Most small firms need about eleven business documents, and most of them get invented from scratch the first time they are needed. This is the tour nobody gives you, with the right document for each moment of a job.
The order things happen in
Paperwork follows the work. A typical job runs like this:
- Someone asks what it will cost. You send a quote or an estimate.
- They agree. If they are a business of any size, they raise a purchase order.
- Goods move, or work happens. A delivery note travels with the goods.
- You bill. That is the invoice.
- They pay. You confirm with a receipt.
- Something was wrong. A credit note corrects it.
- Month end. A statement summarises the account.
Knowing which stage you are at tells you which document you need. Most confusion comes from using an invoice where a quote belonged, or a statement where an invoice belonged.
Before the work: quote and estimate
A quote is a firm price you can be held to. An estimate is a considered figure that both sides expect to move.
Send a quote when the scope is settled and you would stand behind the number. Send an estimate when the final figure depends on what you find, which is most repair work. Getting this wrong is expensive: customers read the number, not the heading.
The distinction is set out properly in quote or estimate.
Buying: the purchase order
If you are the one buying, a purchase order is your written instruction to a supplier. What you want, how many, at what price, delivered where.
It becomes the reference everything downstream is checked against, which is why suppliers ask for the number and accounts teams reject invoices without it. See how to raise a purchase order.
Moving goods: delivery note and goods received note
Two documents, two directions, and they are not the same.
A delivery note travels with the goods and carries no prices. The person signing on the loading bay has no business seeing your margins.
A goods received note is written by whoever receives the delivery, recording what actually turned up. That difference is the point: the supplier’s note says what they think they sent.
Getting paid: invoice and receipt
The invoice asks for money. The receipt confirms it arrived. Both, usually, for business customers.
A quick comparison of what each carries:
| Invoice | Receipt | |
|---|---|---|
| Issued | When the work is done | When the money clears |
| Creates | A debt | A record that a debt was settled |
| Shows a due date | Yes | No |
| Customer uses it for | Approving payment | Expense claims and tax records |
Fixing mistakes: the credit note
You have sent an invoice and something is wrong. The instinct is to edit it and resend.
Do not. Your customer has filed the first version, possibly entered it into their accounts, and in most places an issued invoice is part of your tax record. A credit note is a second document that reduces what is owed on the first, and it leaves a clean trail instead of an argument.
Specialist documents: job card and proforma
Two that only some businesses need.
A job card records an item booked in for repair: the fault, the condition it arrived in, what was authorised. Workshops live or die by these, because the argument is almost never about the work. It is about the scratch that was already there.
A proforma invoice prices a shipment before it moves, for customs or advance payment. It looks like an invoice and is not one, and it should not be entered as a sale.
The month-end document: statement of account
A statement of account summarises everything invoiced and paid over a period, with the balance outstanding.
It is the cheapest collection tool there is, because most of the payments it produces come from customers who simply lost an invoice. Send it alongside invoices, never instead of them, since a statement cannot be used to claim tax.
A worked sequence
One job, start to finish, showing how the numbering ties together:
QTE-0044 4 Aug Fitted wardrobe, quoted 340,000
Accepted by email 6 Aug
INV-0118 22 Aug Fitted wardrobe, per QTE-0044 340,000
Deposit received 6 Aug (100,000)
Balance due 5 Sept 240,000
REC-0203 30 Aug Payment received, bank transfer 240,000
STM-0009 1 Sept Account balance 0Four documents, four sequences, and every one references the one before it. That chain is what makes a query in November a two minute answer.
What you actually need to start
Not eleven. Most businesses start with two: an invoice and a receipt. Add a quote when customers start asking for prices in writing, and a credit note the first time you get one wrong.
All eleven are free here, with no sign up and nothing stored, which is worth saying plainly: your client names and prices stay in your browser. If that trade-off matters to you, the privacy page sets out exactly what does and does not happen.
Where to start
Pick the document you need and fill it in. There is a guide for each one, and a short walkthrough in how to make an invoice if you want the most common case first.