Every business wants their customers to pay invoices as soon as possible, and you can subtly influence your clients to settle up sooner rather than later. One of the changes you can make is to design beautiful invoices—documents that are easy to scan, read, and understand are more likely to be acted on. Although it can be a little effort to design a great looking invoice, you only need to do it once. Then, you can use the same invoice template again and again to encourage prompt payment.
Here are our recommendations for amazing invoice design that you can use yourself or share with a professional graphic designer.
Invoice Design, Company Information
It’s important to clearly show your company information on your invoices so your clients know exactly who they’re being invoiced by. Here’s what to include:
- The legal name of your business, including its designation (e.g. LLC, Inc. etc).
- A correspondence address for your organization.
- A phone number and email for your accounts receivable department for any questions.
- Optional details include other contact methods, your website, etc.
BillerGenie lets you add your contact details and has custom fields for things like website addresses.
Invoice Design, Payment Details
You want to make it as easy as possible for your customers to pay, so make sure you include payment details like:
- Your routing number and bank account details for bank credits and ACH payments.
- For international payments, your International Bank Account Number (IBAN) or SWIFT code.
- Your PayPal address, Stripe details, or where to pay by card if you accept payment via those methods.
- Who to make checks payable to.
- A link to a page where people can make payments, you might also include this in the covering email.
- How soon you expect payments and any discounts for paying sooner.
- Details of the payment terms that apply to this client.
Biller Genie has custom fields that make it easy to add your payment details and they can also be included in the covering email.
Invoice Design, Goods and Services
One of the most important aspects of your invoice design is detailing what your client is actually paying for. Be sure to include:
- Clear details of the individual goods and services you’ve supplied, itemized as needed.
- The unit price, quantity, and overall price for each item.
- Any expenses that you’ve incurred on behalf of the client that you’re charging for.
- Any special discounts you’ve applied to each line item or to the invoice overall.
- Any prepayments or deposits that the client has already paid, shown as credits.
- Details of any sales taxes or other fees that the client needs to pay.
- A grand total at the end of the invoice.
BillerGenie allows you to add all of these details in their invoice templates.
Invoice Design, Other Important Information
There are a few other important pieces of information for any invoice design:
- The name and address of the organization or person that you’re sending the invoice to.
- The name of the person in the organization dealing with your account and approving your invoices.
- A unique invoice reference number.
- The date of the invoice.
- When you expect the invoice to be paid.
- Any special payment terms or discounts.
- Any special terms and conditions for the invoice.
- A “Thank You” at the end of the invoice.
BillerGenie allows you to add all of these details in their invoice templates.
Invoice Design, Typography
The typography and fonts that you choose have a big impact on the readability and ability to scan your invoice:
- Choose a font that’s easy to read whether it’s printed out or viewed on a screen.
- Make sure the font size isn’t too small, remember that other people’s eyesight might not be as good as yours.
- Choose a font based on the image your business is projecting, here’s some good advice on the difference between serif and sans serif fonts, and what they say about your organization.
- Keep the number of different fonts on the invoice to two or three so that it’s easier to read.
BillerGenie gives you several invoice designs to choose from, all designed to be easy to read and scan.
Invoice Design, Colors and Logos
When it comes to choosing the colors and logos to use on your invoice, generally, less is more:
- If you include your company logo, make sure it looks good when compressed down to fit on the invoice.
- It’s fine to use colors to make your invoice pop a little, but you probably don’t need more than a couple of colors other than black and white.
- Avoid garish colors that make your client click away from the invoice as soon as they’ve opened it!
BillerGenie gives you color choices when you’re designing your invoice, so they’ll always look great.
Invoice Design, Formatting and Spacing
It’s also important to think about the more subtle aspects of your invoice, as these all have an impact on the overall look and feel:
- Try to avoid overuse of bold or italic text, unless you really need to emphasize something.
- Use plenty of white space between invoice elements so the document doesn’t look too cluttered.
- Use clear columns in your itemized goods and services for consistency.
- Use the same size, type, and color of text for similar items on the invoice.
BillerGenie invoices are based on beautiful, preset designs that take advantage of these design principles.
Invoice Design, Final Thoughts
Before we go, here are our final tips on creating beautiful and striking invoices:
- Remember that invoice design is there to help you get paid as quickly and efficiently as possible, so always create invoices from that central principle.
- Many of the visual invoice design rules that we’ve shared above are guidelines, if it fits with your brand, these rules can be broken—but do so with caution.
- Avoid jargon in any of your invoice wording, and keep everything clear and straightforward.
- Make sure your client reads and understands the language you use in your invoice.
We hope you’ve found this helpful. It’s time to get those creative juices, and the money, flowing!