The Scenario
You are an accounts receivable clerk. It is Tuesday at 9 AM and the billing run is due by noon. You have 40 confirmed Sales Order IDs in an Excel workbook — the Invoice Queue tab, column A — verified by the sales team on Monday. Each one needs to become an ERPNext Sales Invoice.
Your current process: open ERPNext, search for each Sales Order ID, click "Create Invoice," review the pre-populated fields, submit, copy the new invoice ID, paste it back into column B of the workbook. Forty times. At roughly four minutes per order, that is two hours and forty minutes of navigation before the billing is even done.
The bad version of billing day:
- Open ERPNext Sales Order list, search for first order ID
- Click "Create Invoice," verify line items, submit
- Copy the new Sales Invoice ID, paste into column B of the workbook
- Navigate back, find the next order ID
- Repeat 39 more times
- Noon arrives and you have seventeen invoices left.
The fast version is one prompt.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI reads the Sales Order ID column and creates all 40 invoices through the ERPNext API, writing each returned Invoice ID back to the workbook.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
Create an ERPNext Sales Invoice from each Sales Order ID in column A of the Invoice Queue tab. Write the new Invoice ID into column B for each row. If creation fails, write the error reason into column B instead.
SheetXAI iterates through all 40 rows, creates each Sales Invoice from the referenced Sales Order, and writes the result into column B. The billing run takes minutes instead of hours.
What You Get
A completed workbook with 40 rows of invoice confirmation:
- Successful rows — the ERPNext Sales Invoice ID in column B
- Failed rows — the specific error in column B (wrong status, missing customer account, already invoiced)
- Audit trail — Sales Order ID in column A paired with Invoice ID in column B, ready for reconciliation
Copy column B directly into the billing report. No manual reconciliation against ERPNext's invoice list.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Billing runs rarely have perfectly clean input. SheetXAI handles the variations inline.
When some order IDs have inconsistent formatting
Some IDs have leading zeros or trailing spaces. ERPNext will not find them.
Normalize the Sales Order IDs in column A of the Invoice Queue tab by removing leading and trailing spaces. Then create an ERPNext Sales Invoice for each ID and write the Invoice ID into column B.
When some orders may already be invoiced
For each Sales Order ID in column A, check whether an ERPNext Sales Invoice already exists. If it does, write "ALREADY INVOICED" into column B and skip. If not, create a new Sales Invoice and write the Invoice ID into column B.
When you need the invoice amount in column C for the cash-flow forecast
Create an ERPNext Sales Invoice for each Sales Order ID in column A of the Invoice Queue tab. Write the new Invoice ID into column B and the total invoice amount into column C. If creation fails, write the error into column B and leave column C blank.
When flagged rows should be skipped
Some rows have "HOLD" in column C. Do not invoice those yet.
Skip any row in the Invoice Queue tab where column C contains "HOLD." For all other rows, create an ERPNext Sales Invoice from the Sales Order ID in column A and write the Invoice ID into column B. Write "SKIPPED — HOLD" into column B for the rows you skipped.
The pattern: the prompt handles the conditional logic across every row. You describe the exception once.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and run it against your next billing queue workbook. The ERPNext integration is included in every SheetXAI plan. For other billing and AP workflows, see how to pull unpaid Purchase Invoices for AP review or the ERPNext in Excel overview.