How to Create an Invoice for Hours Worked

Whether you’re an independent freelancer or an agency offering services, learning how to create an invoice is an essential skill. Including all the necessary information and making payment as easy as possible will mean that you’re more likely to get paid on time, avoiding any potential issues with late payments and the subsequent effects on your cash flow.

When you factor in the challenges of making an invoice for hours worked, the process can seem more daunting. You want to value your time and charge an appropriate amount for your services, but you also want to remain competitive so that clients choose you again. Keep reading to find out more about how to create an invoice for hours worked and the essential information that you should include.

What information should I include in an invoice?

An invoice is basically a written record of the work that you have completed, along with all the details of how and when a payment should be made to you. This is important for small business accounting and also so that your clients can keep track of their payments to you. Before getting into how to write an invoice for hours worked specifically, you should ensure that the following information is included:

• A unique invoice number (you can choose this yourself) that allows both you and the client to identify specific invoices. This helps you to easily reference invoices if you run into any issues.

• Basic details about you and your client, including names, business names, contact details and addresses.

• The cost of each service provided, which can be broken down by task and also by the number of hours worked. You should add these costs up and make the total clear by using a larger font or bold.

• The payment methods that you will accept, such as bank transfers, debit or credit cards or even checks.

• The due date for payment, along with any terms for late payments. For example, you should specify whether late payment will incur any charges.

How to write an invoice for hours worked

Now that we’ve covered the basics of invoicing, you might be wondering how to do an invoice for hours worked specifically. Well, the basic principles are the same as for any other invoice. The main thing to remember is that you should keep regular records of how long you have worked on a particular task or project so that you have the information at your fingertips when it comes to invoicing.

Make sure that you include your hourly rate on the invoice along with the number of hours worked in the breakdown of services. It’s usually best to create a table for this, with columns for the task description, hourly rate, number of hours worked and then the cost of this.

You can make life easier for yourself by downloading an invoice template for hours worked. This will include space for all of the necessary information, so that you don’t have to worry about formatting details. You could also keep a list of all your most commonly invoiced services, so you can simply copy and paste these into the invoice template for hours worked.

Using GoCardless for invoicing

GoCardless is the perfect invoicing solution, whether you want to invoice for hours worked or prefer to do this by job. After the initial setup where the customer provides their payment information and authorization, you don’t have to put in any additional work to collect payments. You can agree on a payment schedule or a one-off payment, and the money is automatically transferred to your account on this date.

With GoCardless, you can reduce the risk of late payments and save time on accounting, allowing you to focus on other areas of your business.

We can help

GoCardless helps you automate payment collection, cutting down on the amount of admin your team needs to deal with when chasing invoices. Find out how GoCardless can help you with ad hoc payments or recurring payments.