How to make an invoice in Word

Route one: use Word's built-in invoice template

Word ships with free invoice templates. They give you a finished layout, which is the part Word is good at.

1. Open the template gallery. File → New, type “invoice” in the search box and press Enter. In Word for the web, the templates are under More templates on the start screen.
2. Pick a plain one. A plain layout prints cleanly and survives being turned into a PDF. The decorative ones often put the total in a coloured box that an office printer turns grey.
3. Replace every placeholder. Work top to bottom: your business name and address, your tax number if you have one, the client's legal name and billing address, the invoice number, the invoice date, the due date and how to pay you. Delete any field you do not use rather than leaving its placeholder text.
4. Fix the date. If you insert the date with Insert → Date & Time, untick Update automatically. Otherwise the invoice shows today's date whenever anyone opens it, including your accountant next year.
5. Fill in the line items. One row per thing you are charging for: description, quantity, unit price, amount. Multiply each row yourself.
6. Add up the totals, then check them. Subtotal, tax, total. The template cannot do this step for you, and the section below is about it.
7. Save as PDF. File → Save As and choose PDF as the file type. On Windows, File → Export → Create PDF/XPS does the same.

Send the PDF, never the .docx. A Word file is editable, and an editable invoice can be changed after it leaves you.

If the gallery has nothing plain enough, our free invoice templates download as .docx, ready to fill in.

Route two: build an invoice in Word from scratch

Worth it if you want a layout that is yours. Twenty minutes, once, and then you reuse it.

1. Open a blank document. File → New → Blank document.
2. Lay out the header with a table. Insert → Table, two columns and one row. Your business name and address go on the left. The word INVOICE, the invoice number, the invoice date and the due date go on the right. Then Table Design → Borders → No Border, so the table holds the layout without showing.
3. Add the client block. Below the header: “Bill to:” and the client's legal name and billing address.
4. Build the line-item table. Insert → Table with four columns: Description, Quantity, Rate, Amount. Add a row per item, plus three rows at the bottom for subtotal, tax and total.
5. Right-align the money columns. Select the Rate and Amount columns and use Home → Align Right. Numbers lined up on the right are numbers a reader can check at a glance.
6. Add payment terms. Under the table: when payment is due, how to pay, and your bank details. Write “Payment due within 30 days” rather than “Net 30”, which a new client may not know.
7. Save it as a template. File → Save As → Word Template (.dotx). Opening a template creates a new document, so this month's invoice cannot overwrite last month's.

Writing your first invoice at all? how to invoice as a freelancer walks through the whole document: your rate, your payment terms, and who you are billing.

Word does not add up your invoice

This is the difference that matters. In a spreadsheet the total is calculated from the line items. In Word the total is text you typed, and Word treats it exactly like your street name. Change a quantity and the total stays where it was. The invoice still looks right. The number is wrong.

• Word tables can calculate, a little. Layout → Formula puts =SUM(ABOVE) into a table cell. It is a field, not a live formula: it does not update when a number above it changes. You have to select it and press F9 after every edit, and remember that you have to.
• The copy-of-last-month trap. Most Word invoices are last month's file saved under a new name. One quantity changed, one line deleted, and the total left over from the previous client. By the time the file is called Invoice_final_v3.docx, nobody remembers which numbers were retyped.
• A two-minute check before you send. Multiply every row again, add the amounts on a calculator and compare the result with your subtotal. Then work the tax out from the subtotal, not from the old tax line.

If your invoice has quantities, hourly rates or tax, the arithmetic is the risky part, and a spreadsheet does it for you. How to make an invoice in Excel covers the same two routes with formulas that keep the total in step.

What every invoice has to contain

The layout is yours. The content is not. Every invoice needs the word Invoice, a unique invoice number, the invoice date, your business name and address, your tax number where you have one, the client's legal name and address, what you supplied, the amount with the tax shown separately, and when and how to pay.

Why two of those fields cause the most trouble is explained in the Excel guide's list of mandatory fields. For German invoices, §14 UStG sets the exact list, and the guide to invoicing in Germany goes through it field by field. For Austria and Switzerland, see the guide to invoice requirements in Austria and the guide to invoicing in Switzerland.

How to number invoices in Word

Every invoice needs its own number, in an unbroken sequence. Most tax authorities require it, so that a missing invoice shows up as a missing number. Word has no counter at all. It does not know it has written an invoice before.

The method that works is a list kept outside the document, in a notebook or a single spreadsheet column, where you write the next number down before you use it. The usual failure is two invoices with the same number, and it tends to surface months later, when two payments cannot be told apart.

The invoice number generator gives you the next numbers in an unbroken run, ready to paste into the template, and how to number invoices sets out the rules the sequence has to follow.

When Word stops being enough

Word is a reasonable place to start. These are the signs you have outgrown it:

• More than a few invoices a month, each one copied from the last
• Line items with quantities, hourly rates or more than one tax rate
• You cannot say from memory which invoices are unpaid right now
• You have sent a total that did not match its lines, or you are not sure you have not
• You invoice businesses in Germany, where e-invoicing is becoming mandatory

That last one has dates. Since 1 January 2025 every German business must be able to receive e-invoices. From 1 January 2027 businesses with more than €800,000 prior-year turnover must issue them for domestic B2B invoices, and from 1 January 2028 all businesses must. An e-invoice is a structured file such as XRechnung or ZUGFeRD. A PDF exported from Word is not one, however tidy it looks.

The timetable and the accepted formats are set out in the guide to invoicing in Germany.

Frequently asked questions