Our newest monthly summary of InvoiceOcean updates for February 2020

Hello, we present another summary of new features and changes to the system. February this year has hardly felt like the shortest month, so our summary will not be shorter than usual either. Today's reading can be interesting especially for those who use bank imports and the function of issuing receipts in InvoiceOcean. Enjoy!

Better visibility into account activity

Tracking the activity in the system allows the account owner to be aware of the operations and changes made to the account by co-workers. This is one of the quiet features of good invoicing software that most people only appreciate once something goes wrong: if a client disputes a document or a number looks off, you can check exactly who created, edited or removed it, and when. A new activity that is now recorded in the activity log is the deletion of the cycle in the case of invoices issued periodically, which makes it easier to audit how recurring invoices were set up and later changed.

For small business invoicing, where the same one or two people often issue documents, approve payments and answer client emails, an activity log is a lightweight form of internal control. It does not replace proper accounting procedures, but it does mean that mistakes and unauthorized changes are far easier to spot.

Smarter handling of imported invoices

When importing invoices, documents are assigned to the account section indicated in the import. Thanks to this update, imported documents now appear in the system using the predefined invoice template configured for the selected section. For businesses that keep separate sections for different brands, departments or types of activity, this means imported data automatically looks consistent with everything else issued in that section, without any manual reformatting afterwards.

This kind of consistency matters more than it might seem. A unified invoice template across every document - whether created manually or brought in through an import - reinforces your brand and makes it easier for clients to recognize and process your invoices quickly, which can also help when you later send a payment reminder for anything left unpaid.

More flexibility with interest notes

When printing the interest note, you can now indicate the type of interest you want to charge. You can choose statutory interest, commercial interest, or your own custom interest rate. This is useful because the correct interest rate to apply after a due date can depend on the type of relationship between the parties and on the payment terms agreed in advance - a business-to-business transaction is not always treated the same way as a consumer one. Having the option to select the applicable interest type directly when generating the note removes a manual calculation step and reduces the risk of using the wrong rate on documents tied to online invoicing and debt recovery.

An extra layer of account security

In order to increase the security of use of the system, InvoiceOcean will now send an email if you log into your account from an unknown device. This is a simple but effective safeguard: even if a password is compromised, an unexpected login notification gives account owners a chance to react quickly, change their password and review recent activity before any real damage is done. For anyone managing sensitive financial data through an invoicing software platform, this kind of alert is a welcome addition rather than a nuisance.

Clearer API documentation

If you use our API documentation, you will be greeted by a revised page with improvements in the readability of the published data. This is just the beginning of changes in this respect. Better documentation directly benefits developers and agencies who connect InvoiceOcean to other tools - accounting software, CRMs, or custom dashboards - since clear, well-structured docs shorten the time needed to build and maintain those integrations around recurring invoices, payments and client data.

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