Invoice for services: how to bill your time and fees

How a services invoice differs from one for goods

When you sell goods, the invoice lists things the customer can check: so many items at a unit price, delivered on a given day, often with a packing slip in the box to compare against. A service leaves nothing to count. You're billing your time, or a fee agreed for a piece of work, and the invoice is often the only document that records what was actually done, which changes what it has to say.

A clear service invoice answers four questions before anyone has to ask: what you did, when you did it, how much of it there was, and how you arrived at the amount. The last is the easiest to leave out. A line reading "Website work, $2,400.00" doesn't say whether that's 30 hours at $80.00 or the second payment of a fixed fee, so the person approving it has to find the contract or write to you, and your payment waits while they do.

The date needs more care as well. A service can run for a week, a month or a whole project, so the invoice should give the date or period the work covers, often called the service date or service period, as well as the date you issue it. Your client needs it to book the cost in the right month and budget, and it appears on the checklist further down.

Billing models: hours, days, fixed fees, milestones and retainers

Most service work is billed in one of a handful of ways, and each looks a little different on the invoice. With hourly billing the quantity is the number of hours and the price is your hourly rate, so 12.5 hours at $80.00 comes to $1,000.00; a day rate works the same way, so three days at $600.00 is $1,800.00 and a half day goes in as 0.5. Agree up front how you round time and what counts as a day, because a client who sees 3.17 hours on one line and a round 4 on the next will wonder how the time was kept. If the hours went into different tasks or weeks, a line for each is easier to check than one big total.

With a fixed fee you agreed a price for a result, such as a finished report or a new website, so the invoice bills the result rather than the time: a quantity of 1, the agreed price and a description that refers to the quote or contract. Larger projects often split the fee into milestones, each invoiced when a stage is reached. A $6,000.00 project split 30/40/30 would be billed as $1,800.00 at the start, $2,400.00 when the designs are approved and $1,800.00 at launch, with each invoice naming its stage, for example "Milestone 2 of 3: designs approved". Work the client asks for outside the agreed scope goes on its own line at your hourly or day rate, so it can't look as though the fixed price has crept up.

A retainer is a regular fee, usually monthly, for a set amount of your time, such as $1,500.00 a month for up to 20 hours of support. The invoice names the period it pays for, as in "Support retainer, December 2026", and hours beyond the agreed amount go on a separate line. Retainers are often billed at the start of the month they cover and hourly work after it's done, so each invoice should say plainly which period it's for.

A deposit paid up front doesn't change the fee, so the final invoice shows the full price and then takes the deposit off on a line of its own with a negative amount. This is the final invoice for a fixed-fee website project with some extra work and a $1,000.00 deposit:

The first line ties the fee to the quote the client accepted, the second explains why a fixed-price job has an hourly charge, and the third shows when the deposit was paid and on which invoice. Tax is left out of the example, because whether you add VAT, GST or sales tax, and at what rate, depends on your registration and on where you and your client are. If you do charge it, it goes on the taxable lines. For the deposit line, follow the deposit invoice: if that invoice charged tax, give the negative deposit line the same net amount and the same tax rate as that invoice, so the tax already invoiced on the deposit is taken off and not charged a second time; if the deposit invoice had no tax on it, leave the deposit line without tax too.

Describing the services and the period they cover

A service invoice is usually read by two people: the one who asked for the work, who knows exactly what you did, and someone in accounts, who doesn't. The second reader matches your invoice against a purchase order, a contract or a budget, and if they can't tell what it's for, they send it back to the first reader to confirm, which is where many late payments start. So write each line for the person who wasn't there, naming the work, the deliverable, the project and the dates.

Compare "Consulting, 10 hours" with "Pricing review for the 2027 range: workshops on 14 and 21 Oct 2026 and written recommendations delivered 28 Oct 2026". The second takes a few seconds longer to write and answers every question an approver is likely to ask. For ongoing work the period does the job: "Bookkeeping, 1 to 31 October 2026" leaves no doubt about which month you're billing. If the client gave you a purchase order (PO) number or a project code, put that on the invoice too, because many larger clients won't process an invoice without one.

The phrase "for services rendered" simply means for work already done. It works well as a heading or a note, such as "Invoice for services rendered in October 2026", and tells the client you're billing in arrears, after the work, rather than asking for money in advance. What it can't do is replace the description: an invoice that says only "For services rendered: $3,000.00" is exactly the kind accounts teams send back, so keep the lines underneath that say what those services were.

What to put on an invoice for services

For a business in the United States, these are the details a service invoice should carry:

• A unique invoice number (apart from invoices to federal agencies, no federal law prescribes what a business invoice must contain: the items in this list are customary)
• Invoice date
• Your business name and address
• Your customer's name and address
• A description of the goods or services and when they were supplied
• Quantity and price of each item
• Total amount due
• Sales tax, where the sale is taxable in that state
• Payment terms (when and how to pay)
• Invoices to federal agencies (a 'proper invoice') must also show the contract or order number, your Taxpayer Identification Number, banking details and a contact name and phone number

Two of these do most of the work on a service invoice. The description "and when they were supplied" is where the work and its date or period go, and "quantity and price" means the hours or days and your rate, or a quantity of 1 and the agreed fee. Payment terms tell the client when the money is due and how to pay; the guide to Net 30 and other payment terms explains the usual wording. If you work as an independent contractor, the page on invoices for US contractors and freelancers covers what's specific to that.

Outside the US, the details depend on your country and on whether you're registered for VAT, GST or GST/HST, and our invoice guides by country include pages for the UK, Australia and Canada. A client in another country raises a further question, because tax on services between businesses in different countries follows its own rules, which this page doesn't try to explain. For a UK business, the position is broadly this. Most services you supply to a business customer that belongs outside the UK are supplied where the customer belongs, so they are outside the scope of UK VAT and you charge no UK VAT; keep evidence that the customer is a business abroad (such as its VAT number), or the sale is treated as one to a consumer (consumer sales usually carry UK VAT, but advisory and other intangible services such as consultancy, accounting, legal, advertising or data processing for a consumer outside the UK are also outside the scope). Some services follow special rules (such as land-related services, events and hire of means of transport), you or your customer may have to account for VAT in the customer's country, and HMRC asks that the invoice describe the service clearly rather than generically.

That last point echoes the advice above about describing the work, this time with a tax reason behind it. For an Irish business, the starting point for clients outside the EU is this. Services to business customers outside the EU (e.g. in the US or UK) are generally not subject to Irish VAT, so no Irish VAT goes on the invoice. Keep proof that the customer is a business established outside the EU, such as details from its tax authority, an order form with its business address and trade registration number, or a print-out of its website. And where the reverse charge applies to a business customer in another EU country, meaning the customer accounts for the VAT instead of you, the maker can set the invoice up for it: no VAT, the customer's VAT number and the legal note on the PDF.

Making a service invoice in the maker

The maker keeps your business details and clients, so after the first invoice most of this is already filled in. To make an invoice like the example above:

1. Open the maker with the button on this page and enter your business details once, including how you want to be paid: bank transfer, a PayPal link or, in the US, options such as check, Venmo or Zelle. Your business country sets the currency and paper size, and for several countries the usual tax rate.
2. If you priced the work with the free quote template, open the accepted quote and choose Create invoice from this, which copies the client, lines and prices and gives the invoice the next number. Otherwise add the client, who is then saved for reuse.
3. Add a line for each piece of work with a dated description, the quantity, a unit such as hours, days, weeks or months, and your rate, and set the tax rate per line if you charge tax. Enter a deposit already paid as its own line with a negative amount, such as -1,000, and if the deposit invoice charged tax, use its net amount and give the line the same tax rate as that invoice.
4. Put the client's PO number or project reference in a custom field, set the due date and add your payment terms, which you need to do even when the invoice came from a quote, because a quote's own terms don't carry over.
5. Download or print the PDF, or with a free account send it by email or as a link, and mark it as paid when the money arrives.

A few limits matter for service work. The maker doesn't track time, so there's no timer, timesheet or import of hours: you add up your hours wherever you record them and type the total into the line. It doesn't make recurring invoices either, so for a monthly retainer the quickest way is to duplicate last month's invoice and change the period. Nor does it deduct a deposit by itself; the negative line you add is what lowers the total, and the totals and tax take it into account like any other line.

Once you've sent an invoice from the maker or marked it as sent, it can't be edited, so corrections go through a credit note rather than changes to the original. If the due date passes without payment, the invoice shows as overdue and you can send the client a payment reminder from it, though nothing is ever sent automatically. Without an account your browser keeps up to three invoices or quotes, and a free account saves ten new ones a month across your devices.