The Art of Customizing Your Invoices

As such, denoting the brand at every possible opportunity is a must to build that familiarity and trust and make the business instantly recognizable. And what better way to do that than by customizing invoices to make your brand more visible so that customers will unquestionably agree with the well-known phrase that so commonly appears on these documents: “It was a pleasure doing business with you.”

Customizing invoices the right way

Obligatory elements

Although invoice customization is an opportunity to create a visual masterpiece along the lines of Picasso paintings, actually there are restrictions surrounding the appearance of the invoice. As tempting as it is to come up with something truly unique, the following elements all have to be included in the invoice, no matter what:

• The issuer’s name, address, and contact information.
• The client’s name, address, and any relevant personal data.
• A proper invoice number with issue number and due dates.
• The amount due.
• Details about the amount due: items/services purchased, their base price(s), the quantity purchased, taxes, and additional fees.
• Notes regarding the terms of the payment and/or the nature of the invoice should it be a correction or cancellation invoice.
• Any additional message, such as a thank-you note.

Keeping it simple and professional

In that regard, adding the company’s logo and/or a picture that’s associated to the business and its nature is often enough, since these elements reinforce the company’s brand as well as make the document and its sender instantly recognizable. Additionally, you may also use color to separate the header, the footer, and other sections, but note that this is a double-edged sword: using the right color in the right amount can do wonders, but overdoing it could result in a colorful hodgepodge that is hard to interpret effectively. As for changing the color of the invoice itself, the best approach is to stay as close to the white paper color as possible by selecting very light yellow or grey.

How to create customized invoices

There are plenty of ways to start customizing invoices. While you could start by searching for editable invoice templates on the internet, there are online services like Canva with which the ideal invoice be created with just a few clicks and can then be emailed directly to clients right away. While utilizing these tools helps in creating visually stunning invoices, the documents themselves still need to be registered in the company’s books manually. That’s why it’s such a relief that many online accounting solutions provide invoice customization to its users.

Granted, basic accounting software usually has limitations to its invoice customization that typically amounts to little more than the addition of a logo, but more professional solutions can do much more than this. Wave Accounting, for instance, offers three different templates and a variety of options concerning the obligatory elements. Xero and QuickBooks apply the same approach, but where the former allows users to download a DOCX file that they can customize to their liking, the latter provides more options for the invoice’s appearance.

Still, it’s FreshBooks that takes the cake by offering downloadable templates in various formats as well as letting users customize invoices to their liking by switching between themes, changing the color palette, uploading logos, and adding images.