Invoice & Receipt Generator

How to use

Choose invoice (a request for payment) or receipt (proof of payment), add your details and a line per item, and the totals update as you type. Tax, discount, shipping, amount already paid, logo, signature and payment terms are all optional. The PDF is built in your browser — no watermark, no sign-up, nothing uploaded — and Save draft keeps a copy in this browser for repeat clients.

Invoicing in the US

There's no federal law that dictates the layout of an invoice, and no national VAT — the tax you may need to add is sales tax, which is set by states, and often cities and counties, not the federal government. Whether you charge it depends on where you and your customer are and what you sell: many states tax physical goods but treat services differently. Enter the combined rate that applies, or set it to 0 for a non-taxable service.

What US clients do expect is a clear paper trail: a unique invoice number, both parties' names and addresses, dates, an itemized description, the total, payment terms and how to pay. If you're a freelancer billing a business, expect to be asked for a Form W-9 with your taxpayer identification number before your first payment — the business uses it for its own information reporting to the IRS.

How long to keep invoices. The IRS ties record retention to the period it can examine a return: generally 3 years after filing; 6 years if you left out income worth more than 25% of the gross income on the return; 7 years for a bad-debt or worthless-securities deduction; and indefinitely if you didn't file or filed a fraudulent return. Employment tax records are kept for at least 4 years (IRS). An unpaid invoice you later write off as a bad debt falls in the 7-year group.

How the totals are calculated

balance due = (subtotal − discount) + tax + shipping − amount paid. Each line is quantity × unit price, rounded to the cent; the discount comes off before tax; shipping is added after tax and isn't taxed. In per-line tax mode the discount is spread across lines in proportion to their amounts, so each line is taxed on what it actually cost.

Worked example

Say you bill a client for 10 hours of design at $50.00 and a one-off $120.00 hosting setup. The two lines come to $500.00 and $120.00, a subtotal of $620.00. Apply a 10% loyalty discount (−$62.00) and the taxable amount is $558.00. At a 8% sales-tax rate, tax is $44.64, so the total due is $602.64. If the client already paid a $200.00 deposit, enter it as the amount paid and the invoice shows a balance due of $402.64. Switch the document type to Receipt once they settle the rest, keep the same numbers, and you have a matching proof-of-payment PDF.

Tips and common mistakes

• Use the combined local rate. State, county and city sales taxes stack — look up the rate for the delivery address, not just the state.
• Keep services separate from goods. In states that tax goods but not services, per-line tax keeps the invoice accurate.
• Number every invoice sequentially. Gaps or duplicates cause reconciliation headaches at tax time.
• Keep the PDF. Saved drafts live in this browser only — the downloaded PDF is your permanent record.
• The total isn't what you keep. Tax on your profits comes out later— run expected billings through the take-home pay & income tax calculator so the bill isn't a surprise.

Because the calculation logic is the same code that renders the PDF, the figures you see on screen always match the downloaded document — there's no separate export path to drift out of sync.