This page is about the decisions freelancers have to make on an invoice that a company with a finance department never thinks about. If you would rather look at a finished example first, the preview above is a real invoice with a project fee, hourly work, and a discount already filled in.
Which name goes at the top
If you have not incorporated anything, you are trading as yourself, and that shapes the sender block. A trading name is fine to display, but the entity being paid is you, so the invoice should make both visible when they differ: “Pine Studio” as the name at the top, with “Alex Rivera trading as Pine Studio” underneath or in the address block.
Two reasons this matters in practice. The name on the invoice should match the name on the bank account receiving the money, or a cautious accounts team will pause and ask. And a client onboarding you as a supplier will want to know which legal person they are contracting with, which is a question you save them asking.
You also need a real address on the invoice. Freelancers are understandably reluctant to publish a home address, and the normal answers are a business mailing address, an accountant’s address where they offer that, or a registered service. Whether an address is strictly required depends on where you are and what you are registered for, which is a question for your accountant rather than for us.
Hourly, day rate, or project fee
All three fit the same two columns, and using them properly means the client can check your maths without a conversation.
| Billing | Description | Quantity and rate |
|---|
| Hourly | Landing page copy, September | 8 at $95 |
| Day rate | On-site workshop facilitation | 3 at $600 |
| Project fee | Website design, homepage and 4 inner pages | 1 at $2,400 |
| Retainer | Advisory retainer, September 2026 | 1 at $1,500 |
Two habits are worth adopting. Name the period on anything recurring or hourly, so the approver knows which month they are signing off. And keep a quoted fee on a separate line from variable hours, because a query about the hours should not delay payment of the part nobody disputes.
Round your hours the way you told the client you would. If you agreed to bill in quarter hours, 6.25 in the quantity field is honest and checkable. Quietly rounding 6.25 up to 7 across a year is the kind of thing clients notice once and remember for a long time.
Worked example: the invoice above
- Website design, homepage and 4 inner pages: 1 at $2,400.00
- Landing page copy and SEO outline: 8 hours at $95.00, $760.00
The subtotal is $3,160.00. A 10% discount takes off $316.00, there is no tax, and $2,844.00 is due in 14 days. The dates refresh when you open it, so you are not sending a PDF dated last September. Keeping the fee and the hours on separate lines also leaves you a record of how long the project really took, which helps when you quote the next one.
Expenses and pass-through costs
Anything you paid for on the client’s behalf belongs on its own line, described plainly, at the amount you actually paid: stock photography, a font licence, travel, a subcontractor. Do not fold it into your fee, because a client who is reimbursing a cost wants to see it as a cost.
Get agreement before you incur anything worth arguing over, and keep the receipts, because expenses are the line most likely to be queried. If you mark expenses up, say so in the original agreement rather than presenting a marked-up figure as a pass-through. How tax applies to reimbursed expenses varies, so ask once about your own situation.
One sequence across every client
Freelancers invoice several clients in the same month, which is where numbering goes wrong. The safe rule is one continuous sequence for your whole business, not one per client: INV-1042 to Acme is followed by INV-1043 to Harbor. It keeps your own records coherent and satisfies the continuity that bookkeeping generally expects.
Because this tool keeps nothing on a server, it cannot hand you the next number. The practical fix is to keep the counter where you already track income, and to save each PDF as Invoice-1042-Acme.pdf so your invoices folder doubles as the record of what you have issued. The numbering guide compares the schemes and covers what to do when you have to correct an invoice a client has already received.
Terms you can actually hold a client to
A freelancer has less leverage than a supplier with a credit control department, so the leverage has to come from what was agreed before the work started. Payment terms that first appear on the invoice are a request. The same terms in an accepted quote are an agreement.
For new clients, ask for a deposit. It is normal commercial practice rather than an insult, and a client who will not pay one has told you something early and cheaply. Payment terms explained covers deposit invoices, how to net the deposit off the final invoice, and why a late fee only works if it was agreed in advance.
What not to put on it
- Tax you are not registered to charge. Adding a tax line because it looks more official is a real problem, not a cosmetic one.
- Terms nobody agreed to. A late fee or a short payment window that appears for the first time on the invoice is unlikely to be enforceable and will cost you goodwill.
- A single line reading “services”. An opaque invoice is the easiest thing in the world for a client to set aside.
- Apologies. An invoice is a routine business document. Send it the day the work is accepted, because terms run from the invoice date and a late invoice is paid late.
Before you send it
- Delete the discount unless you agreed one. A discount nobody negotiated invites the client to expect it again. Set it to 0, or switch it to a fixed amount if you promised a round number off.
- Change the currency before the rates. A wrong symbol is easier to spot on an empty invoice than on a finished one.
- Replace the notes with your own payment details. Bank details, the payment reference you want quoted, and the client’s purchase order number if they use one. This is what lets them pay you today.
- Add a logo if you have one. It changes nothing legally and a lot about whether the invoice looks like it came from a business.
Then check five things:
- The client name is the entity that pays, not the person who briefed you.
- The invoice number is one you have not used before.
- The due date is a real date and matches the term in your notes.
- The line totals add up to the total you expected.
- You have opened the downloaded PDF and looked at it.
Where to go next
Ready to write one: the invoice generator builds the PDF in this browser, and Start a freelance invoice opens the example above with its numbers already in place. Different work, different shape: the consultant template handles workshops plus hours with tax, the small business template bills products, the tutoring invoice template bills lessons by the hour, and the honorarium invoice template covers a guest lecture or talk.
More detail: how to write an invoice, which document to send before the work, and how to get invoices paid on time.