How to write an accountant invoice

What goes on a accountant invoice

Six things, in the order they belong on the page. The invoice generator opens a accountant / bookkeeper document with the lines already in place, so most of this is checking rather than typing.

1. State the period the work covers. Which year, which quarter, which month. It is the first thing a client checks and the first thing missing on a queried invoice.
2. Put the filing reference on it. The return, the submission, the reference number. It is what connects your fee to a thing the client can verify.
3. Separate compliance from advisory. Year-end accounts and a tax return are compliance. Planning, restructuring and ad hoc advice are not, and pricing them together makes the compliance fee look inflated.
4. Show recurring work by unit. Monthly bookkeeping and payroll priced per run or per employee, with the count visible.
5. List filing fees and disbursements at cost. State filing fees, software licenses and third-party costs are not your fee.
6. Say what is not included. The scope you did not price is the scope the client believes they bought.

The lines a accountant invoice usually carries

These are the lines the generator opens with when you pick Accountant / bookkeeper. The figures are a starting point to type over rather than a going rate: this site runs no pricing survey, and the number on your invoice should be the one you charge.

Add, rename, reorder or delete any line, and set tax per line where it applies. Priced as they open, that comes to $2,130 before tax.

A worked accountant invoice, filled in

This is the same job as the table above, written out the way it would leave your phone. Every figure on it is a starting point rather than a going rate, and the tax line is shown at ten per cent purely so the arithmetic is visible: set your own rate, or none, per line.

Subtotal $2,130, tax $213, total $2,343. The parts worth copying are the structure rather than the numbers: the job reference next to the client, every line separately priced with its count showing, the tax on its own line, and terms that name a number of days instead of saying on receipt.

Fixed fee or hourly, and the year the work doubled

Most practices have moved to fixed fees because clients prefer them, and most have at least one client whose fixed fee stopped making sense two years ago.

Fixed pricing works when the scope is written down and the invoice repeats it. Name what the fee covers on the document, in the units the work actually happens in: one set of accounts, one return, twelve bookkeeping runs, payroll for a stated headcount.

Then when the headcount doubles or the transaction volume triples, you have a basis for repricing that is not a subjective conversation about how much harder the year felt. Work outside the fixed fee goes on as its own line when it happens rather than quietly enlarging next year's quote.

Out-of-scope work, and the phone call that was actually advice

Every practice gives away advisory work by phone. A client rings with a question, the answer takes forty minutes and some thinking, and it never reaches an invoice.

The remedy is not to bill every call. It is to have an advisory line that exists, priced, so that when a call becomes a piece of work it has somewhere to go. Work that has no line on your invoice template will never be billed.

Name it on the invoice when you use it, with what it was: a VAT registration question, a restructuring discussion, a review of a proposed purchase. Clients pay for named advice far more readily than for an unexplained increase.

Deadlines, penalties and the invoice that has to arrive first

Compliance work sits against statutory deadlines, and the client who pays late is often the same client whose records arrived late.

Two things help, both on the document. State your terms in days and the date, so the invoice enters a payment cycle rather than a pile. And where your engagement makes filing conditional on payment or on receiving records by a date, say so plainly on the invoice rather than in a letter from three years ago.

If a deadline is at risk because records are outstanding, that belongs in writing at the time, not in a discussion about a penalty afterwards. The late fee calculator covers the payment side of the same problem.

Hourly, fixed price or per unit: how accountants and bookkeepers price the work

Accounting and bookkeeping have moved decisively from hourly to fixed monthly fees, and the reason is not efficiency, it is that clients hate phoning an adviser who is charging by the minute. A fixed fee makes the relationship usable.

Whichever model, itemize the services on the invoice and reference the period or the filing. A client reading bookkeeping, one month cannot see value. A client reading the bank reconciliations, the payroll runs, the return filed and the deadline met can see all of it.

Working out what to charge

This guide is about what goes on the document, not what the number should be, and nobody should hand you a rate for your own market. What the site can do is the arithmetic: the freelance rate calculator works back from what you need to earn, the service price calculator prices a service against your costs, and the profit margin calculator checks what is left once the job is done.

Writing it on your phone, in five steps

Most accountants and bookkeepers write the invoice standing next to the work rather than at a desk a week later, and the week later version is the one that gets details wrong. The generator is built for the first case.

1. Open it with your trade already chosen. The accountant / bookkeeper invoice loads with annual accounts preparation and the rest of the lines already on the page.
2. Put the client and the job reference in first. It is the part you will not remember accurately in three days, and on agent, landlord or contractor work it is the reason the invoice gets paid at all.
3. Edit the lines rather than starting from empty. Change the quantities and the rates, delete what you did not do, add what you did. Keeping the descriptions means the wording stays consistent from one job to the next.
4. Set the terms to 14 days and add a payment link. A due date that is an actual date gets chased. A link and a QR code means it can be settled before you have packed up.
5. Send it before you leave. The clock on your terms starts when the invoice arrives, not when the work finished, so every day it sits unsent is a day added to getting paid.

Getting paid once it is sent

Put a due date and your terms on the document, because an invoice without them is hard to chase. Add a payment link and a QR so settling up is a tap rather than a transfer somebody has to set up. When part of it lands, the receipt maker records it as a part payment and prints the balance still due. If the due date passes, the late fee calculator works out what your own terms allow and writes the chasing letter to go with it.

Five dates decide whether a accountant gets paid on time, and four of them are set before the work starts.

Mistakes that cost accountants and bookkeepers money

• No period on the invoice. It is the first thing queried and the first thing missing.
• Compliance and advisory in one figure. It makes the compliance fee look inflated and the advice look free.
• Disbursements inside the fee. Filing fees and licenses are not your revenue and should not read as though they are.
• No advisory line on the template. Work with nowhere to go on the invoice never gets billed.
• Scope not stated. What you did not price is what the client believes was included.

Accountant / bookkeeper invoice questions

Free accountant invoice template

The free accountant invoice template opens with the lines above already priced, in any of 200 designs, and exports a print-ready PDF with no signup and nothing saved to a server. If you would rather edit a file offline, there are 72 Word templates, 72 Excel templates with the totals already calculating, and 72 fillable PDFs.

Invoicing guides for related trades

The same billing questions come up next door. These four guides cover the trades closest to accountants and bookkeepers, and each one sits alongside its own free template.

Every trade has one: see all 46 invoicing guides, or go straight to the 46 free invoice templates they describe.

Everything on this site, set up for accountants and bookkeepers

The whole toolkit, with the reason each one matters to accountants and bookkeepers rather than in general. The five marked links open with accountant / bookkeeper already selected.

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