EU companies are required to do bookkeeping. This means that if you are working on a freelance basis for an EU company you will have to send invoices to receive payments. Generally EU invoice requirements tend to be more strict than what’s common in the US. We will show you how to issue an invoice as a freelancer to EU countries.
How to Invoice a Client for Freelance Work
- When writing a freelancer invoice, you need to include important details like invoice number, dates, contact information, description and amount.
- When invoicing, make it easy for the client to pay you. Discuss with them payment methods and how often you can be invoicing.
- You can invoice a client when you have completed the work. For large projects, you can invoice from time to time once you have completed some milestones of the project. Other clients may require you to invoice weekly or monthly.
Online Free Freelance Invoice Templates
- There are online tools, free and paid (such as the excellent Freeinvoicebuilder.com), that have many different freelance invoice templates.
- PayPal invoice template is another easy to use tool: Paypal invoice generator.
- Other examples include Zoho, Bonsai and Invoice Ninja. Check out our article How to Write an Invoice for Freelance Work for more info.
For example, if you are an African online freelancer living in Kenya and you write articles for an awesome financial website that is built by a company in Estonia. To do things properly, you will have to send an invoice. A PayPal invoice could work, but if you use PayPal to receive your money, you are likely loose a big chunk of your money to them. Instead, you will end up with a lot more Kenyan Shillings if you get your client to sign up with Wise, formerly Transferwise, and get paid to your Kenyan bank account or even to your MPESA.
Contents
EU invoice Requirements
- Date of issue, e.g. January 26th 2022
- Unique sequential number identifying the invoice, e.g. “Invoice 2345”
- Supplier’s full name, e.g. “Nelson Mandela”
- Supplier address, e.g. “First Road nr 6, Johannesburg, South Africa”
- Customer’s full name & address, e.g. “SEO Crew OÜ, Sepapaja 6, 15551 Tallinn Estonia”
- Description of quantity and type of goods supplied or type and extent of services rendered, e.g. a list of titles of delivered articles and the unit price for each article
- Due date, this is the latest date you give the client for payment.
- Tax information. You will be responsible for paying your own income tax in your country of residence. Therefore you need to supply information about this, e.g. your personal or company’s TAX id.
- Include a statement about VAT. For example you should write on the invoice ‘VAT reverse-charged’.
VAT in Europe
If you are inside the EU and you need to charge VAT, the following information also has to be provided.
- EU VAT rate applied
- VAT amount payable
- Breakdown of VAT amount payable by VAT rate or exemption
- EU VAT ID of the customer (if the customer is liable for the tax on the transaction)
Do I charge VAT on invoices to Europe?: Generally, if you are invoicing customers outside the EU, you do not charge VAT. You can send EU invoice without VAT. However, if you are invoicing customers in another EU country, you may be required to charge for VAT.
When to send an invoice?
When you send an invoice depends on the client. Some clients have strict requirements and payment periods. With other clients you have more freedom as a freelancer. The first payment coming in from a client is the most important.
I helped an NGO in the Middle East, to convert their giant ASP website into Drupal. Started off full of energy. Then there was an unexpected requirement from their side about a tax document. This document took half a year to acquire. After that it took another 3 months for my first payment to arrive. Needless to say we lost a lot of time getting back into the project.
In another case a client ended up never paying. I didn’t have much recourse. My recommendation to freelancers is: try to send a first invoice pretty soon. And my recommendation to companies hiring freelancers: pay early. If you have the liquidity, pay any invoice as soon as you can, especially when you’re working with sole traders. Keeping your freelancers happy is a smart idea when building a business. — Kasper
What’s a good due date for an invoice?
Some clients will have their own requirements about due dates. Government institutions and big corporations tend to pay very late, sometimes 2 months after reception of the invoice. If you’re dealing with smaller businesses it’s generally okay to put 2 weeks.
If you are working for FiFi Finance you can put a due date of 1 week. We aim to pay the same or next day, but this doesn’t always work out if we’re afk for a day or we have to communicate about the work delivered. — Kasper
