Invoice Essentials Checklist

You successfully won some business from either an existing client or prospect, you did the work and now it’s time to invoice. You don’t want any delays in being paid do you? It is so worth making sure that you have the correct and invoice essentials information on the actual invoice itself to make it as easy as possible for the customer to pay without any delay. Here is my invoice essentials checklist items which covers all the items that you should have in your invoice template. Use a spreadsheet package to generate your invoice so it calculates the figures for you – reducing the chance of errors occurring.

Invoice Essentials

• It has a unique invoice number (make sure that it’s sequential)
• An invoice date, which includes the day, month and year
• Customer’s business name
• Customer’s business address
• Customer purchase order (PO) reference number, if this has been provided
• Who the invoice is for the attention of (FAO)
• A description that makes sense to your customer. A description of ‘onsite visit’ doesn’t say that you ‘fixed leaking bath taps’.
• The quantity purchased for that particular line item
• The price for the unit item
• The line item total
• The sub total before VAT
• State the VAT rate
• The invoice grand total
• Which currency the payment is due in
• You have listed the ways the customer can pay along with its details, for example:
  • cash
  • cheque (including to whom it needs to be written out to)
  • bank transfer (bank name, account number and sort code)
  • debit/credit card (including any transaction % surcharge information)
  • PayPal  (including any transaction % surcharge information)
• Triple check that your bank account details are correct!
• You have stated when to pay by – eg. ‘Payment Terms: 14 days’
• You have included your full postal address (especially needed if you accept cheques)
• Include your contact details:
  • telephone number
  • mobile number
  • email address