Investopedia defines an invoice as a time-stamped commercial document that itemizes and records a transaction between a buyer and a seller. If goods or services were purchased on credit, the invoice usually specifies the terms of the deal and provides information on the available methods of payment.
If you offer services to customers or clients as a business owner or as a freelancer, you need to have a good invoicing system that can help you create invoices, keep track of them, and remind your customers when they are due.
At Flutterwave, we have a good & seamless invoicing solution with a secure payment option. You can create an invoice from your Flutterwave dashboard, send it to your customer as an email. Once received, your customer can view it and pay using the different payment options. Freelancers can also use the Flutterwave invoice solution to bill their clients and receive their payment from anywhere across the world. Read this article that explains how Flutterwave is the African freelancers’ best friend.
To create an invoice, you will need to sign up on Flutterwave if you haven’t done so already. To sign up, visit Flutterwave.com. Here’s a helpful video that shows you how to navigate the Flutterwave Dashboard after signing up:
Once you have signed up on Flutterwave and your email has been verified, you can start creating invoices. You can start by logging on to your dashboard where you will see an overview of your account. To start creating invoices for your customers or to see how it works, visit here. This video will show you a step by step process of creating an invoice.
An invoice should contain vital information that is clear and easy for the customer to understand. Here are the features a good invoice like Flutterwave invoice should have:
Business Information
Your invoice should have all the details of your business like business name, address, email address, phone number and logo. Since you’ve already signed up on Flutterwave, all this information will appear automatically on the invoice.
Of course, you will also need to add your customer’s information – email, address, phone number etc.
Invoice Number
All invoices should have a unique number that can be used to identify it. Each Flutterwave invoice comes with an assigned unique number.
Invoice Date and Due Date
Dates are very important when creating an invoice because it helps you to know when your invoice is overdue and when to send a reminder. Flutterwave invoices come with an “Invoice Date” and a “Payment Due Date”, the payment due date informs your customer about how much time they have to pay you.
Items
Every invoice has this box where you can list the item(s) were bought or service(s) offered. With this, the customer will know what exactly they are paying for.
Price & Quantity
You also want to add the price of the item(s) sold or services offered. You can also add the quantity of items purchased.
Tax Information & Shipping Cost
Flutterwave invoice allows you to add the tax value, which is then added to the price to make the total amount of money to be paid by the customer. You can also add the shipping cost to your Flutterwave invoice where applicable.
Invoice Notes
There may be some other information you want to share with your customers; you may want to send them a thank you note, you can always use the invoice notes feature to send this information.
Reminder
Some customers may forget to view the invoice or totally ignore it and default on payment. With Flutterwave invoice, you can send reminders to your customers.
This is what a Flutterwave invoice looks like when you are adding a new customer.
This is an example of a completely filled Flutterwave invoice.
This is what a Flutterwave invoice looks like when it drops in your customer’s email.
When your customer clicks on the “Make Payment” link in their Flutterwave Invoice, it takes them to this webpage.
Once your customer is ready to make the payment, they should click on “Make Payment”, the page will redirect them to our payment gateway where they can choose how they want to pay from our payment options.
If you run a business, we encourage you to stare using the invoice option to inform your customers and also get paid. Invoices are also good for records purposes, especially when you need to carry out an audit on your business.
You can learn more about creating and handling Flutterwave Invoices here.