Either its about tracking your on going trasactions, or if its about keeping your accounts balance; even if its abouts clearing IRS audit or keeping past record of the deals; or its about showing professionalism or delivering an update about upcoming events; or even if your credibility and genuinesess at stake, you need an proficient invoice mechanism to handle all these things. (Paypal)

Invoices can be considered as a face of any business. It is the most commonly seen or used document of your business. However, often businesses take invoices for granted and do not take the structure of design of this “most used document” into their consideration.

So, this guide will not only tell you about the structure and important elements of an invoice, it will also guide you about how to use an app to develop an effective invoice. 

This guide will not only develop your understanding about what invoice is, it will also tell you about the important elements that should be included in an invoice. 

Definition of Invoice 

Invoice is a document that is issued by seller of the goods or service provider to the buyer of the goods or to whom service is rendered. This document also include information regarding taxes, discounts, cost price, shipment charges, quantity of the product/ service description that has been rendered and custom fees, etc. 

However, before moving on towards the applications that can help you in developing a well structred invoice, you must have an idea about what are the important elemenst of a well structred or proficient invoice. 

Important Elements to Structure a Proficient and Effective Invoice

There are certain elements that should be included in a well structured invoice. In other words, a typical standard invoice should include all these elements to look professional. (Chargeebee)

Information related to Bunsiness/ Company Profile

Name of the Focal Persons and their Contact Informations 

Well Designed, Meaningful, and Creative Logo of the Company/ Business

Complete Address Details of the Parties that are Included in the Transaction

Information of the Law Partners (Specially in case of International Transactions)

Complete Bank Details (International Bank Account Number, etc. Specially in case of International Trasactions)

Issuance Date of Invoice (Do not confuse it with day of creation)

Due Date of the payment (When the payment against the invoice is due)

Unqiue Serial Number to Every Invoice (Try to assign number in Chronological Order)

Details and Description of Goods and Services that have been provided and rendered

Unit Price of the Product or Break Down of the Prices

Sub Total (That includes costs of all products and services acquired except Taxes, shipment charges, custom Fees)

Total Amount (That includes sub total and all the other costs that are related with the transaction i.e. taxes, discounts, custom fees, freight charges, shipment charges, etc.) 

Designated Section for Notes and Additional Information (to include all other relevant information in the invoice. For instance information regarding future discounts, offers, events, give away gifts, etc.)

Section for Terms and Conditions (To state refund, recovery, review, repair, warranty, credit policies of the transaction)

Mode or Method of Payment (Specially, in case of International Transaction to avoid any conflict in future)

These elements are very important and if not all then most of these should be included in an invoice. If any includes all these of most of the elements, then you can use it for developing your own invoice. 

Now, as you know about the design and structure that should be opted to develop an invoice, we must go on towards the next section of the guide. 

This section of the guide is about the use of applications to develop invoice. There are many applications available in the Google Play Store and Apple Store. However, you need to be choosy about it. You should choose such an that that can add if not all then most of the noteable features in the invoice. As these elements are key to preofessionalism. Your business genuineness, originality, authenticity, and professionalism depends upon the face of invoice. If you do not take it seriously then, your client or customer can percieve this as your causal behaviour. 

This guide will answer you that how to use applications to develop a well structred invoice. A typical invoice has particular notable features. 

How to Use App to Develop a Well Structred Invoice? 

This article will provide step by step guide for those who wants to develop an invoice within minutes by using free applications.

You can use Play Store or Apple Store to use applications to draft a well structured invoice. For instance, you can access Google Play Store and download any invoice app of your choice. 

However, try to use an app that has higher rating or better remarks then the rest. 

In this guide, an invoice generator app is used to explain the steps for developing proficient and well structured invoice.

Step by Step Guide to Invoice Application

Following are the few steps that you need to follow to develop a well drafted invoice in few minutes. 

To develop any invoice through application, you need to have invoice maker/ generator application in your device. For that you need to access Google Play Store or Apple Store from your device. To download any invoice, you need to type key search word in Google Play Store search bar. For example, you can write “Invoice Maker”, “Invoice Generator”, “Invoice Developer”, or “Invoice” to conduct your research. 

After selecting app of your choice, you need to install it in your device to generate invoice from it. For that you need to interact with the “Install” button as shown in the below given pictures.

Just with the “Install” button and start the installation process in your device. 

After the completetion of process certain screens will pop up on your device.

Once you are done with the installation process, you can interact with the application to contruct your own invoice. Just open the app to start interacting with it. 

When you open this app that we have interacted in the above given images, a particular homepage of the app will pop up. 

Interact with the create invoice button to start constructing your invoices.

After you interact with the “Create invoice now ” button, then a screen will pop up which will inquire issuer of the invoice about information that is relevant to the seller/exporter company. In other words, exporter/seller firm will add its relevant information, as they will be the issuer of invoice.

You would be writing your name of the company in “Company Name” section, which is quite obvious. Moving on, you would select a date format that is in line with the importer country’s format. Try to choose such format that involves name of the month to avoid any confusion. 

After that in “Your Name” section, issuer of the invoice will be writing his/her own name for future correspondence. 

In the address section, issuer of the invoice will write complete address of the firm/ company. Try to be more cautious while putting your accurate address to avoid any disagreement in the future. 

Finally, after putting your information your screen will look like this. The information given in these images are fictional. Any resemblance to any identity is mere coincidence. 

After adding you company’s profile, this app will require you add all the relevant details of the importer/ buyer/ client company. In “Client Details” option, you would be writing company’s name, its address, and country in which it operates. You can also other details in the name or address section. For example, Fax number, mobile number, and other details. These details will pop up in your final invoice as per the format you have followed. 

After adding client details, this app would require you to add details related to invoice itself in “Invoice Details” section. Issuer of the invoice would assign a unique serial number to this particular invoice. Try to assign numbers in chronological order, so by the time you need to sort them, then you can do that easily. This will also help you in locating transaction of your interest. In other words, you would be able to track your invoice by using this unique number. This will also help you in determining the status of the transaction, if you are doing business on credit. According to Sighted, invoice serial number allows you to track financial streams, like past and future transactions (past de invoice, and proforma invoices), cash flows, spending/expenditure, income, and investments, etc. It also keeps record of the exchanges, recoveries you have made or you are about to made. 

After adding invoice serial number, you need to add its issuance date in the “Invoice date” section. Do not add that date on which you have created your invoice, but add when you are going to issue or send this invoice to your client or customer. 

With that you need to add the due date of your invoice as well. Due date is the date when the payment from the client is made due. So, issuer of the invoice will mention a date in the “due date” section, when he or she expects his/her client to send the agreed amount. 

After that you need to add details or description of the goods/ services sold or rendered. You can also delete included items that have been added mistakenly. For example, in this case 25 unit of the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 is exported for $1000 per unit cost. You can be more explicit by adding more details or features in the detail section. You can also add shipment cost, freight charges, custom fee and other relevant costs in this section. However, do not add tax fee in this section, as this application gives you provision for that. You can also change the unit of currency to construct your invoice. This application allows you to choose different currency units.

As mentioned earlier, this app gives you a provision of adding sales tax in the amount. So, you can add percentage amount that would be added in the sub total as sales tax. Suppose, 12 percent sales is applied on the total amount of the sale, then you would write 12 in the “Sales Tax” section. It will automatically calculate the 12 percent of the sales amount and add into the sub total, which will be given as total amount of the sales. This app does not allow you to add discount in the invoice. So, if you want to give a discount, then you can reduce the total sale value by the discount percentage, and you can write about this information in note section, which is just below the “Item Details” section. You can write as 3 percent discount is given on the total sale value. 

The provision of “Other Details” section is given for issuer of the invoice, so that he/she can add any other relevant details in it. For example, you can write about the details that have not mentioned before, and you want your client to have this information. In other words, you can write about the future discounts, future events, give away presents and any news that is relevant your business and its promotion. As invoice is the only document that always gets read by your clients and customers. So, make sure you use this platform effectively and efficiently. You can also write other remarks, like “It’s pleasure doing business with you”, or “Please come again. We will be looking forward to it”, or simply “Thank you for doing business with us”. These statements will leave a good impression on your customer/ client.

Just like mentioned before, you can also add other details in the items section as well. Below an image is given to give you an idea about, what will it look like if you add shipment charges in it. 

Last section of the application is about terms and conditions. This is one of the most important part of the invoice. You can write all the terms and conditions or circumstances in which transaction has taken place. You can write all the terms and conditions on which partners of the transaction have agreed upon. For example, issuer of the invoice can mention his/her refund policy, exchange policy, warranty policy, credit policy, and due date implementation policy. This section is very important in such a way that it can be used to establish legal rights between parties. 

After submitting required details in the application, it will allow you move on. After submission of details, you will interact with the “Next” button. It will take you to the next page. At this page it will offer you too share, download, or email your invoice. Upon choosing the “Download” option a PDF based version of invoice will download in your invoice. Now, you can interact with as you like to. You can send this invoice via email, via courier, or deliver it by hand, it is totally up to you.

This app has its own limitations. It does not allow you to add logo of your business/ company. So, it is advised to search a more comprehensive app that allows you add logo of your business or company. It will leave a more professional mark on your client’s memory. 

Since, you are well equipped with the elements that should be included in your invoice, you are free to use any application that seems to fulfil your purpose. There are other applications like “Invoice Maker- Invoicing App with Quote Generator by SpeedInvoice-Invoice Generator”, “Invoice & Estimate on the Go by Invoice Simple”, “Free Invoice Maker by Bookipi Billing Estimate”, and “Invoice Maker-Tiny Invoice by Appxy”, and many more. You can consider these applications and some other as well. All these applications have above 4 ratings, which is reasonably high than others. 

So, that is all you need by now. Definitely you can learn more about invoices and their structure, and about their types. But this all you need to know about what is invoice, what are its important elements, how to use an app to issue invoice, and what other apps you can use to issue an invoice. 

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