Find anything with search

A single search covers your whole company: clients, invoices, quotes, expenses, payments, accounting, payroll, pages and settings. Type a name, a number, an amount or a date: To Bill understands what you are looking for and shows you a preview before you even open it.

Open the search

1. Click Search everywhere... (1), at the top of the screen, or press ⌘K on a Mac, Ctrl+K on Windows. The shortcut works everywhere in To Bill, even while you are typing in a field.

   

2. The search window opens. Before you type anything, it offers the most useful Quick actions, Pages and Settings, as well as the documents you opened last. The categories (1) are under the field.

   

3. To close it, press Esc, click outside the window or press ⌘K / Ctrl+K again.

On the right of the top bar, Copilot (2) answers your questions and prepares your draft quotes and invoices, on every page (see The Copilot and the night agent). The ? (3) opens the help for the screen you are on: its guided tour, its guide and the keyboard shortcuts. It also offers Tour of the search, which shows you this window step by step.

On a phone

The search is the magnifying glass icon at the top of the screen. It opens full screen; Cancel closes it. The preview is only shown on a wide screen.

Search

Type at least two characters. Results arrive as you type, grouped by kind: Clients, Invoices, Quotes, Credit notes, Expenses, Collections, Journal entries, Employees, etc. The words found are highlighted.

• Accents, capitals and hyphens do not count: “leman” finds “Léman”, “f 2601” finds “F-2601”.
• Several words: each word must be found (up to six words).
• The best result first: an exact number or name comes before the start of a word, which comes before a word contained in another. When they are equal, the most recent comes first. On the invoices page, invoices are shown first.
• In All, each group shows its 5 best results; Show all shows more.

What you find depends on your permissions and on the modules switched on: a user without access to payroll sees neither the Payroll category nor the employees.

What the search understands

You type	To Bill looks for
A name: dupont	Clients, their contacts, the documents in their name, suppliers, employees, team members
A document number: F-2603, 2603	The document, even if you only type the end of the number
An amount: 540.50, 1'800, 1 800,50, CHF 1800.-	Invoices, quotes, expenses, payments received, entries and bank lines of this amount, to the centime, including or excluding VAT
A negative amount: -4'190.46	Only negative amounts, for example money leaving the bank account
A date: 12.03.2026, 12.3.26, 2026-03-12	The documents, payments and entries of that day
A month: 03.2026, 3/2026	The month’s documents, the month’s payrolls, the VAT periods that include it
A year: 2026	The VAT periods and payrolls of the year
A quarter or the word VAT: Q1 2026, vat	The VAT periods
An IBAN	Supplier invoices, expenses and bank lines of this account
A QR reference (27 digits) or an RF reference	The invoice, supplier invoice, payment received or bank line that carries it

When To Bill recognises an amount, a date, an IBAN or a reference, it writes it above the results: Read as amount CHF 540.50 (1).

On a computer screen, the preview on the right shows the chosen result: for an invoice, its number, its client, its dates, its amount, what is left to pay and its last activity; for a client, their contact details and the number of their open invoices. Below it, the actions (2):

Action	Shortcut
Open	Enter
Open in a new tab	⌘ Enter / Ctrl+Enter
Copy the number	⌘C / Ctrl+C
Send, for an invoice or a quote not sent yet
Record a payment, for an invoice that is sent, partially paid or overdue: the amount left is filled in
Send a reminder, for an invoice past its due date

Actions only appear if you have the permission and your subscription is active.

What the search does not read

• Month names are not read as dates: type 03.2026 rather than “March 2026”.
• 1.800 (three decimals) is not read as an amount: write 1'800 or 1800.
• OASI (AHV) numbers, employees’ IBANs and salaries are never searched, to protect staff data. An employee is found by their name or their employee number.

Search in a category

Click a category under the field, or press Tab to move to the next one (Shift+Tab for the previous one). You can also start your search with the category’s name followed by a colon: invoice: dupont looks for “dupont” in the invoices (1). The preview (2) details the chosen result.

Category	It contains	Prefixes accepted
Clients	Clients	client:, customer:
Invoices	Invoices, credit notes and recurring invoices	invoice:
Quotes	Quotes	quote:
Expenses	Expenses and supplier invoices	expense:
Payments	Payments received and bank lines	payment:
Accounting	Entries, accounts, bank lines, fixed assets and VAT periods	accounting:
Payroll	Employees and payrolls	payroll:
Pages	To Bill’s pages and the help	page: or /
Settings	The settings tabs	settings:
Actions	The quick actions	action: or >

Prefixes work with or without accents, in the singular or the plural, and in To Bill’s other languages (facture:, rechnung:, fattura:…). To go back to All, clear the field then press the delete key.

Items, projects, time entries and team members have no category: they appear in All.

When a category finds nothing, Search everywhere runs the same search again in All.

Quick actions and pages

Type > to see all the quick actions: New Invoice, New quote, New client, New Expense, New collection, Import a statement, New credit note, New article, Invite a User, Import invoices, Import clients and Import articles.

The first five can also be launched with ⌥1 to ⌥5 (Alt+1 to Alt+5 on Windows) when the All category is shown.

Type / followed by a word to go to a page: /vat, /journal, /balance. Pages can also be found with words from other languages: “mwst” or “tva” find the VAT pages. In the help, Guide to this page opens the documentation for the screen you are on, To Bill documentation the home page of this documentation.

Recent items and history

To Bill remembers, for you and for this company, the last items opened from the search and the last searches that led you to a result. When the field is empty, the last five are shown under Recently opened and the last four searches under Recent searches. They stay in your browser, without amounts. Clear search history deletes them.

All the search keys

Key	Effect
↑ ↓	Move from one result to another
Enter	Open the result, run the action
⌘ Enter / Ctrl+Enter	Open in a new tab (also: ⌘ click or Ctrl+click)
Tab / Shift+Tab	Next / previous category
Delete, empty field	Go back to All
⌥1 to ⌥5 / Alt+1 to Alt+5	Run a quick action
⌘C / Ctrl+C	Copy the number of the chosen result
Esc	Close

The other To Bill shortcuts are in Keyboard shortcuts. To sort and filter a list, see Filter, sort and keep your views.