Invoice Generator — Create Free Invoices & Estimates
Create invoices and estimates for free. Enter your business details, the client, line items, quantities, unit prices and tax rates, and an A4 document is built as you type — then save it as a PDF straight from your browser. Nothing you enter is ever sent to a server.
What this invoice generator does
This invoice generator lets you build an invoice or an estimate in your browser and save it as a PDF. Fill in your business details, the client, and the line items, and the A4 preview on the right updates as you type. Unlike a spreadsheet template, columns never drift out of alignment, and what you see is exactly what comes out of the printer.
Tax is handled the way tax authorities expect it: amounts are grouped by tax rate, and the tax figure is rounded once per rate for the whole document rather than line by line. Mixed-rate documents get an automatic breakdown table showing the taxable amount and tax for each rate, which is what a VAT invoice or a Japanese qualified invoice needs to be valid for the buyer's input tax credit.
There is no sign-up, no upload and no watermark. Your client names and amounts never leave the browser, and the draft is stored only on your own device, so you can prepare a document for a sensitive engagement without handing the details to a third-party service.
How to create an invoice
- Choose the document type and number Switch between invoice and estimate, then set the document number, issue date and payment due date (or the validity date for an estimate). A number like INV-2026-001 keeps your records easy to search.
- Add your business and the client Enter your name, address and contact details, plus a tax registration number if you need one on the document. Add the client name and any department or contact person.
- Enter the line items Give each line a description, quantity, unit, unit price and tax rate. Use the add button for extra rows and the arrows to reorder them.
- Check the totals and rounding The preview shows the subtotal, the tax for each rate and the total. Choose whether fractions of a currency unit are rounded down, half up or up.
- Print and save as PDF Press "Print / Save as PDF" and choose "Save as PDF" as the destination in your browser's print dialog. Only the document is printed — none of the surrounding page.
Tips for getting more out of it
- In the print dialog, set margins to "None" or "Default" and turn off headers and footers. That removes the page URL and page numbers so you get a document that looks professionally produced.
- Number your documents sequentially, ideally with the year in front. If a client queries an old payment, a unique number is far quicker to trace than a date and an amount.
- When you convert an estimate into an invoice, change the document number as well as the type. Reusing the estimate number makes reconciliation harder for your client's accounts team.
- State who pays the bank transfer fee in the notes field. It is the single most common source of a small unexplained shortfall when the payment arrives.
- If you invoice the same client every month, the draft is saved automatically — just change the date and the number. Use "Reset" before you start a document for a different client.
- Add a unit such as "hrs", "days" or "pcs" to each line. It makes the basis of the charge obvious and reduces follow-up questions about how a figure was reached.
When to use it
Freelancers billing for project work
Invoice for design, writing or development work without paying for accounting software. Line items with hours and a rate make the calculation transparent for the client.
Issuing a VAT-compliant invoice
Add your VAT registration number and let the tool produce the per-rate breakdown of taxable amount and tax that the buyer needs in order to reclaim input tax.
Turning a quote into an invoice
Send an estimate first, then flip the same document to an invoice once the work is approved. Nothing has to be retyped.
Invoicing a Japanese client
Switch the currency to JPY to unlock the qualified invoice registration number field and automatic withholding tax deduction, so the document matches what a Japanese accounts department expects.
One-off invoices for a side business
Useful when you only issue a handful of invoices a year and a monthly subscription would not be worth it. Nothing to install and nothing to cancel.
Invoicing terms
- Estimate
- A document sent before work begins that sets out the expected price and conditions. It carries much the same information as an invoice, but shows a validity date instead of a payment due date.
- Tax registration number
- The identifier that shows you are registered to charge tax — a VAT number in Europe, or a "T" followed by 13 digits for a qualified invoice issuer in Japan.
- Input tax credit
- The mechanism that lets a business deduct the tax it paid on purchases from the tax it collects on sales. A buyer usually needs a compliant invoice from the seller to claim it.
- Reduced rate
- A lower tax rate applied to specific categories of goods. In Japan it is 8% and covers food and drink other than alcohol and restaurant meals, plus certain newspaper subscriptions.
- Withholding tax
- Tax that the payer deducts from a fee and remits directly to the tax authority. In Japan, fees paid to individuals are typically withheld at 10.21%, rising to 20.42% on the portion above 1,000,000 yen.
- Rounding
- How fractions of a currency unit in the tax figure are handled. Rounding once per tax rate across the whole document, rather than on every line, is the standard treatment.
Frequently asked questions
Side Note — the invoice began life as a packing list
The English word "invoice" is generally traced to "envois", the plural of the French "envoi", meaning a sending or dispatch. It started out as the note that travelled with a shipment, setting out what had been sent and in what quantity. It was closer to a packing list than to a demand for payment, which is why every invoice you will ever see still leads with columns for description, quantity and unit price. The bill came second; the manifest came first.
That list became the centre of accounting once merchants in Renaissance Italy refined double-entry bookkeeping. A passage in a mathematics compendium published by Luca Pacioli in 1494 set out the method used by Venetian traders of the time, and it spread across Europe from there. Recording every transaction twice, as a debit and a credit, only works if the underlying paperwork can be produced on demand, which is where the habit of giving each invoice its own sequential number comes from — it makes any single transaction findable years later.
The link to tax came much later. When France introduced value added tax in 1954, businesses were allowed to deduct the tax paid on their purchases from the tax they collected on their sales. That required proof of how much tax had been paid, and the proof was an invoice stating the rate and the amount. The VAT invoice has been part of European commerce ever since, and Japan adopted its own version — the qualified invoice system — as recently as October 2023. The registration numbers and per-rate breakdowns that feel like new bureaucracy are really the latest layer on a document that has been accumulating requirements for centuries.
One small curiosity: in Japan, there is no legal obligation to stamp an invoice with a company seal, yet most invoices still carry one. The seal survives because it long served as a statement that the document genuinely came from the business named on it. Now that invoices travel as PDFs, that role is quietly being taken over by registration numbers and digital signatures — a packing list that keeps changing the way it proves who wrote it.