The default headings on an invoice are Description, Quantity, Unit price and Amount. They suit a great many businesses and read slightly wrong to everybody else.
Custom invoice labels fix that. On this site every heading, column title and party label is a text field, so the sheet uses your vocabulary rather than a generic one.
What is editable
More than people expect:
- The document title, so an invoice can read Tax Invoice or Fee Note.
- The From and To labels, so they can read Studio and Client, or Supplier and Site.
- Every column heading in the table.
- The meta fields down the side, so Invoice date can become Session date.
- The totals labels, including tax, discount and the balance line.
- The signature captions on documents that carry them.
Click the text, type over it, and it is changed.
Rename the columns to match the work
Generic headings force you to describe the job in the Description field when the structure would say it better.
| Trade | Instead of Quantity | Instead of Unit price |
|---|---|---|
| Photography | Images | Per image |
| Consulting | Hours | Rate |
| Haulage | Kilometres | Per km |
| Copies | Per copy | |
| Letting | Nights | Per night |
The line items get shorter and the arithmetic becomes obvious to the reader, which is the whole point of a table.
Add your own columns
Beyond renaming, you can add columns the default sheet does not have. Common additions:
- Date, on documents covering several days of work.
- Reference, for a job number or a purchase order line.
- Location or Site, where the same customer has several.
- Notes, kept short.
Add only what a reader needs. Every extra column narrows the others, and a printed invoice with eight columns is harder to read than one with four. What goes on an invoice covers the fields that genuinely have to be there.
Add a purchase order number if you are asked for one
Large customers frequently will not pay an invoice that does not quote their PO number, and the sheet has no such field by default because most businesses do not need one.
Add it as a meta field. It takes ten seconds and it is the single most common reason an otherwise correct invoice sits unpaid. How to raise a purchase order covers the other side of that process.
Save it, or do it again every month
This is the part that matters. Once the labels read the way you want, save the file. Every future document starts from that file and the labels are already right.
Retyping the same six renames each month is how they drift, and drifting labels are how two invoices from the same business look like they came from different ones. A free invoice template you can edit covers what else belongs in the saved blank.
Keep it consistent across documents
If your invoice says Client, your quote and receipt should too. Save a blank for each document you actually use, with the same vocabulary in all of them.
That consistency is most of what people mean by a business looking established.
Where to stop
Labels should clarify, not decorate. Renaming Amount to Investment does not read as confident, and renaming standard tax terminology can create a genuine problem, since some of that wording is prescribed where you trade.
Change what helps the reader. Leave the rest.
Language, not just wording
The sheet does not translate itself, and it does not need to. Every label is a text field, so a document can be produced in whichever language the customer reads.
Type the headings in that language, save the file, and you have a template for that market. Businesses working across a border commonly keep two blanks, one per language, with everything else identical.
Two names on one document
Where your registered name differs from your trading name, both usually need to appear, and the labels are how you do it cleanly.
From Riverside Trading Ltd
t/a Riverside Interiors
VAT 0123456The registered entity is what a tax authority and a bank need to see. The trading name is what the customer recognises. Putting one and not the other causes a payment to be held.
Meta fields carry the reference the payer needs
The fields down the side of the sheet are renameable too, and they are where a large customer’s requirements go: their purchase order number, a cost centre, a contract reference, a site code.
Ask a new business customer what their invoice needs to quote. It is one question and it is the difference between paid in thirty days and paid in ninety. Three way matching covers why their system cares.
Do not rename the tax lines casually
Tax terminology is frequently prescribed. Where you are registered, the wording, your registration number and the way tax is displayed may all be specified, and a creative label can make an otherwise correct invoice non-compliant.
Rename the descriptive parts of the document freely. Leave the tax block as it is unless you have checked.
Check the printed version after renaming
Longer labels wrap differently on paper than on screen, and a heading that fits the column at 1280 pixels wide may not fit the page box. Print one and look before you commit the template.
Try it
Open the invoice maker, click a column heading, and type. Then save the file, and it is done permanently.