What Do Invoice Status Values Mean in the Unified API?

1. Overview

The unified Accounting API uses a standardized set of status values for invoices. These statuses represent the lifecycle of an invoice from creation through to settlement, providing a consistent model across all supported accounting connectors.

Because each connector uses its own native status terminology, Apideck normalizes these into a single set of unified values so you can write consistent logic regardless of which accounting platform your users connect.

2. Status Values

The unified model supports the following 10 status values:

draft - The invoice has been created but is not yet finalized. It can still be edited and has not been sent, approved, or recorded in the ledger.
submitted - The invoice has been sent or submitted for review, approval, or processing. It is no longer a draft but has not yet been formally approved.
authorised - The invoice has been approved at a business level — it is cleared to proceed. However, it has not yet been recorded in the accounting ledger. Think of this as a business approval gate, not an accounting event.
partially_paid - Some payment has been received or allocated, but a balance still remains outstanding.
paid - The invoice has been fully settled. No remaining balance.
void - The invoice has been cancelled or invalidated. It is retained in the system for audit trail purposes but has no financial effect.
deleted - The invoice has been removed or soft-deleted. Exact behavior may vary by connector.

3. Lifecycle Flow

The typical happy-path progression of an invoice is:

draft → submitted → authorised → partially_paid → paid

Not every invoice passes through every status. Depending on the connector and business workflow:

An invoice may go directly from draft to authorised, skipping submitted
An invoice may be void or deleted from any stage
Some connectors don't distinguish between all statuses - see Connector Coverage below

4. Connector Coverage

Not all connectors support every status value. The table below shows how each connector's native statuses map to the unified model. A dash (—) means the connector does not have a native equivalent for that status.

Unified Status	Xero	NetSuite	Sage Intacct	FreshBooks	MYOB Acumatica	Exact Online	QuickBooks
`draft`	DRAFT	Open	Draft	draft	Unapplied	Draft	—
`submitted`	SUBMITTED	—	(fallback)	(fallback)	Pending Processing, etc.	Sent	—
`authorised`	AUTHORISED *	—	Partially Approved	—	Open, Scheduled, etc.	—	—
`partially_paid`	AUTHORISED *	Open-partially Paid	Partially Paid	partial, deposit-partial	—	—	—
`paid`	PAID	Paid In Full	Paid	paid	Balanced, Closed	Paid	—
`void`	VOIDED	—	Declined, Reversed	—	Voided, Rejected	—	—
`deleted`	DELETED	—	—	vis_state=1	—	—	—

* Xero note: Xero maps both authorised and partially_paid to the same native status (AUTHORISED). This means these two states cannot be distinguished on the Xero side alone.

Notable behaviors:

QuickBooks does not expose a status field on invoices at all, so none of the unified statuses are applicable.
NetSuite uses different status codes depending on the query method (SuiteQL vs Saved Search), which can result in different values being returned for the same invoice.

5. Things to Keep in Mind

Not all transitions are available on all connectors. If a connector doesn't support a status, attempting to set it may be ignored or return an error.
Some connectors collapse multiple unified statuses into one native status. This means round-tripping (read → write → read) may not preserve the exact status. Xero's handling of authorised and partially_paid is a good example of this.
Status semantics can vary subtly between connectors. For example, Open in NetSuite maps to draft, while Open in MYOB Acumatica maps to authorised. The unified model normalizes these differences so you don't need to handle them yourself.