Free invoice generator with PDF download

What a good invoice does

An invoice has one job: get you paid without a follow-up question. The client's accounts team should be able to see who it is from, what it is for, how much is owed, when it is due and how to pay, without opening an email thread to ask. Every unclear line is a reason for the payment to wait another week.

That is why the layout here is plain. A logo and a colour scheme do not get anyone paid faster; a clear total, a due date and bank details that can be copied straight into a banking app do.

What an invoice must include

The exact rules depend on where you trade, but the core list barely changes from country to country. The UK government's guidance, for example, asks for the items below, and they are a sound checklist anywhere.

• A unique invoice number.
• Your name or business name, address and contact details.
• The client's name or company name and address.
• A clear description of what you are charging for.
• The date the work was done or the goods supplied, and the date of the invoice.
• The amounts charged, any VAT or sales tax, and the total owed.

How to make an invoice with this invoice generator

• Check the invoice number and dates. The tool fills in INV-0001, today's date and a due date 30 days out; change any of them.
• Pick the currency: US dollar, euro, pound sterling, Pakistani rupee, Indian rupee, Australian dollar or Canadian dollar.
• Add your own details. If you are registered for VAT or need to show a company or tax number, add it; you can rename its label to whatever your country calls it.
• Add the client's name, address and the email their accounts team uses.
• Add a line for each piece of work: a description, a quantity and a unit price. The line totals, subtotal and rounding are worked out for you, and lines can be moved up and down.
• Switch on a tax line or a discount only if this invoice actually has one. A discount can be a percentage or a fixed amount, and it comes off before tax is calculated.
• Add payment details (bank account, payment link, terms) and any notes.
• Press Download PDF and choose Save as PDF in the dialog that opens.

Getting the PDF: how the download works

This is an invoice maker that produces a PDF without sending your invoice anywhere. Rather than building the file on a server, it hands the finished A4 page to your browser's own print dialog, which every modern browser can save as a PDF. In Chrome and Edge choose "Save as PDF" as the destination; in Safari and Firefox it is the PDF or Save to PDF option in the same dialog. Only the invoice is printed, not the rest of this page.

Two settings are worth checking the first time: paper size A4 (or Letter, if that is what your client expects) and headers and footers switched off, so the browser does not stamp the page address and date across the top. The finished PDF is a normal file you can attach to an email, upload to a client portal or print.

The bottom of the page carries one small line, "Created with Bunfolio", with our mark. It is the only thing the free tool asks for in return, and we would rather you knew before you export than discovered it afterwards.

A worked example

A designer invoices a client for two days of work and a fixed-price logo. Line one: "Website design workshop, 2 to 3 March", quantity 2, unit price 450.00. Line two: "Logo design, three concepts and final files", quantity 1, unit price 900.00. Subtotal 1,800.00. They agreed a 10% discount for a returning client, so 180.00 comes off, leaving 1,620.00. They are VAT registered at 20%, so tax is 324.00 and the total due is 1,944.00.

Compare a weak version of the same invoice: one line saying "Design work — 1,944". The client cannot match it to a purchase order, the accounts team cannot see the VAT, and the first reply is a question. Specific descriptions and dates on each line are what make an invoice easy to approve.

Payment terms and details that get you paid

The payment details box is the most useful free-text field on the page. Put in exactly what the client needs to pay you without asking: account name, bank details or a payment link, the reference you want them to quote (the invoice number is the obvious one), and the terms in plain words, such as "Payment due within 30 days of the invoice date".

Set the due date to match whatever you agreed in your contract or proposal, rather than the default, if the two differ. A due date the client did not agree to is the easiest one for them to ignore.

Common invoicing mistakes

• Leaving off the due date, or writing "payable on receipt" and then waiting 60 days without chasing.
• Skipping or reusing invoice numbers. Keep the sequence unbroken, even for an invoice that was cancelled.
• Vague line descriptions that the client cannot match to what they ordered.
• Forgetting the payment details, so the client has to email you to ask how to pay.
• Charging VAT or sales tax when you are not registered for it, or leaving it off when you are.
• Keeping the only copy in a browser. The draft is saved locally for convenience; the PDF is your record.

What the tool does not do

It is a one-invoice-at-a-time generator, not accounting software. There is no logo upload, no choice of templates, no client list, no recurring invoices, no emailing from the page and no payment tracking. If you are sending invoices every week, those features are worth paying for. If you send a handful a year, a clean PDF made in a few minutes is usually all you need.