Three Ways to Use Your Free Invoice Templates

So you’ve downloaded your free invoice templates—from BizXpert or from somewhere else. You’re ready to start using those free invoice templates to improve your company’s invoicing process. There’s just one problem: You’re not quite sure how to use those templates most effectively.

There are three basic ways to put invoice templates to use. One, you can study them, building your own understanding of invoice design. Two, you can use them as foundations for your own invoices, saving you time and making the invoice process smoother. And three, you can use them to help you transition from paper to e-mail invoicing.

We’ll share some tips and reflections on all three of these approaches in the paragraphs that follow.

Using Your Free Invoice Templates to Enhance Your Invoice Design

Here’s what we recommend you do first: Just take a couple of minutes to study your invoice templates. Either pull them up on the screen or print them out, and read over them a time or two. Study them carefully, noting the elements you see on the page—and, perhaps, thinking about the elements you don’t see. Make note of the intrinsic simplicity of these invoice templates, yet also the way they cover the necessary information so thoroughly.

Invoice design is an important skill to master, after all, and all business owners should have some familiarity with the construction and layout of a good invoice. Proper invoice design ensures prompt payment and it minimizes delinquencies, so this is certainly something to spend some time with.

In studying your invoice templates, you might make special note of the following elements—all of them essential for proper invoice design:

• The label, clearly marking it as an invoice.
• The company contact information.
• The customer contact information.
• The breakdown of charges/services—not just a lump sum.
• The total amount that is due.
• The explanation of payment terms and penalties.
• The information about how to pay—credit card, PayPal, etc.

That’s the first way to implement your invoice templates—study them, and become an invoice design pro!

Going Beyond the Sample Invoice

Invoice templates can make great resources. They can be useful to study and to learn from. Remember, though, that you can use them as more than just invoice examples; you can actually use them to construct new invoices, relying on their structure and simply filling in your company- and customer-specific information.

This requires you to get invoice templates that are in an editable, workable format, of course—something like Word or Excel. But it can be a much more efficient way to invoice than invoicing from scratch. Actually use your template as a starting point for your next invoice, and see how much time it saves you!

Transitioning to Online Invoicing

Finally, you can use your free invoice templates to help you make the transition from snail mail to electronic invoicing. After all, you’ve got the templates right there on your desktop. After you customize them, it’s easy enough to convert each file into an invoice PDF, then e-mail it directly to your clients.

The e-mail invoice approach is a prudent one for a number of reasons. For one, it just takes less time—and less postage! Your customers will receive their invoices more promptly, and it will be easy for them to pay online with a credit card or a PayPal account. This method also lends itself to electronic record-keeping.

The bottom line: Free invoice templates have myriad uses—and until you have a moment to get started with BizXpert, they represent a fine way to expedite your invoicing process!