Invoice Templates & Numbering

Three settings screens decide how a printed document looks and how it is numbered: Invoice Templates (which fields and columns appear, their labels, the branding), Invoice Print Copies (how many GST copies print), and Voucher Numbering (the number series each document type draws from). This page walks through all three by customising a GST tax invoice end to end.

The template gallery

Settings → Invoice Templates shows your templates as a grid of cards. Each card is a live preview rendered through the real PDF pipeline, so you can tell templates apart without opening them. Chips on the card tell you its role:

Chip	Meaning
Default (blue border)	The template used when nothing more specific applies.
Business unit	Scoped to one business unit rather than the whole account.
Starter	A system template Raya ships. It can be duplicated but not deleted.

Each card carries four actions: ★ Set default, ✎ Edit, ⧉ Duplicate and 🗑 Delete. Delete is disabled for Starter templates and for the account default.

:::tip Start by duplicating, never editing the Starter Duplicate a Starter template and edit the copy. You keep a clean, known-good original to fall back on, and your customisations live on a template you own. :::

Worked example: customise a GST tax invoice

Say you want a tax invoice that shows your logo on the right, hides the columns you never use, renames "Rate" to "Price/Unit", and prints your bank details in the footer.

1. Duplicate and open the editor

1. Find the Tax Invoice (Starter) card and click ⧉ Duplicate.
2. Open the copy. The editor opens with the controls on the left and a live preview on the right that re-renders as you type.
3. Fill the identity fields at the top:

Field	What to enter
Name	An internal name, e.g. Tax Invoice — Mumbai.
Description	Optional note for your admins.
Applies to	All business units (account-wide) or a single business unit.
Use as the default	Turn on to make this the default for its scope.

2. Set per-field visibility and labels

Every field is grouped into an expandable section (Seller details, Buyer details, Totals, Transport, E-invoice, and so on). For each field you get a switch (does it print), a label box (rename it), and a Reset button. The switch has four behaviours:

State	On the switch	What prints
On	Toggle on	Always printed.
Off	Toggle off	Never printed unless you switch it on.
Auto	On, with an auto chip	Printed only when the invoice has a value for it (e.g. the e-Way Bill band).
Always	On, with an always chip	You switched an Auto field on explicitly — it prints even when empty.
Locked	Greyed with a 🔒	Statutory — always printed, cannot be turned off.

To rename a field, type into its label box — leaving it blank keeps the default wording. For this example, set the Rate column's label to Price/Unit. Reset clears both an explicit switch and a custom label, returning the field to its catalogue default.

:::info Rule 46 fields are locked Fields required by GST Rule 46 — your and the buyer's GSTIN, the HSN/SAC code, the taxable value, the tax breakup (CGST/SGST/IGST) and the signature block — carry a 🔒 and always print. You can relabel some of them, but you cannot switch them off. :::

3. Reorder and resize the line-item columns

Open the Line item columns section. Each column has ↑ / ↓ arrows to reorder it, the same visibility switch and label box, and a width slider (a relative weight, not millimetres — the renderer normalises the whole row to fit the page). For this example:

1. Move HSN/SAC up so it sits right after the product description.
2. Turn off the columns you never use (say, a Discount column when you never discount).
3. Widen Description and narrow Unit so long product names don't wrap.

4. Set page layout and branding

The Page layout section controls Paper (A4/A5/Letter/Legal), Orientation, Font (Helvetica/Times/Courier), body font size, the four margins, and checkboxes for Compact rows, Repeat the column header on every page and Show page numbers.

The Branding & wording section controls the rest:

Setting	Example value
Logo position	Right
Logo height	48
Accent colour	#2563eb (hex — tints headings and rule lines)
Watermark	DRAFT (leave blank on a real invoice)
Document title	Tax Invoice
Declaration	We declare that this invoice shows the actual price…
Jurisdiction note	Subject to Mumbai jurisdiction
Footer note	bank name, A/C number, IFSC, or This is a Computer Generated Invoice

5. Preview and save

The Live preview on the right renders your unsaved draft against sample data through the actual PDF renderer — what you see is what prints. Use Open full-size PDF for a full-page check, then Save template.

Which template is used

When an invoice prints, Raya picks the template by precedence, most specific first:

1. A customer pointed at a specific template on their master record.
2. The business unit's own default.
3. The account default.

GST print copies (Rule 48)

Settings → Invoice Print Copies decides how many labelled copies each invoice prints. GST Rule 48 requires goods invoices in triplicate and services invoices in duplicate. This screen is opt-in: while the profile switch is off, invoices print as a single copy with no banner (unless a customer override applies).

Turn on Set a company-wide copy profile and either use a quick-fill button — GST goods (triplicate) or GST services (duplicate) — or build the list by hand (1–5 copies, drag to reorder, up to 40 characters each). Copy #1 is always the "original". Each label prints as a bordered banner in the top-right of every page of that copy.

Copy	Default label (goods)	Who it is for
1	ORIGINAL FOR RECIPIENT	The buyer.
2	DUPLICATE FOR TRANSPORTER	Travels with the goods for the carrier.
3	TRIPLICATE FOR SUPPLIER	Retained in your own records.

For services the default profile is two copies: ORIGINAL FOR RECIPIENT and DUPLICATE FOR SUPPLIER.

The Email all copies to the customer switch controls delivery. Off (recommended) sends only the Original for Recipient copy by email or WhatsApp, while print and download always produce the full set. A customer can override the company profile on their own master record.

Voucher numbering

Voucher Numbering controls the number series for each document type — Sales, Purchase, Receipt, Payment, Journal, Contra, Credit Note, Debit Note and Stock Journal. If you configure nothing, Raya auto-numbers each type with a standard prefix (INV-, PUR/, RCP/, PMT/, JV/, CTR/, CN/, DN/, SJ/) starting at 0001. Create a series only to customise it.

Worked example: INV/2026-27/0001

Use New Series — a three-step wizard — to build a Sales series that numbers INV/2026-27/0001, INV/2026-27/0002, …:

Step 1 — Type & Scope. Pick the Sales card, then a fiscal year scope (Current FY, Next FY, a custom YY-YY, or All FYs). Optionally restrict the series to a business unit, branch, or (for Sales/Purchase only) a product category.

Step 2 — Numbering. Fill in each part of the number:

Part	What you enter	This example
Series name	An internal label for admins	Sales — 2026-27
Prefix	Text before the number	INV/2026-27/
Suffix	Optional text after the number	(blank)
Start number	The first voucher's number	1
Padding width	Zero-pad to 2–8 digits	4 → 0001
Restart frequency	Never / Yearly / Monthly	Yearly

A live preview shows the first number as you type. Here that reads INV/2026-27/0001. With Yearly restart the counter resets to 0001 on the first day of each fiscal year (April–March by default).

Step 3 — Flags. Confirm Make this the default (Raya turns it on automatically when it is the first series for that type + fiscal-year combination) and Active.

Scope precedence and locked fields

A voucher always draws from the most specific matching series:

• Business Unit + Branch > Business Unit > Branch > All.
• A Product Category series (Sales/Purchase) wins over business-unit and branch scope — an order matches the category of its highest-value line.

After a series is created, its voucher type, prefix, fiscal year and next number are locked. You can still edit the series name, suffix, restart frequency, padding width, and the Default / Active flags. An inactive series stays in history but can't be picked for new vouchers, and you can't deactivate the only active series for a given type + fiscal year.

Related

• GSTIN Profiles, Business Units & Branches — the units, branches and categories you can scope templates and numbering to.
• Overview — the company logo and branding drawn onto documents.
• Users & Roles — who may change these settings.