← All documentation · Settings & Integrations

Record numbering

Set how LogAI numbers your orders, invoices, returns, payments, leads, customers, deals, employees, expense claims and leave requests: prefix, separator, year or financial year, digits, yearly restart and the number to continue from.

5 min read · Last updated 2026-10-01

Every order, invoice, lead and the other records below gets a readable number — INV/26-27/0001, LD-00042, ORD-42-00117 — that counts up one by one for your organization alone. These are the numbers your team and customers see and quote: lists, detail panels, hover cards, search and xLog all show them instead of internal ids. The format of each series lives on the Record numbering card at the bottom of Settings → General → Organization.

The series and their defaults

Each row shows the Next number the series will hand out, and a Custom badge once you have changed it. Order and return numbers always include your organization id (the 42 in ORD-42-00117) — it can't be turned off — so they stay unique when they leave LogAI as reference ids with shipping and payment partners such as Shiprocket and Razorpay.

Change a format

1. Open the series. Go to Settings → General → Organization, scroll to Record numbering, and press the pencil on the row you want — e.g. Invoices. The dialog shows a live Next number preview as you edit.
2. Pick the parts. Prefix — up to 12 letters or digits, stored in capitals (or leave it empty). Separator — Dash ( - ), Slash ( / ) or None. Year — No year, Financial year, Year (2026) or Year (26). Digits — how many digits the counter is padded to, 1 to 10.
3. Decide on a yearly restart. Turn on Restart every year to start again at 1 each year. With Financial year it restarts when your financial year begins; with a calendar year it restarts on 1 January. It needs the year in the number, otherwise numbers would repeat.
4. Optionally continue from a number. Moving from another system? Type the number your next record should get in Continue from (optional) — e.g. 1501 to carry on after your old invoice 1500. A number that is already used is refused with “… is already used. Pick a higher number.”
5. Save. Press Save. A toast confirms where numbering will continue from. The change applies to new records only.

Rules the dialog enforces: Prefix: letters and digits only, 12 at most. Digits: 1–10. Restart every year needs a year in the number. Orders and returns need a separator (the None option is hidden for them) because they carry your organization id — without one, 2+00009 and 20+0009 would read the same. A format that would make numbers too long is rejected.

Financial year

Financial year starts in (top of the card) sets the month used by any series that shows or restarts by financial year. Left on the country default it is April for organizations in India and January elsewhere. With an April start, invoices raised between April 2026 and March 2027 read INV/26-27/…; with a January start the year shows as 2026. The same setting drives the financial-year periods in Reports and Books.

What happens to existing records

• Existing numbers never change. A new format only affects records created after you save.
• Orders, invoices and returns created before numbering existed keep the numbers they already had.
• Leads, customers, payments, deals, expense claims and leave requests that had no number were given one in the default format, in the order they were created (LD-00001, LD-00002…).
• Counting continues from your volume. The first time a series is used it starts after the records you already have in that period, so an organization with 120 leads gets LD-00121 next, not LD-00001.
• No duplicates. A number that is already in use is skipped rather than issued twice. A save that fails doesn't use up a number; deleting a record does leave a gap.
• Use default (…) in the dialog puts a customised series back on its default format; the count carries on where it was.

Invoices: numbered once, for good

In the invoice wizard the Number field is read-only and shows Auto · INV/26-27/0042 (or Assigned on save) — the number is assigned when the invoice is saved, dated by its invoice date. Invoice numbers can't be changed once issued, which keeps your series continuous for GST. Invoices raised automatically when an online order is delivered draw from the same invoice series, so manual and storefront invoices share one unbroken sequence. How the invoice looks is set separately in Invoice templates.

Access

Changing a series or the financial-year month needs Update on Organization. Anyone with View on Organization sees the card read-only, and people who work with invoices, orders or leads see the next number on those forms. xLog answers “what's our next invoice number?” or “how are orders numbered?” and quotes record numbers in its replies. See Organization settings for the rest of the page and Manage your team for roles.

Open the LogAI app — start free, no credit card required.