What to Look For on a Simple Invoice Template

Looking to step up your invoice game—to provide a more customer-friendly invoice experience while also ensuring that you get paid on time? The first step is to master invoice layout and design. And there’s no better place to start than with a simple invoice template.

You can find a generic invoice template almost anywhere. In fact, we have some on offer here at BizXpert. This can be a much more efficient way to invoice than starting from scratch. Starting with a blank Word or Excel document provides you with no structure, no parameters for your invoice. A generic invoice template, meanwhile, can provide you with a kind of road map—a sense of what does and doesn’t need to be included on your invoice design.

Why Invoice Design Matters

This is actually an important issue, with real-world consequences for your business. A good invoice must include all pertinent information, or else you risk late payments, delinquent payments, incomplete payments, customer service complaints, or excessive customer inquiries—all of which will slow your efficiency to a halt!

More than that, though, a good invoice needs to be simple and intuitive. It needs to present your customers with information in such a way that they immediately grasp their obligations to you. This is part of the customer experience; in a very real way, proper invoice design can foster customer loyalty.

What You Can Learn from Free Invoice Templates

Creating invoices that are at once thorough and simple is kind of a tall order; you may have previously thought invoicing was easy and effortless, but in reality there’s a lot of strategy required. Using a simple invoice template can help you perfect this balance, providing you with some guidance in invoice design and structuring.

Some specific lessons you might learn from working with free invoice templates:

• It is important to include plenty of white space on your invoices. It’s the same as with a resume: Readability is key, and a document that’s cluttered with text can give the reader a headache. Besides, there really isn’t that much information that needs to be included on your invoices.
• The elements you do need to include: Your full company contact information; your customer’s contact information; an itemized breakdown of services or products, plus costs; a final amount due; payment terms and penalties; information about where and when the customer can pay you; and, any personal notes or custom comments you feel are truly necessary.
• Be careful that you do list individual services or products offered, instead of just posing a lump sum for your customer to pay. This conveys value to your customers, and offers them clarity as they pay.
• Make sure you are explicit in articulating your invoice terms; you don’t have to be mean but you should be clear and firm. Specify when a payment becomes overdue, and the penalty for payments that miss the window.
• Make sure you are complete in your company contact information and in your payment methods. If you accept PayPal, include the link. If you want people to pay via check, tell them how to make out the check and where they should send it.
• As for personal comments, it’s best to keep them brief, but if you want to offer a quick word of thanks or something similar, that may well enhance the customer experience!

All of this you can get a feel for just by spending some time with a blank invoice form. From there, you may wish to move on to an invoice app, like BizXpert—but a simple invoice template is surely a good place to begin.