What is an invoice? And why is it so important for your business?
How to write an invoice.
So what makes a great service invoice? In my opinion, there are three big things you need to consider in your invoice layout: presentation, content, and messaging.
1. Presentation.
Your invoice for services should look the same whether it's mailed or sent electronically. It should represent all that's good about your business. So how do you make your invoice look good?
- Have a great logo. Hopefully your company logo is professional and unique. If not, then consider getting it redone - there are many online services that will do this for you, or you can look for a graphic artist on freelancer sites. It should be the same logo from your stationary and website. It should be crystal clear and sharp.
- Instead of or in addition to your logo, have a cool graphic. Some of my clients have invoices with photos of their building, or products or a group of their employees. I've seen beautiful sunsets and hometown cityscapes on invoices sent to me from vendors. A few of them even substitute cartoons or professional drawings for a photo. A cool graphic like that draws attention.
- Ideally your service invoice should be one page. But don't sweat that detail. You want to make sure your fonts are large enough so that anyone - even those boomers - can see all the information without reading glasses. If that means going on to a second page then so be it.
- Your service invoices should also be black and white. That's my opinion. Sure, you can colourize your logo or graphic. But keep the rest of it straight up and easy to read. Too many colours create confusion and are distracting from the invoice's main purpose: reminding your customer that payment is due.
As said above, the main purpose of your invoice is to notify your customer that they owe you for a service rendered. You want to make sure your invoices have all the information a customer needs to accomplish that task as quickly as possible. What information is that?
- Customer invoicing address: The specific name of the human being where this invoice is going to along with their address. That's the person you're going to want to talk to if there's any problem.
- Place where service was performed: Sometimes the work is done at different locations and you want to indicate that.
- Your salesperson: This can be a last name or initials of your person who did this deal. It's important to track their sales (probably for commission) but also to have someone internally who owns this invoice.
- Invoice number: Every invoice has to have an assigned, unique control number for reference. Different companies take different approaches to this and there's no right answer. Maybe you want to combine a number with a date or just have an ongoing log of sequential invoice numbers.
- Invoice date: This is the date that the invoice was created (and hopefully sent). The clock starts ticking here.
- Purchase order number: This should reference your customer's purchase order for cross reference.
- Terms: Net 30 (due in 30 days) is the most common but maybe you'd like to do a 2% net 10 which means you're offering a two percent discount if the customer pays within ten days. This is a common practice and a helpful way to speed up cash flow.
- Service date: This is the date the service was performed. That's important for your customer's accounting department so they can potentially recognize their payable. For example, if a service was performed in March but then you didn’t invoice until April (tsk, tsk) then the customer may want to record that liability at the end of March for their accounting purposes.
- Service description: This is your place to shine! Include a detailed description of everything performed. Make sure you're using consistent wording with your customer's purchase order and your own quote/proposal. Your description should be explanatory enough so that your customer has little reason to question all the great things your company does.
- Price or fee: This amount should always agree to the customer's purchase order and your quote/proposal...or you'll have a fight on your hands!
- Net invoice amount: Hold your horses: this is what you're owed before you take taxes into account.
- Taxes: Generally the amount of sales tax charged on the order. Tax laws on services performed vary by state and jurisdiction. That's a whole other can of worms!
- Total invoiced amount: A summing up of all that's due. It's basically your favourite number on the document.
3. Messaging.
Many people think that sending an invoice is just about getting paid and I agree that's the primary purpose. But a great invoice can be a lot more. It can also be a great marketing tool. In these days of overwhelming emails and overflowing voicemail boxes, your invoice is actually the one document you send to your customers that always gets read. So why not take advantage of that opportunity and add a message?
To that end, make sure you're able to customize your invoice so that you can include a short note at the bottom. What do you put in this note? Maybe you can invite the customer to stop by your booth at the next industry trade show. Or to consider a complementary service. Or to be aware of a special discount you're offering on something else. Or maybe just to say thank you for your business or happy holidays or some other personalized greeting that makes a customer feel a tiny bit more special. It works and if you take notice, you'll see a lot of great companies doing that.
The good news about your invoice is that you don't have to do this all from scratch. There are great invoice templates that you can use to create and send an invoice online to your customers to get paid quickly. Your invoice is a critical document. Don't shrug it off. Take it seriously. Make it look great. Investing resources in your service invoice can pay off over the long term.
We’ll use cookies to improve and customize your experience if you continue to browse. Is it OK if we also use cookies to show you personalized ads? Learn more and manage your cookies