How to Create an Invoice

Start with who is billing whom

The two identity blocks — yours and the client's — do more work than people expect. Your block establishes who is owed the money and, via your tax number, that you are entitled to charge tax. The client block has to name the legal entity, not the brand. An invoice addressed to a trading name that does not match the entity on the purchase order is one of the most common reasons an invoice is returned unpaid.

Number it properly

Use a single unbroken sequence: INV-0001, INV-0002, and so on. Do not restart the sequence per client, and do not leave gaps. Gaps look like deleted invoices to an auditor, and sequential numbering is a legal requirement in much of Europe.

If you want client information in the reference, add it as a suffix rather than breaking the sequence — INV-0042-ACME reads fine and still sorts.

Write line items a stranger can understand

The person who approves your invoice is often not the person who hired you. Write descriptions for them. "Consulting" tells an accounts payable clerk nothing; "Q1 marketing strategy workshop, 2 days, 12–13 March" can be matched to a purchase order without a phone call.

Set dates, not shorthand

Net 30 is fine as long as you also print the actual due date. Shorthand gets interpreted differently by different finance teams — some count from receipt, some from month end — and a printed date removes the ambiguity entirely.

Say how to pay you

Payment details belong on the invoice itself, not in the covering email. Emails get forwarded into ticketing systems that strip attachments and context; the PDF is the document that survives.

• Bank name, account number and routing/sort code, or IBAN and BIC
• The exact account name so it matches their beneficiary check
• A payment reference — usually the invoice number
• Any online payment link, if you offer one