Like a lot of parents, I’m super busy and don’t have time to trawl the Internet researching a topic, let alone understanding it in my sleep deprived brain fug. So I’ve done the work for you, condensing topics down to the essentials you need to know plus more detail if you need it.
What You Need to Know
Whatever your business is, there may be occasions that you need to provide an invoice to a supplier, and you may also need to provide a credit note – providing a refund to a supplier to ‘cancel out’ an invoice that you have sent them.
Creating an invoice does not need to be complicated but there are certain pieces of information that you need to ensure that you include:
- The word INVOICE displayed prominently at the top
- Your name and postal address
- The supplier’s name and address
- An invoice number, you can choose what this is
- Invoice date (this can also be called the tax point) – this is the date you create the invoice, not when you provided the goods or services
- Your VAT number, if you have one
- A brief description of the goods or services provided
- The total amount due
- Payment terms – how long the supplier has to pay you
- Payment methods – this could be Paypal or BACS, so you will need to provide the email address or bank details
If you are a limited company, you should include your company number and registered address
You do not need to include the supplier’s VAT number or company number.
Click here for an example invoice (pdf).
If you are creating a credit note, change INVOICE to CREDIT NOTE at the top of the document. You should also change the description so that it references the invoice number that you are crediting, plus change the total amount to say total amount credited. You could put a minus symbol in front of the amount as well.
More Information
If you are going to be producing a lot of invoices, it may be worth looking into accounting software suck as QuickBooks or Sage.
