An invoice is an essential document that is used in many organizations and businesses. It defines payments and other information, which specify the terms of such transactions. In general, you would usually create an invoice for sold goods or services to facilitate payment by the buyer. Depending on your organization’s policy, an invoice is sent either after or before the supply of purchased products or services. Depending on the circumstance of use, an invoice may be legally binding.
When creating a typical invoice, you require several crucial elements for it to be presentable and usable. These elements are stated below.
- Company information
- Header
- A unique identifier, date, and invoice number
- List of items and services
- Terms of sales
- List of fees
- Total due amount
- Add-ons
These elements are clearly shown in the sample invoice for an arbitrary organization named AA Associates.
Company information
All good invoices contain specific company information. This information includes company name, address, phone number or fax, and other relevant information. Depending on where you want to place your company’s information, you could place it boldly at the top (header) or at the bottom (footer) of an invoice. You would want your business’s information and your client’s information clearly stated on the invoice you produce. Doing this helps to Prevent Delay in payment by your client.
Header
Professionally created invoices usually have headers. You would want to write the word ‘invoice’ boldly at the top. It helps all parties involved to easily differentiate between different types of documents that may be involved during the transaction. You may want to write your company’s information on the header alongside the word’ invoice’. You may want to include your logo on the header.
Unique Identifier, Date, and Invoice number
Apart from the buyer’s and seller’s information, an invoice should include a unique identifier, the date, and the invoice number. Different organizations have different ways of organizing this information. Depending on your company’s policy or the type of software you use to generate invoices, simple numbers and unique codes may be used as the invoice number and unique identifiers, which can be placed just below the header.
For other companies, they may categorize each service they provide with corresponding unique identifying codes. As such, these codes are used to generate invoices.
List of items and services
Within the main body of a typical invoice, you would typically generate a list of items, unique identifiers, and more. Each item should correspond to the purchased rate and the quantity.
In some cases, you would create a subsection that allows for modification and provision of description to elaborate on the details of supplied goods or services.
Terms of sales
Another crucial element is the sales of terms, which are defined by the industry’s ethics, the company’s requirement, and their association with the buyer. Your company may clearly state any penalty that may be incurred as a result of late payment or violation of the agreement. Such fees may be stated clearly as percentages of the entire cost in the footer.
List of fees
Depending on your business’s preferences or the regulation within a jurisdiction, you may create a list of fees for each item on the invoice. Such fees may include handling fees, taxes, and other charges.
Total due amount
You would want to generate a ‘total due amount’ section for all your invoices. It tells the buyer the entire amount of money due for the goods purchased or the services provided. You would want to highlight the total due amount to catch the attention of the buyer.
Add-ons
Unlike all other elements, add-ons are not as important. Depending on your policy, you may want to include add-ons on your invoices. Two common types of add-ons are used, which are the message field and tax identification number. You would usually use message fields to write personalized messages to your clients. Such messages could be a simple thank you. On the other hand, the tax identification number is given by the government, which is unique for each business.
Create a PDF Invoice with All the Fields
In this detailed tutorial, we will show you how to create an invoice from text and images using our integration. If you want to get this done, you should create a PDF.co account and a Zapier account.
Step 1. Get Your API Key
Initially, you should create a free account with PDF.co and grab your API key in your account.
Step 2. Make a Very First Zap
Please proceed to the task – create your first Zap.
Click the Zap creation button in the top-right of your Zapier account.
Please find PDF.co as the App and PDF Filler as the Action Event. The screenshot explains the details:
3. PDF Filler Configurations
When you set PDF Filler up, you will use the Invoice data. Please do it quickly with the help of the PDF Viewer tool. Just drag the necessary coordinates of the location where your text and images must be in the PDF file.
Here’s the screenshot with all the settings complete.
Here’s the Text objects field. It includes the coordinates, page text, number, font name, color & size in the appropriate format: x;y;page;text;fontSize;fontName;fontColor.
Here’s the Images field. It includes the coordinates, page number, image URL, width, and height in the appropriate format: x;y;page;urltoimage;;width;height
4. Review Your Action by Testing the Zap
Check out the Zap and run it successfully. Here’s the link showing the PDF invoice ready.
Learn how to create invoices as well as use different HTML Templates, for example, Invoice Template Sample 1, Invoice Template Sample 2, and Invoice Template Sample 3.
