The 2020s bring forth a new dawn of digital invoice templates. Out with the tacky comic sans invoices and in with highly customizable templates with a sleek design.
If you’re looking for invoice templates, chances are you are either elevating your brand by opting for more professional-looking invoices or trying to automate your administrative work.
You’ve come to the right place.
Indeed, your business will benefit from invoice designs that are modern, crisp, and clear.
If you’ve been typing out invoices in MS Word or have a stack of handwritten invoices—gasp!—an invoice template will be a major step up for your business. I’m not in favor of printable invoice templates, and this article is not focused on such resources. Friendly advice – opt for digital invoices, and you’ll never go back to paper invoices.
So, lest I overwhelm you with a ton of resources, I’ll group them around the system and give some useful recommendations as a starting point. It’s not going to be the largest selection of templates, but it will be good enough as a reference to get an idea of how digital invoices work.
Starter: A typical invoice is a commercial instrument used to identify a relationship between a seller and a buyer. Its function, though, goes beyond this straightforward definition. In fact, a well-designed and detailed one can represent your brand and what your company stands for. Read our invoicing guide to know the basics and how to generate invoices in a few steps.
A. Invoicing software: automated templates
Fully automated templates generated by invoicing software.
Cost: free, excluding the invoicing software’s monthly subscription. It’s worth mentioning that most invoicing software are free.
Time: A few minutes/invoice. Generating invoices is easy once you set up your client and project data.
Difficulty: easy. Once you learn how to use an invoicing tool, the process onwards is simple. I find it more complicated to edit formulas in Excel than to set parameters in an automated tool.
Paymo
Paymo is an established invoicing software with time-tracking capabilities. Paymo has fully automated templates in that as soon as you choose your template, it is automatically populated with time entries and tasks from outstanding projects.
You can add rows, add taxes, insert notes, and pick dates in just a few clicks.
Paymo’s WYSIWYG (“what you see is what you get”) invoicing interface makes billing your clients easy. The process is intuitive and simple — fill in all the necessary fields in just a few clicks, hit ‘Save Invoice,’ then send it to your clients via email, permalink, or share it in the app. Add your business logo and even a thank-note to leave a lasting impression.
You can clone invoices to save even more time or automatically send recurring invoices to your clients. Since Paymo’s invoicing feature is linked to time tracking and task management, you can select all the data from your time or task entries (“Add outstanding Time/Costs”):
An invoicing tool is superior to an invoice generator thanks to the intricate invoicing system behind it: it can receive online payments through payment gateways, notify clients of pending payments, keep track of billed AR, etc. An invoicing software like Paymo has other advanced features, which you can explore in this product update post on invoicing features.
You may customize your invoices to set yourself apart from your competition. There’s a template gallery with ten brand-new templates you can tweak to match your brand in different languages:
Read more about Paymo’s visual invoice editor.
Create your own invoice template styles with HTML/CSS for the more advanced users.
Create and send invoices for free.
B. Excel-based templates
Semi-automated templates that make invoices with the help of Excel formulas.
Cost: free (excluding possible subscription costs for Microsoft, Google, and other solutions that might cost a few bucks.
Time: Up to 10 minutes/invoice.
Difficulty: difficult. I gave it a 3/3 difficulty rating because you have to know Excel and spreadsheet formulas in place for price roundings, taxes, and discounts
Coefficient
Folks at Coefficient offer a trove of free invoice templates you can copy and make your own in a Google spreadsheet or Excel.
Vertex 42
Search for your preferred type of invoice template to find inspiration for your invoices, or download the models they supply. Vertex42 provides more than financial templates. You can also discover templates for project management, Gantt Charts, calendars, calculators, timesheets, schedules, resumes, and similar resources to boost your business.
Tip: Templates only go so far. We’ve compiled a list of the best Gantt software for a cloud-based project tracking tool for teams.
The drawback of choosing this website as your main invoice-related template source is that they don’t give you too many options. You’ll often get only one model for each type of invoice. In this sense, it might be a great resource if you’re indecisive or if you don’t know what distinguishes your brand yet.
C. Design-centered templates
Manual templates created with the help of a graphic design tool, such as Canva or Adobe.
Cost: free, excluding paid templates and graphic design subscription costs.
Time: over 15 minutes/invoice, depending on your skill and creative outburst.
Difficulty: medium. You have to know how to use a graphic design tool.
Canva
Canva has a free tier for graphic design aficionados and a template gallery offering both paid and free templates.
Since I’ve already got a Canva subscription, the sky is the limit when creating invoices. However, I find invoicing software easier to generate and manage my invoices, especially when keeping track of AR.
Miscellaneous graphic design tools
Editing .EPS or .XML invoice templates you downloaded online is possible with Adobe InCopy or InDesign. An .XML file (Extensible Markup Language)) is probably more technical for the average user, but definitely something worth reading about since e-invoices are structured as XML files. If HTML is for displaying data, XML is for storing data, so probably techies and software-oriented users would find XML fun to dabble with.
You’ll find .EPS invoice templates for free on Freepik, which you can later edit in Adobe Illustrator. An .EPS file (Encapsulated PostScript) is a standard graphics file format that’s vector-based. It’s the kind of format that graphic designers would look for when editing an invoice since they can easily import it into the graphic design tool of their choice, be it CorelDRAW, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, or GIMP. Adobe offers a template gallery with stock invoice templates—you get 10 for free.
Stock image platforms
Template Trove lets you download free templates for CorelDRAW and InDesign as well. Despite providing very simple templates, you can edit them according to your exact preferences by starting from the basic structure that includes fields such as company information, date, customer ID, invoice number, service or product details, terms, fees, etc.
However, this is not your resource if you’d like complex designs or a template creation tool on the website to support your design tasks. Editing these templates involves already having another software to complete the personalization process.
Envato Elements is commonly known for providing professional templates for web and graphics. You would not expect to find a template related to finance and invoicing on their website, yet you can. You’ll find an invoicing template on any website that offers general templates regardless of its main field of interest. If you want to do more, you can also get icons and other graphics to pair with your original template. You need to get a monthly or annual subscription to Envato Elements to download them.
All templates are tailored to specific industries and financial needs, and you can also customize them to your liking. Some of the given options are a freelance writer invoice template, construction invoice template, hourly invoice template, professional services invoice template, and a timesheet invoice template, among others.
Take a look at their licensing terms before you proceed to use them commercially.
Etsy is an e-commerce website where designers and artisans sell handmade or vintage supplies. Although it’s uncommon to find an invoice template on Etsy, it’s rich in polished templates and business thank-you notes you can download after your payment is confirmed. If you’re a small business and want to differentiate yourself from the rest of the competition, not finding an invoice template to your liking on Etsy is impossible. You’ll also find inventory forms, expense reports, billing documents, credit memos, etc.
The disadvantage of buying a template from Etsy is that you still don’t get a template that is uniquely yours. Other people can buy the same template you did and use it for their businesses. Pay attention to the seller’s description to see how much the template is editable.
Remember: Buying an invoice template doesn’t mean you own it. As a result, you are not allowed to sell those templates to someone else or claim that you have created them.
A professional branded invoice with no errors can set you apart from your competition. It highlights the value you offer your clients and establishes trust between you and your buyer.
D. Word processor templates
Once their design is created, these manual templates need to be edited with the help of a word processor tool, such as Adobe Acrobat or Microsoft Word.
Cost: free, excluding the price of the template and word processor subscription fee.
Time: over 15 minutes/invoice. Managing and proofreading will take more time.
Difficulty: ⅓. Creating an invoice in Word is easy, but make sure you crunch the numbers correctly.
Microsoft Word/Google Docs
You’ll probably find suitable invoices in this invoice gallery for Google Docs and Google Sheets curated by Invoice Simple or this printable invoice template gallery for Microsoft Word and Google Docs.
Adobe Acrobat
If you’d rather switch from Docs to PDFs, consider using Adobe Acrobat. There are free fillable PDF invoice templates online that you can download and edit, such as WPS PDF Tools or Smartsheet.
The only issue is that they’re inflexible: You cannot delete or add rows or customize field visibility as you would when engaging with a template in an invoicing software. In addition, you can change the labels of a standard invoice. See how a visual invoice editor gets that done in Paymo:
Pinterest is known as a website designed to help you discover content. It’s a common source for any visual resources you may need for your work or personal purposes. The best part is that you don’t necessarily need to spend hours searching the Internet for the perfect invoice template. Pinterest already does that for you.
Keep in mind that most Pinterest posts come from external sources. This means you’re not taking the template from Pinterest but another website. As a result, you must always check for that specific website’s usage rights before sending an invoice template to your clients.
By giving suggestions, Pinterest can also help you if you’re looking for a distinct template type. Therefore, you can choose from thousands of invoice templates that are downloadable, printable, and simple for freelancers, creatives, Excel users, and many more.
Are you looking for beautiful or artsy invoice templates? Graphic designer networks are just the place for you, such as Dribbble and Behance. Created as communities for showcasing the work of art professionals, they can provide the most colorful, complex, and inspiring invoice templates.
Invoice templates don’t have to be boring. You can use these if you have an innovative and original business or impress your buyers with your uniqueness.
Don’t forget: Make sure to ask for the permission of the template’s creator before using it commercially.
E. Invoice generators
Semi-automated invoice templates with the help of custom fields and an interactive user interface.
Cost: free, excluding subscription costs—some tools offer a first free invoice.
Time: under 10 minutes/invoice.
Difficulty: easy. It’s a semi-manual task where the fields get automatically calculated.
There’s a difference between an invoice template and an invoice generator – although both are editable and printable, an invoice builder looks like a template but can generate the same invoice based on various templates.
The interface of an invoice generator might look like a template (as it can be customized), but it’s a semi-automated invoicing tool where you have to input all your data, and it will render it (“generate” it) as a PDF.
We’ve written a whole article on the best 6 invoice generators, which we won’t rehash here.
The verdict
Free templates are helpful for occasional usage, but advanced users want a complete end-to-end project management platform to end the struggle of managing multiple projects and clients. For instance, if you’re billing by the hour, you probably need task and time-tracking capabilities first. Consider employee time tracking software with a time clock to keep track of all your timesheets organized. Employees with access to invoices can view and use them whenever they want.
Most similar platforms come with full invoicing functionalities. Conveniently, this complete experience will eliminate the need to switch between different apps. This means that you can generate, send, and monitor your invoices and estimates from one place. For the best invoicing tools, read our latest article on the top invoicing software for small businesses.
Note: If you want to learn how to get into project management more seriously, here are some requirements and skills you can hone.
What next?
The days when you had to do all the paperwork to issue invoices are gone. Today, you can look for an invoice template online and complete it in minutes. The advantage of using online sources to download them is that you can filter the searches according to your own needs. Likewise, you can even personalize the templates to fit your client’s requirements.
Next time you stumble upon a template you like, examine it and see whether it is fully automated, semi-automated, or manual. I hope this article was helpful.
If you haven’t used Paymo yet, it’s a powerful tool to automatically keep track of your time (unintrusively, of course) and bill your clients for your work.
Paymo’s free version includes unlimited time tracking and invoicing, so be sure to sign up:
Create and send invoices for free.
Read this easy-to-understand invoicing guide for tutorials on what an invoice is and how to bill clients.
Alexandra Martin
Author
Drawing from a background in cognitive linguistics and armed with 10+ years of content writing experience, Alexandra Martin combines her expertise with a newfound interest in productivity and project management. In her spare time, she dabbles in all things creative.
Laurențiu Bancu
Editor
Laurențiu started his marketing journey over 18 years ago and now leads a marketing team. He has extensive experience in work and project management, and content strategy. When not working, he’s probably playing board games or binge-watching mini-series.
