Knowledge Base

What Combining Does

Normally, invoice generation creates one draft invoice per student. If a family has two or three children taking lessons at your studio, that's two or three separate invoices for the same parent to pay — even if they're all due at the same time.

Combining takes eligible draft invoices that belong to the same payment-responsible parent and merges them into one family invoice. The charges for each child are kept as clearly labelled line items on the combined invoice, so it's still obvious what each child's fees were for — but the parent only has one invoice to view and pay.

Where to Combine Invoices

You can combine invoices from two places:

• The invoice review screen, right after generating a batch of drafts — click Combine family invoices to combine eligible drafts from that run
• The main invoice list, at any time — select two or more draft invoices and click Combine family invoices

Either way, you'll see a confirmation before anything happens:

Matching draft invoices with the same payment-responsible parent will be combined into family invoices. Original draft invoice lines will be moved onto the family invoice, and the source draft invoices will be removed.

Confirm to go ahead. This can't be undone from the invoice screen — if you need to separate charges back out afterwards, you'd need to edit or void the family invoice and re-add the charges manually.

Which Invoices Can Be Combined

An invoice is only eligible to be combined if all of the following are true:

• It's still a draft — not sent, not void, not paid, and doesn't have a Stripe payment link attached
• It has no payments or account credits applied. If a credit has already been applied to the invoice, remove it first — you can add the credit to the family invoice afterwards instead
• It's an original student invoice that hasn't already been combined into another family invoice
• It was created manually, not by automatic invoice generation. Auto-generated invoices currently can't be combined
• The student is not set up to manage their own billing in the Family Hub. Students with their own billing access always keep their own invoice, even if a parent is linked
• The student has exactly one parent marked as payment-responsible. If a student has no payment-responsible parent, or more than one, their invoice is skipped

On top of that, invoices only combine with each other if they genuinely match — same payment-responsible parent, same billing type, same due date, same currency, same teacher, and the same billing period (for calendar billing, overlapping periods are close enough).

If you select invoices that don't meet these conditions, they're skipped rather than blocking the rest of the batch — you'll get a message explaining why each skipped invoice couldn't be combined, for example:

• "...has account credits applied and cannot be combined. Please remove the credits before combining."
• "...was generated automatically and can't be combined into a family invoice."
• "...cannot be combined on its own because no compatible sibling invoice was selected."

Combining Into an Existing Family Invoice

If a matching draft family invoice for that parent already exists (for example, from an earlier combine), newly eligible invoices are added onto it rather than creating a new one. A brand-new family invoice is only created when there's no existing match and you've selected at least two compatible student invoices to combine.

If more than one existing draft family invoice matches, Octavia can't tell which one you meant — those invoices are skipped so you can combine them by hand.

What the Combined Invoice Looks Like

• The family invoice is named after the parent, for example Smith Family Invoice
• Each child's charges appear as their own line items, so the breakdown per student is still clear
• The invoice total, due date, and payment status apply to the whole family invoice — there's no way to record a payment against just one child's portion
• If a partial payment is made, the remaining balance is tracked on the family invoice as a whole, the same as any other invoice. See Partial Payments

In the Family Hub, the parent sees the family invoice listed separately from any individual student invoices, so it's clear which invoices cover more than one child.

Sending and Managing a Family Invoice

Once combined, a family invoice follows the normal invoice lifecycle — send it, take payment, and void it the same way you would a student invoice. See Sending Invoices and Receipts, Recording a Payment, and Voiding an Invoice.

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Related articles:

• Billing Families with Multiple Enrolments
• Generating Invoices: The Review-and-Send Flow
• Account Credits
• Recording a Payment