A professional invoice without the account, the fee or the upload
Freelancers and small businesses send the same document over and over: who you are, who owes you, what for, how much, by when. The invoicing platforms that dominate search results wrap that simple document in sign-ups, trials, watermarks and per month fees, and they store your client list and your rates on their servers as the price of admission. This generator takes the other route. It is a form and a live preview in your browser: type your details, add your items, set tax if you charge it, and download a clean, properly laid out PDF invoice. No account. No watermark. Your prices and your clients never leave your device, because there is no server for them to leave to.
How to make an invoice
Start at the top: your business name and contact details, and a logo if you have one, PNG or JPG. Then the client you are billing. The invoice number is yours to control, so keep a simple sequence your records can follow; the issue date defaults to today and the due date two weeks later, and both are yours to change. Add one row per item with a clear description, quantity and rate: "Website design, homepage" beats "work" when a client or an accountant reads it later. Set the tax percentage if you charge tax, and a discount percentage if you are offering one. The totals compute live and the preview below the form is the invoice itself. Download the PDF to send, or print straight from the preview.
What a good invoice always includes
- Both parties, unambiguously: your legal business name and contact details, and the client's, so there is never a question of who owes whom.
- A unique invoice number and dates: the number makes the invoice findable in both parties' records; the issue and due dates make the payment terms real.
- Itemised work: one line per deliverable with quantity and rate, so the client can see exactly what the total is made of.
- Tax shown separately: if you charge VAT, GST or sales tax, show the rate and the amount as their own line; accountants on both sides will thank you.
- A total that needs no arithmetic: subtotal, discount, tax and the final amount due, in that order, impossible to misread.
How the PDF is built
When you press Download PDF, the tool builds the document with pdf-lib, the same library behind this site's other PDF tools, directly in your browser. The invoice is drawn as real text and lines on an A4 page, not a screenshot of the preview, so the file stays tiny, the text stays selectable in any PDF reader, and it prints sharply at any size. Your logo is embedded as an image at the top. Long item lists flow onto a second page automatically with the table header repeated, and the totals always sit under the final row. Because generation is local, the tenth invoice of the month is exactly as private as the first, and there is nothing to log into on a deadline day.
Tips for getting paid on time
- Send the invoice the day the work lands. Invoices sent immediately are paid measurably faster than ones batched at month end; the job is fresh and the budget holder remembers approving it.
- Match the client's purchase order wording. If they gave you a PO number or a project name, put it in the notes. Accounts payable teams pay the invoices they can match without emailing you.
- Keep numbering boring and sequential. INV-0001, INV-0002. Gaps invite questions in an audit; a clean sequence reads as a clean business.
- Say how to pay in the notes. Bank details or a payment link in the notes field removes the most common reason invoices sit unpaid: the client meant to ask.
- Download and file every PDF. The form resets on refresh by design, so the downloaded PDF is your record. Keep a folder per year and tax season becomes a filing exercise, not an archaeology dig.
A worked example
A freelance designer finishes a homepage project: design at 1 item of 900 dollars, two revision rounds at 75 each, and a rush fee waived as a 5 percent goodwill discount. She enters the three lines, sets the discount to 5 percent and her local tax to 13 percent, and watches the preview do the arithmetic: subtotal 1,050, discount 52.50, tax on the reduced amount, and a final total she can defend line by line. The PDF is in the client's inbox two minutes after the work was approved, with her logo at the top and her bank details in the notes.