How to invoice as a sole trader
Nine things belong on the document and the rest is presentation. Here is what they are, how to number and date them, and the terms that get the thing paid.
Nine things belong on the document and the rest is presentation. Here is what they are, how to number and date them, and the terms that get the thing paid.
Nine things. Your name and address, the client and theirs, a unique invoice number, the date you issued it, the date it is due, a line for each piece of work with its quantity and rate, the subtotal, the tax if you charge it, and how to pay you.
That is the whole document. Everything past those nine is presentation: a logo, a template, an accent colour. Presentation changes how the invoice reads, and how seriously it is taken, but it does not change whether the thing is an invoice. A document missing the number or the due date is a letter about money.
In that order down the page, because that is the order the person paying reads it in.
Two of the nine are worth more attention than the other seven, and one of them is not really a field at all. They are the next section.
These three decide whether the invoice gets paid, and all three are decided before you write a single line of work.
Nobody checks, and a first invoice numbered 0001 tells a client exactly how new you are. Pick a number, go up by one, and keep going up for the rest of your working life. The only real rule is that no two documents ever carry the same one, including the invoice you raised and cancelled last March. Invoice Koi holds the next number and fills it in, which is the point at which this stops being something to remember.
The gap between finishing the work and invoicing for it is the gap in which the price gets remembered differently. An invoice written on site goes out while the job is still the thing that just happened. An invoice sent a fortnight later arrives into a fortnight of other paperwork, and the person who agreed the price has had two weeks to forget what it was.
An invoice sent a fortnight later competes with a fortnight of other paperwork.
It is a date to a bookkeeper and a puzzle to everybody else. Put the terms and the day itself on the document, so that the answer to "when is this due" is printed rather than worked out. Koi counts the days from the day you send it and prints the result.
All three are free and none of them asks for an account. Which one you want depends on whether this is a one off or the thing you will be doing every week for the next ten years.
None of the three takes the payment. You record what came in, and the balance and the reports follow from that.
A template is a file you fill in and keep filling in, which is fine for the first one and tiring by the tenth. The generator is the same document without the file: fill in the fields in this browser, get the PDF, close the tab. The app is the one that remembers, which matters once there is a second invoice to the same client and a number that has to follow the last one.
A quote is a price before the work and it asks for nothing. When it is accepted it converts to the invoice, carrying the lines, the client, the tax and your terms across, so the thing you bill is the thing they said yes to. That is its own post, because getting it wrong is how you end up billing for something nobody agreed to.
Nine things: your name and address, the client and theirs, a unique invoice number, the date you issued it, the date it is due, a line for each piece of work with its quantity and rate, the subtotal, the tax if you charge it, and how to pay you. Anything past that is presentation.
They have to be unique, and sequential is the simplest way to keep them unique. Start anywhere you like, go up by one, and never reuse a number even for an invoice you cancelled. Invoice Koi holds the next number and fills it in.
The day the work finishes, before you leave if you can. An invoice sent a fortnight later competes with a fortnight of other paperwork, and the person who agreed the price has had time to forget it.
An estimate is a price before the work and asks for nothing. An invoice is a demand for payment after it, with a due date on it. In Invoice Koi an accepted estimate converts to the invoice, carrying the lines, the client, the tax and your terms across, so the thing you bill is the thing they agreed to.
Yes. An invoice is a document, not a company filing. It needs a name, an address and a way to pay you, and none of those require a company behind them.
Ask, in writing, with the invoice attached. Invoice Koi will not chase anybody for you: what it does is tell you, once a day at an hour you pick, what is overdue and what it comes to. Nothing goes to a client unless you send it.
Only if you charge it, and what it is called depends on where you invoice from. Invoice Koi asks which country you work in and prefills the name and the standard rate, which you confirm rather than type from memory. Whether you should be charging it at all is a question for whoever does your books.
The generator runs in this browser, asks for no account, and gives you the PDF at the end of it. If it turns out you need a second one, the app remembers the client and the number.
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