How does your invoice look?

i am currently redesigning mine...

[moltar]

I just got a hold of an application that automates the whole invoicing process. It has a feature to export an invoice to PDF, and even email it to a customer. Before that, I've been using MS Word and Excel to do all the invoicing routine. With the change, I have to redesign the PDF templates and I thought maybe, I could change something in my invoice form the way it looks now (and I actually have to, because of the limitation of the application.)

Now I have:

• my logo
  
• my address
  
• invoice #
  
• client's company name
  
• client's name
  
• client's address
  

Followed by a table of services performed last month:

• service performed
  
• time took to do it
  
• date it was done on
  
• $ rate/h
  
• total
  

Then the table is summarised with subtotal, taxes and total.

I was wondering if I really need this many details in the table? Do you put the time it took and rate and all that in your invoice?

How does your invoice look?

[jo1ene]

I include the identical information (sans invoice #) on mine and so does my husband who is in consulting. (He would since I designed it.)

I know many who people want the dates and hours broken down. Also, I find that I have to go back and check/look at dates all the time.

One thing that I have been meaning to put on there is the fax number or email address to make it easier to find where to send the thing.

I just keep mine clean and uncluttered. That helps me at tax time. All the salient details are in the lower right-hand corner when I go through the stack. Yes... I print hard copies!

[vkaryl]

I use QuickBooks Pro, including the nifty timer applet. Reports and invoices can be broken down by timered chargeable items. The invoice template is fully customizable, which I did - for as clean a look as I could manage! No fancy fonts, simple left-top logo, contact info, invoice number, date of invoice, table section with number of hours, cost per hour (or per job, depending), total, and the bottom line total for the whole thing. AND a nice little thanks message left-bottom.

Clean fonts, lots of white space, no overly done colored graphics - you want the customer to pay it, not drool over it....

[Sanenet]

Nice and simple for us -

company name, trading name, logo, address and contact details, date, VAT number and invoice number;

customers company name, trading name, address and contact details, date, VAT number;

Item ref, item detail, price/item, total price, applicable VAT per item, total price per item, total price, total VAT, amount payable.

payment methods, including bank account number and "check payable", payment terms, status of payment.

Actually, now I look at the list, I realise it's not simple! However, a lot of the above needs to be on the invoice by law (don't forget to double check that your invoice complies with legal requirements moltar!)

[moltar]

Good point Sanenet, I have never thought about the law :)