How to create and send an invoice, step by step

In short: Here is how to create and send an invoice: add your client, list the work with a description, quantity, and price, apply any VAT or discount, and pick a PDF design. To send it, click send: your client gets an email with the PDF attached. In Tally Crow that whole loop, from a blank invoice to a professional PDF in your client’s inbox, takes a few minutes.

You’ve agreed the work and the price. Now you just need to turn that into a proper invoice and get it to the client. This is the practical, in-the-app version: exactly what to click to create an invoice, send it, and see it through to paid. If you want the wider “what goes on an invoice and when to charge VAT” grounding first, start with our pillar guide, how to invoice a client as a freelancer, then come back here to do it.

We’ll use Tally Crow throughout, invoicing and bookkeeping built for freelancers and creators, with no accounting experience required.

First, a quick one-time setup

Before your first invoice, Tally Crow’s guided onboarding asks for a few things once. You don’t have to enter them again, and they all flow straight onto the finished PDF:

1. Your company details. Your name or business name, address, and your VAT number if you’re VAT-registered. This is the “from” on every invoice.
2. A bank account to get paid into. Add an account with its IBAN and BIC (Tally Crow checks they’re valid), and it shows up on the invoice as your payment details. You can set one default account per currency.
3. Your first client. Their business name, address, contact email, VAT number if they have one, and a default due date (anything from 1 to 365 days). Save a client once and they’re ready to reuse.
4. A starting invoice number. Pick where your numbering begins, as a whole number, for example 1001. From there Tally Crow numbers each new invoice for you, in order, with no gaps and no duplicates. If you’re moving over mid-year, just set the next number in your existing sequence and carry on.

That’s the whole setup. Everything after this is a matter of minutes.

How to create an invoice

With setup done, creating an invoice is quick:

1. Start a new invoice and pick the client. Choose the client you saved, and their details fill in automatically.
2. Choose the currency. Invoice in whatever you agreed with the client. Tally Crow lets you raise invoices in any currency, so a euro client and a dollar client can each get an invoice in their own money.
3. Add your line items. One line per thing you did, with a description, quantity, and price. Keep descriptions specific: “Landing page design, 2 rounds” reads better than “design work”. You can add up to 10 line items on a single invoice.
4. Apply VAT and any discount. If VAT applies to you, add it and Tally Crow does the maths; add a discount the same way. The subtotal, VAT, discount, and total all update as you go, so the maths is done for you.
5. Set the due date. It defaults to the client’s usual terms (say 14 or 30 days), and you can override it per invoice.
6. Pick a PDF design. Choose the template that looks like you, then preview the finished invoice before it goes anywhere.

A quick concrete example: a €480 website invoice, one line item, due in 14 days, in the classic PDF design, payable by bank transfer or online. That’s a complete, professional invoice, and it took about two minutes.

About the PDF designs

Tally Crow ships three PDF designs: classic, modern, and minimal. The classic design is on every plan, including Free; the modern and minimal designs are on Pro. All three use a font set that handles Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, and Maltese characters, so names and addresses render properly wherever your client is. On Pro you can also remove the ‘Made with Tally Crow’ line from the PDF.

Not signed up yet? You can build a one-off invoice in the browser with the free invoice generator, then come back here when you want numbering, reminders, and a record of what is still unpaid.

How do I send an invoice to a client?

Once the invoice looks right, sending it is one step: click send, and Tally Crow emails your client with the invoice PDF attached. There’s no exporting, downloading, and attaching by hand, and no wondering whether the file opened. The email comes from Tally Crow on your behalf, with the PDF ready for the client to open, save, or forward to whoever pays the bills.

One important detail: the moment an invoice is sent, its financial fields lock. That’s deliberate. It means one invoice number can only ever produce one PDF, which keeps your records clean at tax time. If you spot a mistake after sending, you don’t edit and resend, you issue a credit note against it and send a fresh, correctly numbered invoice. It’s the tidy, auditable way to fix an error.

What happens after you send an invoice?

Every invoice moves through a simple, forward-only status flow, so you can see where it stands at a glance:

• Generated: created but not yet sent.
• Sent: emailed to the client and waiting to be paid.
• Paid: the money’s in.
• Overdue: the due date has passed and it’s still unpaid.

Here’s what you’ll actually do at each stage.

Marking an invoice as paid

When the payment lands, open the invoice and mark it as paid. You can add a short payment note at the same time, for example “paid by bank transfer, 20 August” or a reference, so your record shows not just that it was paid but how. That keeps your per-currency analytics and CSV export accurate for later.

Reminders, without the awkward chase

Chasing money is the part nobody enjoys, so Tally Crow does the nudging for you:

• Due-soon reminders go out automatically as an invoice approaches its due date.
• Overdue reminders are a one-click nudge you send yourself, once, if the date passes. You decide when to press it; the client gets a polite prompt.

That covers the two most useful reminders without you having to draft a single “just checking in” email.

Let clients pay online

You can add an optional pay-now link to an invoice so the client pays by card in a click, instead of copying your IBAN into their banking app. Online payment runs through Stripe, you’re the merchant of record (the money is yours, paid to you directly), and Tally Crow takes a small application fee on top of Stripe’s own processing fee: 2% on Free, 1% on Basic, and 0.5% on Pro. Making it easy to pay is one of the simplest ways to get paid faster. There’s more on setting this up in our guide to accepting online payments on invoices.

One practical note: bank transfer works for any currency, while the online pay-now button covers the currencies Stripe supports. So if you invoice in a currency Stripe doesn’t handle, the client can still pay you by transfer, you just won’t have the one-click online button for that one.

Sending the same invoice every month

If you bill a client the same amount on a regular cadence, a retainer, a subscription, a monthly service, you don’t want to rebuild the invoice each time. Recurring invoices handle that, and they’re a Pro feature. You set up a template on a schedule, Tally Crow generates each new invoice for you when it’s due, and then it tells you to review and send it. The invoice is never mailed to your client automatically, so you get the final say before it goes out. For setting up the arrangement itself, see our guide on how to invoice a retainer client.

A quick note on VAT

Tally Crow calculates VAT on your invoice when you apply it. Whether you should be charging VAT at all, at what rate, and whether a cross-border sale uses the reverse charge, depends on where you’re based and what you sell. Our pillar guide covers the basics.

Create and send your first invoice

Creating an invoice shouldn’t take longer than the coffee you make while you do it. Add your details once, add the client, list the work, and send. Tally Crow handles the numbering, the totals, the VAT, the PDF, and the reminders, so you can get back to the work you’re actually paid for.

You can start free with 2 invoices a month and no credit card. See pricing for what each plan includes, or just dive in.