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Invoice Templates

Updated on: May 25th, 2023

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7 min read

Business owners and professionals are usually found busy invoicing while also attending to their customers. As a business owner or professional, you may have a handful to manage, from finances to selling products. 

Although several invoicing templates are available in the market, what works the best and stands out as your invoicing buddy is the invoice generating tool. It puts your business on the fast track mode, from document tracking to payment settlement, in an efficient manner.

Invoice creation could never get better! Check out the next-gen invoicing and billing software ClearOne, built for business owners. Create professional and bespoke invoices anytime and from anywhere from both web and mobile!

Deciding which invoicing template best suits your business

Many factors affect your decision to choose the right invoicing template for your business, as follows-

  • Size of business
  • Nature of products and services offered
  • Quantum of products and services offered
  • Sector or industry in which the business functions
  • Customer preferences 
  • Level of competition
  • Tax requirements and compliances
  • Requirements of other documents as per law, such as e-way bills, e-invoices, etc.

Billing and invoicing templates widely used in India

Pen and Paper

Paper-based invoicing and billing are one of the oldest modes of invoicing. Typically, there is no one standard template for manual paper-based billing. It is expensive, not environment-friendly, difficult to manage, track, or account for, and is time-consuming.

ClearOne invoicing is easy to access, eco-friendly and allows easy duplication of bills to save time and effort.

Invoicing in Word

The popular go-to invoicing template is found in Microsoft Word or a word document. The word template is a conventional invoicing tool first adopted when people started moving from pen and paper.

It is easy for small-time professionals or freelancers to use word templates for raising invoices. However, the changing times pose challenges such as manual formatting, difficulty in deriving values when calculations are involved, and the manual entry of line items. Besides, its restriction to offline use poses backup problems.

ClearOne invoicing solution helps you add or remove fields on your invoice with a click of a button, stores invoice data securely, is easy to retrieve for future use and allows creating invoices on mobile while on the move!

Invoicing in Excel

The next best invoicing template prevalent among businesses dealing with multiple products is Excel Sheet. It is also a conventional mode of raising invoices.

A user can preset formulas in Excel sheets and easily compute quantities, values and taxes for the invoices accurately. On the flipside, Excel fails to create professional and dynamic invoices suited for on-the-move businesses. Its restriction to offline use leads to backup problems.

ClearOne allows easy recovery even when one changes their device or if it crashes. The servers are profoundly secure with bank-grade security, ensuring data safety.

Google Docs invoicing

In recent years, Google Docs has gained prominence. It is a cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) and provides all typical word document functionalities.

Thus, there is almost a 100% guarantee that the data doesn’t get lost. Another advantage of Google Docs for invoicing is that users can operate and use Google Docs on the move. It is shareable with options of edit, view, and suggestion mode.

However, the challenges remain the same as in Microsoft Word, with the most prominent one being manual work involved in using Google Docs for invoicing and billing.

With the ClearOne invoicing solution, you can be future-ready and one step ahead. Create estimates and convert them to invoices or e-invoices, or e-way bills with a click of a button!

Google Sheets invoicing

Lately, Google Sheets also has caught the attention of business owners on the move. It is a cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) and provides all the typical Microsoft Excel sheet functionalities.

Thus, there is almost a 100% guarantee that the data doesn’t get lost. Another advantage of Google Sheets for invoicing is that users can operate and use it remotely or while commuting. It is shareable with options of edit, view and suggestion mode.

The challenges remain the same as Microsoft Excel, though, with the most prominent one being manual efforts involved in creating invoices.

ClearOne invoicing helps you stay 100% tax compliant with the creation of GST and NIC-compliant invoices and other documents. What’s more? You can be in control of who you do business with by knowing their GST compliance history before you do business with them.!

PDF invoicing

your invoices in a PDF template for invoicing. Then, you can print your invoice without worrying about alignment and email it directly to your customers in a few minutes.

Most of the free PDF tools available in the market do not support multiple features for editing and formatting. However, invoices must need standard templates in place for various types of supplies and services that business deals with. It ensures data accuracy, better presentation and allows reusability. Hence, using this template cannot be cost-effective. Further, calculations cannot be performed easily in an editable PDF. All these challenges are major hiccups for one to use PDF invoicing.

On the other hand,ClearOne invoicing provides an easy-to-operate interface for its users to navigate through the invoicing process. It takes minimal time for setup with both web and mobile-based options for invoicing.

Invoicing tools

There are various ERP or software or desktop application based invoicing tools available in the market.

However, next-gen invoicing needs to have customer and CA collaboration as one of the important features that are lacking in most of the applications.

The challenges remain the same as Microsoft Excel, though, with the most prominent one being manual efforts involved in creating invoices.

While ERPs are made for accountants, ClearOne invoicing is made for business owners with a better user interface, as well as CA and customer collaborations as one of the primary offerings! Generate e-way bills and e-invoices from standard invoices with a single click.

Advantages of using invoicing templates

The following are the benefits of using invoicing templates-

  • These invoice templates are easily available or accessible.
  • It is good to have a standard practice in place for invoicing as it can leave a good impression on your customers.
  • Access the invoice templates in various forms or templates such as cloud-based tools, .DOC, PDF, .XLS, .CSV formats and more. 
  • Since it is editable, businesses can customise fields in an invoice template to include your name, logo, address and contact information.
  • Businesses can also organise customer account information and status separately.
  • Businesses can record invoice data for tax purposes.
  • Businesses can easily add data and do tax calculations when a preset template is used.

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Quick Summary

Business owners have numerous invoicing template options. ClearOne's sophisticated software streamlines invoicing for professionals. Consider factors like business size, products, industry, and customer preferences when selecting a template. Popular options include pen and paper, Word, Excel, Google Docs, Google Sheets, and PDF invoicing, each offering unique benefits and drawbacks. ClearOne invoicing stands out for its accessibility, eco-friendliness, and intuitive features.

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