How to Create an Invoice

1. Create your first invoice

Open the editor — it lives on the home page and at /create. The form is on the left and the document you are building is on the right. As you type, the totals are worked out for you: you never add anything up yourself.

1. Enter or confirm your business information — your trading name and address, and a logo if you have one.
2. Select or enter a customer — pick a saved customer to fill the Bill To block in one click, or simply type the details.
3. Add products or services — choose from your catalogue to fill a line, or add a blank line and type it.
4. Enter quantities and prices — the line total updates as you type.
5. Apply discounts if you need them — on a single line, on the whole document, or both.
6. Choose the VAT treatment — No VAT, Standard VAT, a custom rate, or VAT exempt.
7. Choose payment terms — the due date is calculated from the issue date.
8. Choose the currency for this document.
9. Add payment instructions if the client needs them — you can insert your saved bank details in one click.
10. Check the preview on the right; it is what will be printed.
11. Download or print the PDF once it looks right.

There is no sign-up step anywhere in that list, and your work is saved in this browser as you go, so you can close the tab and pick it up later.

2. Create a quote

At the top of the first panel in the editor there is an Invoice / Quote selector. Choose Quote and the same document becomes a quote: the number changes to a quote number, the heading reads Quote, and the date becomes a "valid until" date instead of a due date.

Everything else works the same way — the same customers, line items, discounts, VAT, payment terms and currency. You hand a quote to a client as a PDF in the same way as an invoice. The three documents do different jobs: a quote comes before the work, an invoice asks for payment once it is delivered, and a receipt confirms the money arrived.

Turning a quote into an invoice

When the client accepts, open the quote and press Convert to Invoice. That creates a new invoice carrying over the customer, the line items with their quantities and prices, the discounts, the VAT setting, the payment terms, the currency, your notes and the payment information — then gives it its own invoice number and today's date, with the due date worked out from the terms you set on the quote.

Your quote is not used up or altered by this. It stays exactly as you sent it, and the invoice records which quote it came from, so you keep both.

3. Customers

The Customers area is a simple address book: add a customer once and you can fill an invoice in one click for the rest of the year.

• Add a customer with their name, company, email, phone, address and VAT number.
• Only a customer name or a company name is required; everything else is optional.
• Search by name, company, email or phone once the list grows.
• Edit or delete any customer. Deleting asks you to confirm first.
• While creating an invoice or quote, search your saved customers and pick one to fill the Bill To fields. You can still edit those fields afterwards.

What happens to documents you have already sent

When you add a customer to an invoice or quote, their information is copied into that document. Later changes to the customer do not rewrite old documents, and deleting a customer does not change or break any invoice or quote that used them. If a client moves office you can update them for next time, while the invoice you already sent still shows the address it was issued with.

4. Products & services

The Products & services area is your catalogue of what you sell, so you do not retype it on every document.

• Save a name, description, SKU or code, unit price, unit and VAT rate.
• Search the catalogue by name, description or SKU.
• Edit anything at any time, or delete items you no longer sell.
• Mark an item inactive rather than deleting it — it stays in your records but is not offered on new documents.
• In the Line items panel, add a saved item from the dropdown: it fills the line's description, price and unit, which you can then adjust for that document.

The VAT rate on a catalogue item is information kept with the item. The VAT charged on a document is controlled by that document's own VAT setting, so choosing a product never silently switches the VAT on your invoice — set the VAT mode for the document as described below.

As with customers, catalogue values are copied onto the line when you use them: changing or deleting a product later leaves documents you have already created exactly as they were.

5. Discounts

There are two places to give a discount, and you can use both on the same document.

• Line-item discount — set on a single line in the Line items panel, when you are reducing one particular item.
• Document discount — set in the Totals & notes panel, for a goodwill reduction or a negotiated total on the whole document.

Both come in two forms: a percentage of the amount, or a fixed amount off it. The order is always the same, and the preview shows each step of it:

Quantity × unit price gives the line subtotal. A line's own discount comes off that line first. The line discounts are added up, then the document discount comes off what is left. VAT is calculated on that discounted amount, and the total follows from it.

Discounts are kept sensible for you: a discount can never take a line below zero, and the document discount can never exceed what remains after the line discounts. For worked examples, see How to handle discounts on an invoice.

6. VAT

Each document has one VAT setting, chosen in the Totals & notes panel:

• No VAT — no VAT is added or shown.
• Standard VAT — uses the standard rate from your business settings, and the document label shows the rate it used.
• Custom rate — type a rate for this document specifically.
• VAT exempt — no VAT is charged and the document says so plainly rather than showing a zero.

The rate a document was created with is saved with that document. If you change the standard rate in your settings later, new documents use the new rate while documents you have already made keep calculating and printing at their original one. Settings only ever affect new documents.

FreeInvoices does the arithmetic and prints what you tell it to. It is not tax advice and it does not file anything with a tax authority — check the treatment that applies to you.

7. Payment terms and due dates

Next to the issue date you choose when payment is due:

• Due on receipt — due the day it is issued.
• 7, 14, 30 or 60 days after the issue date.
• Custom — you set the due date yourself, and it stays exactly where you put it.

The due date is always calculated from the issue date, so changing the issue date on a document with a preset moves the due date with it. On a quote the same date is labelled valid until.

Converting a quote into an invoice keeps the terms you offered on the quote instead of quietly replacing them with a default. If you are deciding between Net 7, Net 15 and Net 30, Invoice payment terms explained walks through the trade-offs.

8. Currencies

Every document has its own currency, chosen in the document details panel. These are currently supported:

• ZAR — South African Rand
• USD — US Dollar
• EUR — Euro
• GBP — British Pound
• AUD — Australian Dollar
• CAD — Canadian Dollar
• INR — Indian Rupee
• JPY — Japanese Yen

The currency is stored on the document, so a default you set later applies only to new documents — anything already sent keeps the currency it was written in. Amounts are formatted for that currency in the editor, the preview and the PDF.

There is no automatic currency conversion and there are no exchange rates: one document is in one currency, and you enter the figures you want to charge.

9. Payment information

In business settings you can save the payment details you send to clients once, so you never retype them: bank name, account name, account number, branch code, SWIFT/BIC, payment reference and any other payment instructions.

• New invoices and quotes are written with your saved details when that option is switched on in settings.
• On any document, press Insert from settings beside the payment details box to drop them in.
• The payment block on a document stays editable by hand — useful for adding a reference that is specific to one client.

Each document keeps the payment information it was issued with. Change your bank details in settings and existing documents are not rewritten: the invoice you already sent still shows the account the client was asked to pay into.

10. Downloading and printing

The preview beside the editor is the real thing — what you see is what gets printed. When it looks right, press Download PDF.

• Download PDF builds the file right here in your browser and saves it straight to your device — there is no print dialog to click through, and the browser adds no date, title or web address to it.
• Documents are laid out for A4 paper, and a full document is designed to fit on a single page.
• Only the invoice or quote is printed. The site header, the editor form, its buttons and any advertising are left off your document entirely.
• Print opens the browser's normal print dialog, and there your browser adds its own header and footer — the date, the page title and the web address — to anything it prints. This is the browser's own feature and, deliberately, no website is allowed to switch it off for you; it is a one-time setting on your side. To leave those lines off an invoice, turn off Headers and footers in the print dialog (under "More settings" in Chrome) — browsers remember the choice. The invoice itself is unaffected either way: it stays A4 and on one page.
• Quotes print with the heading "Quote" so they can never be mistaken for an invoice.

11. Save, Update & Share Invoices Online

FreeInvoices is local-first: your work is saved in this browser as you type. When you want an invoice to live outside it — persisted online and shareable with your customer — add an online copy with Save online. It is the one button that puts an invoice on FreeInvoices' servers; nothing leaves this device until you press it.

1. Create your invoice normally in the editor, exactly as described above.
2. When it is ready, press Save online. A secure online copy is created, and the invoice now has a shareable public link.
3. Your local copy stays exactly where it was — the online copy is an addition, never a replacement. The editor keeps working from this browser's storage either way.
4. Changed something later? Press Update online — the same button, renamed once an online copy exists — and the online invoice is updated to match your edits.
5. Press Share / Send to hand the invoice to your customer. Once it has an online copy, sharing gives them a link to the public invoice page.
6. Your customer opens that link and sees the invoice — no account and no login needed, nothing to install.
7. The shared page is read-only: your customer can read, print or save it, but cannot change anything on it.
8. You stay in control: reopen the invoice in your editor and press Update online whenever the details change.

You can find every invoice you save online again in My invoices (section 13): an invoice is managed from the editor you saved it in, where its Update online button lives.

How online invoices work

Saving an invoice online sends it from your browser to the FreeInvoices API, which stores it in the service's secure database. The browser-first workflow is unchanged — online saving simply adds persistence and a shareable link on top:

Security and privacy

• No account is required — not to create, not to save online, and not to open a shared invoice. There is no signup, login or subscription anywhere in FreeInvoices.
• Sharing uses its own public link that leads to the shared invoice page only. Your private management access is separate and is never included in anything you share.
• The private management credential that lets you update an online invoice is never displayed on the public page — customers see the invoice, nothing else.
• Customers viewing a shared invoice cannot edit it; the public page is read-only by design.
• When you save online, the service independently recalculates the invoice totals before accepting them, which helps protect the integrity of the numbers on the invoice.
• Saving online can never cost you local work: if it fails — offline, or the service having a bad day — your invoice stays untouched in this browser and fully editable.

12. Your data and privacy

FreeInvoices keeps your documents, customers, products, settings and getting-started progress in this browser's local storage on this device. There is no account and no login, and nothing is uploaded while you work. Your document contents — names, addresses, amounts, bank details — leave this browser only when you choose to send them somewhere: saving an invoice online, or sharing one (section 11).

Two practical consequences are worth knowing:

• Clearing your browser's site data removes it. If you clear browsing data, work in a private window, or switch computer or browser, what you saved here will not be there, and there is no copy of your working data to restore. An invoice you saved online still exists on FreeInvoices' servers, but without this browser's data you cannot reopen or manage that online copy.
• A PDF is your permanent record. Download the PDF of anything that matters and keep it with your own files — that copy is yours and does not depend on this browser.

The editor also has a backup option: download a backup file and restore it later if you want to move your saved data between browsers. Keep that file somewhere safe, because it contains the same information as your documents.

The site is supported by advertising and uses Google AdSense and Google Analytics. Those load only after you accept cookies, and they never receive your customer details, your line items or your amounts. The cookie policy and privacy policy set out the detail.

13. My invoices

My invoices lists every invoice you saved online. It is a lightweight manager, not an accounting dashboard: it helps you find an invoice again, open it to edit, and record a payment. No account or login is needed.

Each invoice shows its number, the customer, the invoice date and due date, the total, the amount paid, the balance due, whether it has been viewed, and its payment status.

Finding an invoice

• Search by invoice number, customer name or customer email.
• Filter by payment status - Unpaid, Partially paid, Paid, or Overdue.
• Filter by Viewed or Not viewed.
• Sort by newest, oldest, due date or invoice number.
• Copy link copies that invoice's public share link, ready to send.

Opening an invoice

Select Open on an invoice to load that exact invoice back into the editor you already use. Nothing new is created - you are editing the original, which keeps its invoice number, its identity and its public share link.

14. Viewed status

A new online invoice shows Not viewed. When your customer opens the public share link for the first time, it changes to Viewed, and the first-view date and time is recorded.

• The timestamp is the customer's first public view - never the time you created it.
• Opening, editing or previewing the invoice yourself does not mark it Viewed.
• Viewed is independent of payment: an invoice can be Viewed but Unpaid, or Paid without ever being opened.
• The Viewed stamp is for you only - customers never see it.

15. Recording payments & payment statuses

Open an invoice - from My invoices or the editor - and open the Payment panel. Enter the Payment amount: the money received now, not the running total. You can also add a Date and a Reference (such as a bank reference or receipt number), then press Save payment. The amount paid, the balance due and the status update straight away.

How it builds up

• Invoice total R1,000. Record R300 - amount paid R300, balance due R700, Partially paid.
• Later record R700 - amount paid R1,000, balance due R0, Paid.

The payment field always records the new amount received, never the whole cumulative total.

Payment statuses

• Unpaid - no payment recorded yet.
• Partially paid - a payment has been recorded, but a balance is still owed.
• Paid - the full amount has been paid and the balance is zero.
• Overdue - the due date has passed while money is still owed.

A fully paid invoice never becomes Overdue.

After you record or update a payment, your customer's already-open public invoice refreshes on its own to show the latest amount paid, balance due and status - you do not need to send a new link.

16. Local vs online

There are two places an invoice can live, and the difference matters: