What to put on an invoice

An invoice does two jobs, and they pull in different directions. It's a record, so it has to be complete. It's also a request for money, so it has to be easy to act on. A document that only works as a record gets filed, and one that only works as a request gets queried. Most of the fields below serve one job or the other, and it helps to know which.

The four that decide whether you get paid

Bill the entity that holds the budget. In a company of any size, that's usually not the person who briefed you. Say you address the invoice to your contact by name. Their accounts team can't put it into their system until it names the company, so it comes back to be reissued. Before you start work, ask for the billing name, the billing address and the accounts payable email if there is one. I'd put that email at the top of the list, because it's the most useful thing you can collect up front.

Put the due date on as a date. "Net 30" is a term, and someone has to convert it into a day. That's either you or a clerk in a payables queue with no reason to round in your favour. I recommend printing the day itself. You can keep the term beside it (Net 30, due 22 October 2026), but the date is what goes in the diary.

Give the payment details in full. That means bank name, account number, sort code or routing number, and IBAN and SWIFT if the payment crosses a border. An invoice that says "bank transfer" without the details will generate an email, and that email won't be answered on the day it's sent. If you take card or a payment link, put it beside the bank details rather than in place of them. The two suit different payers and carry different fees, and the payment fee calculator shows what each one leaves you.

Describe the work in the payer's words. "Consulting, September" has to be explained to whoever approves it. "Rebuild of the checkout flow, as agreed 2 Sept" doesn't. You already know what you did, so write the description for someone two desks away from your contact who has to decide whether this is a real commitment.

The ones that matter to the file, not the payment

These are your trading name and address, your tax registration number if you have one, the invoice date and a unique invoice number. None of them will make a payment arrive faster. However, all of them will be asked for eventually: by your accountant, by their auditor, or by you in 18 months when you're trying to work out what happened.

Be sure to think about the invoice number rather than generating it at random, because it's the reference everyone will use for this document from now on. The guide to invoice numbering covers a scheme that still works once you have a second client and an accountant.

Tax, and the one thing to get right

Whether you charge tax, at what rate, and what the document has to show are all local questions, and this page won't answer them. The rules differ by country, by what you sell and by whether your customer is a business or a consumer. My recommendation is to ask an accountant once. The answer will hold for years.

For an example of what a tax authority asks for, the UK is useful because HMRC publishes the list. VAT Notice 700, section 16.3.1, says a VAT invoice must show, among other things: a sequential number that uniquely identifies it, the time of supply and the date of issue, your name, address and VAT registration number, the customer's name and address, a description of what was supplied, the quantity or extent of it with the VAT rate and the amount excluding VAT, and the total VAT (in sterling, even when the invoice is in another currency). That is one country's rule for one tax. Other countries publish their own lists, so check yours. The invoice requirements checker has the lists for the UK, the EU, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, each with its official source, as boxes to tick against your own invoice, and the VAT number checker checks that a VAT number, yours or a client's, has the right format before it goes on.

Say whether your prices include tax. This one applies everywhere. For example, a line reading "£1,000" with "VAT 20%" beneath it can mean £1,000 or £1,200, depending on a convention the reader can't see. The payer will often read it the way that suits them, so write includes or plus on the document. If you need to work backwards from a tax-inclusive figure, that's a division rather than a subtraction, and the VAT calculator does it.

What to leave off

Leave off your hourly rate when you're billing a fixed price, and leave off your costs and your margin. The same goes for a breakdown so detailed that it invites line-by-line negotiation after the work is finished. The invoice is the wrong place to reopen the commercial conversation, and any detail you didn't need to supply is one more thing to dispute.

Late payment terms go on only if you agreed them first. A line saying what happens if the invoice goes unpaid belongs on the document when it was part of the deal before the work started. Say the last invoice to this client was late and you add a late fee line to the next one. That charge first appears on the invoice, so it has no agreement behind it. This is the one people most often get backwards.