Self-employed invoice template (UK)

What a self-employed invoice must include

You do not need special software or a company to send a valid invoice — but there is a minimum set of details. GOV.UK’s guidance on invoicing and taking payment from customers requires:

• a unique identification number
• your company name, address and contact information
• the company name and address of the customer you are invoicing
• a clear description of what you are charging for
• the date the goods or service were provided (the supply date)
• the date of the invoice
• the amount or amounts being charged
• the VAT amount, if applicable
• the total amount owed

Sole traders have two extra obligations, and they are the ones most home-made invoices miss. You must include your own name as well as any business name you use, and if you trade under a business name you must give an address where legal documents can be delivered to you. That is what the small print at the bottom of this template is for — “A. Ferris — Electrical Services is a trading name of Alex Ferris, sole trader”, followed by the address. If you invoice under your own name with no trading name, you have already satisfied it.

Note the supply date and the invoice date are two different fields. They are often the same day, and often not — if you finished on the 3rd and invoiced on the 14th, say so. It is the supply date that anchors which tax year the income belongs to.

If you are not VAT registered, do not mention VAT

This is the single most common error on a self-employed invoice, and it is worth being blunt about. GOV.UK’s VAT Notice 700/21 states that only VAT-registered businesses can issue VAT invoices. If you are not registered:

• do not add 20% to your prices
• do not show a VAT line, even a zero one
• do not put a VAT number on the document
• do not head the document “VAT invoice”

Your invoice simply shows what you are charging and the total. That is complete and correct. Turning the VAT switch off in the toolbar above strips every VAT reference out of the document, which is how this template starts by default.

What changes when you register for VAT

Registration becomes compulsory when your total taxable turnover for the last 12 months goes over £90,000, or when you expect it to go over £90,000 in the next 30 days (GOV.UK: when to register). You can register voluntarily below that — worth considering if you buy a lot of materials and most of your customers are businesses who can reclaim, and usually a bad idea if you work for householders who cannot.

Once registered, three things change on your paperwork:

1. Your invoice number becomes sequential. Not just unique — a sequential number based on one or more series that uniquely identifies the document.
2. The invoice grows a list of required fields. Your VAT registration number, the time of supply (tax point), the date of issue where it differs, a description sufficient to identify what was supplied, and for each line the quantity, the VAT rate, the unit price and the amount payable excluding VAT — plus the gross total excluding VAT, the rate of any cash discount, and the total VAT chargeable expressed in sterling.
3. Timing matters. Normally you must issue a VAT invoice within 30 days of the date you make the supply.

There is a shortcut for small jobs: for supplies of £250 or less including VAT you can issue a simplified invoice showing only your name, address and VAT number, the time of supply, a description, the VAT-inclusive total and the VAT rate for each category. Above £250 you can agree a modified invoice with the customer, showing VAT-inclusive rather than VAT-exclusive values. Flipping the VAT switch on in this template produces a full VAT invoice, which is valid in all three situations.

Numbering, and why gaps matter

Pick one series and stick to it for the whole year: INV-2026-001, INV-2026-002, and so on. Three rules keep you out of trouble:

• never reuse a number, even for an invoice you sent in error
• never delete an invoice to close a gap — cancel it with a credit note that references the original number, and keep both
• do not number per customer; the sequence should run across your whole business (though more than one series is allowed if each document is still uniquely identified)

An unexplained hole in the sequence is exactly what makes a routine check less routine.

Getting paid, and what you can charge when you are not

Always state a payment date. If you do not agree one, the law treats a commercial payment as late 30 days after the customer receives the invoice or after you delivered the work, whichever is later (GOV.UK: late commercial payments). For business-to-business work you can agree longer than 60 days, but the terms have to be fair to both sides.

On a late business debt you are entitled to:

• statutory interest of 8% plus the Bank of England base rate
• a fixed debt-recovery charge of £40 (debt up to £999.99), £70 (£1,000 to £9,999.99) or £100 (£10,000 or more), once per late payment

Fourteen days is a sensible default for domestic customers. Put it on the invoice, put your bank details next to it, and make the invoice number the payment reference — you will spend less time reconciling.

Keep the records

If you are self-employed, GOV.UK asks you to keep your business records for at least 5 years after the 31 January submission deadline of the relevant tax year (GOV.UK: how long to keep your records). If you become VAT registered, VAT records must generally be kept for at least 6 years.

A PDF per invoice in a dated folder satisfies this perfectly well. What does not is a spreadsheet you overwrite each time — the record has to show what you actually sent.

If you subcontract for a builder or contractor

The moment your customer is a contractor rather than a householder, the Construction Industry Scheme is likely to be in play. The contractor will withhold 20% if you are registered under CIS and verified, or 30% if you are not, and pay it to HMRC against your tax bill. Crucially it is calculated on your labour only — materials you paid for, plant hire and VAT are all taken off first (GOV.UK: CIS subcontractors).

That is why this template splits every line into labour or materials even when you are invoicing a householder and none of it applies: the habit is what protects you when it does. Set a CIS status in the toolbar and the invoice grows the deduction and a statement for the contractor. For the full version see the CIS invoice template, and check the figure with the CIS deduction calculator before you accept a remittance.