How to make an invoice with this free generator
- Fill in your business details once — name, address, contact, tax number if you have one — and add your logo.
- Add the client, the invoice number and the date, then type the lines you are charging for.
- Set tax, a discount or shipping if they apply, and write how you want to be paid.
- Check the preview, which is the actual PDF, and download it.
Your business details, logo, currency and payment notes stay in the form for the next invoice. Next invoice moves the number on by one and clears only the client and the lines, so the second invoice takes a minute rather than five.
What to put on an invoice
Rules differ by country, but the UK government's list is a sensible baseline anywhere, and the form has a field for each item on it. An invoice must include:
- a unique identification number
- your company name, address and contact information
- the company name and address of the customer you're invoicing
- a clear description of what you're charging for
- the date the goods or service were provided (supply date)
- the date of the invoice
- the amount(s) being charged
- VAT amount if applicable
- the total amount owed
Sole traders must also show their own name and, where they trade under a business name, an address where legal documents can be delivered. Limited companies must use the full company name as it appears on the certificate of incorporation, and if they name one director they must name all of them. In the UK, businesses registered for VAT have to show their VAT number and the VAT separately — which is what the tax setting here produces. Source: gov.uk, invoices and what they must include.
Invoice, quote or receipt?
| Document | What it says | When you send it |
|---|---|---|
| Quote | What the work would cost, before it starts | Before the job, to agree a price |
| Invoice | What is owed, and by when | After the work or delivery |
| Receipt | That the money has been paid | After payment lands |
Switch the type at the top of the form. A quote has no due date; a receipt is marked as paid. When a quote is accepted, switch back to Invoice, check the number and download — the lines you already typed stay where they are.
Tax, discounts and rounding
Choose one rate for the whole invoice when everything is taxed the same, or a rate on each line when it isn't — a mix of 20% and 5% items, or exempt lines at 0%. Rename the label to VAT, GST, Sales tax or IVA to match what your customer expects to see. Each rate is totalled on its own row so the invoice shows how much tax was charged at each rate.
A discount is taken off the subtotal first, and tax is then worked out on the discounted amount, spread across the lines in proportion. Every line is rounded to two decimals before the totals are added up, so the arithmetic on the page always adds up exactly to the total — no penny that only exists because of an invisible third decimal.
Numbering, and why it matters
Invoice numbers have to be unique, and in most places they are expected to run in order,
without gaps you cannot explain. Type any pattern you like — INV-0007,
2026-014, ACME-18 — and the tool continues it: the digits
at the end go up by one and keep their width, so INV-0009 becomes
INV-0010.
Getting paid sooner
- Put a due date on it. “Payment due 14 days” is a date on the invoice, not a hint.
- Make paying easy. Bank name, account or IBAN, and what reference to use — all in the How to pay box, printed on the PDF.
- Describe the work plainly. A line that matches what was agreed gets approved faster than “consulting”.
- Send a receipt when it's paid. Switch the type to Receipt and send it back; it closes the loop and looks professional.
A real PDF, not a picture of one
The preview on this page is the PDF itself, rendered page by page, so what you see is what downloads. The text in it is real text: your client can select it, search it and copy the bank details out of it, and their accounting software can read it. Long invoices continue onto more pages with the column headings repeated, the totals never split away from the table, and each page numbered.
Amounts are printed with the symbol of the currency you choose in English number format
($1,250.00), and dates as 16 Sep 2026 rather than in digits
— an invoice often crosses borders, and 03/04/2026 means two different
days depending on who reads it. Names are printed as you type them — accented,
Turkish, Polish, Greek or Cyrillic characters included. If the
finished PDF needs to be smaller for a portal with an upload limit, run it through
Compress PDF. To send an invoice together with a timesheet
or a delivery note, join them with Merge PDF, and to turn
photographed receipts into a PDF attachment use JPG to PDF.
Your customers' data stays with you
An invoice carries a client's name and address, your bank details and what you charge — exactly the information you would rather not hand to a website. Nothing here is uploaded: the PDF is assembled in your browser, and the draft is kept in your own browser's storage so you can close the tab and come back. Clear wipes it. There is no account, so there is no database with your customer list in it.