Service Invoice PDF Template

A service invoice is similar to several different invoice types and is very comparableto a general invoice for goods purchased. The main difference is that no physical goods should be listed and that the types of units and quantities used for services are quite different than for general goods.

Read on to learn more about all of the different service invoices’ components and become an expert, ready to customize your own and begin billing professionally for your services.

You’ll need to do all of the proper research and homework first, but this template will give you a head-start and a good framework. You should always consult a lawyer though before finalizing any contracts.

Download the template today and edit it using any version of our PDF Reader apps.

So you want to know what a service invoice is? A service invoice is just like a regular invoice, except that it includes only service-based business elements. Your firm might be a combination of business types, offering both products and services, but in this case, you're just going to list particular services which you’re offering. These services can be offered as so-called “commodity services,” which have more or less fixed hourly prices, or your services could be offered as custom services, which have more variable hourly prices. Alternatively, your prices could be based on the project size only.

Some examples of companies that need to offer service invoices are lawyers, writers, IT professionals, landscapers, designers, engineers, freelancers, and consultants. Of course, this is not an exhaustive list. There are many other service-based companies, and within the service-based industries, it is quite common to have several different project scales.

Sometimes an invoice is used as a sales document. The invoice is offered along with the estimate, quote, or initial proposal for the customer. The invoice might be attached to the end of the request, functioning as an offer, providing transparency in pricing to the customer. Several different invoices can even be provided along with a project offer, showing how much the project may cost in each stage or for specific sizing constraints. For example, you might have one invoice for the smallest version of a project, or “option A.” You might have another invoice for “option B.” Neither invoice is specifically due on the offer’s date, but the customer can still use them to know what the invoice might look like and its final form.

Strategically, you can offer this information to your customers to better understand how much these projects may cost. In the service industry, project pricing remains notoriously difficult, and providing a higher level of transparency for your customers will ease the process to purchasing your services.

For service-based businesses, especially in small companies, the type of service you offer generally is preferable to be paid on a subscription basis. Services can also be offered as one-time fees or project fees, but it's becoming more common for companies to provide their services as a subscription.

Even previously, services that were suggested with individual one-time fees are now offered as a subscription, for example, software-as-a-service, infrastructure-as-a-service, or network-as-a-service. Because of the cloud’s abilities and always-on internet connections, companies can decentralize many products and services. It’s less common for businesses to purchase services to use in one location, obtained with an expensive perpetual license.

To make your service invoice valid, you need to ensure that you have several essential components required for any invoice. You need to include your company's information, the client's details, and comprehensive information about the services that have been rendered or provided.

Our template is a general service invoice template, and it hasn't been fully customized for your company yet. If you want to make your service invoice as professional as possible, consider printing it on your company's stationery or letterhead. This will make your service invoice appear much more official to your customers and add an element of integrity. When you're writing your service invoice, you also need to consider whether or not your services were provided as B2B (business-to-business) or b2c (business-to-customer).

If you're providing your services directly to the customer, your invoice should be targeted to the legal person, not the business. This means you might want to simplify some elements on the invoice and explain things a little more. When you're including your client's name and contact details, you want to incorporate their full name and best-known address, rather than a company name and office address.

Depending on your location, the services that you provide may be regulated in a specific way. If you are offering commodity services or highly regulated services, you may need to display those services in a particular way. Display them on the invoice with specifically defined quantity information and following proper guidelines or standards. For example, some invoices need to be paid with particular types of payment terms, such as net 30. Net 30 generally allows your customers to pay within 30 days of the receipt of the invoice. It's quite rare to offer net 30 to an individual person, but it's ubiquitous to provide net 30 services to a business customer.

When you’re listing the services that have been provided, you should write the name of the service and a brief description of the services that have been provided to the customer. Next, note the quantity of services provided. As mentioned before, services can be provided in bulk, such as part of a project, or they can be provided just by citing the number of hours worked. The number of hours worked is usually counted as man-hours, so if you had five people working on a project for 5 hours, that's 25 man-hours.

Depending on your services’ locality, you might have to include sales tax or other taxes, and you may also have to include additional fees. These are usually based off of the subtotal of all of your services. At the very end of your service invoice, you'll need to show information about how to pay. The total amount due needs to be prominently displayed on the invoice. Also, conspicuously, you need to present the accepted payment methods, the due date or the number of days after the transaction, and any penalties that may apply if the payment is received late.

Now that you have a general idea of how to make a service invoice, download our free template, customize it, and get started with a professional way to get paid for your services.