Internal notes are a private scratchpad on almost every document: the place for the things your team needs to remember but the customer must never see. It is the quiet margin of a document, yours alone.
- What internal notes are for
- The hard guarantee: they never reach the customer
- Why you can keep editing them after a document is locked
What it is
Nearly every document, a quotation, an order, an invoice, a payslip, carries a free-text internal notes field. You jot whatever context the document needs: why a price was given, who to chase, a reminder for the next person to touch it.
The guarantee: internal only
This is the whole point. Internal notes are never printed on the customer's document or PDF, they do not appear in any document template, so anything you write here stays inside your organisation. Write freely, knowing the customer will never read it. For a message you do want the customer to see, use Remarks instead.
Editable even after posting
Unlike the figures on a posted document, which lock, the internal notes stay editable after the document is confirmed. A locked invoice can still gather notes, so the document keeps accumulating context long after its numbers are fixed.
Good practice
- Notes for you, Remarks for them. Internal context here; customer-facing messages in Remarks.
- Write for the next person. A good note answers “why is this document like this?” months later.
- Keep annotating. Because notes stay editable, a posted document can carry its follow-up history.
Related
- Reference: Remarks (the customer-facing sibling)
- Reference: Line items (another shared element)