How to send an invoice: steps, email template, and timing

Here's how to send an invoice in one breath: build it with your business details, the customer's details, an invoice number, the invoice date and due date, itemized charges, any tax, the total, and how to pay. Then email it, as a PDF or a link from your invoicing tool, to the person who actually approves payment, with a short note and a pay link. Log the date you sent it, and follow up on a schedule.

That's the job. The details decide how fast the money arrives: who gets the email, whether the invoice matches what the customer expected, and whether paying takes two minutes or a printed check and a stamp. This guide walks through each step, with a field checklist, an email template, a follow-up schedule, and what card payments on invoices cost as of October 2026.

How do you send an invoice, step by step?

Most invoicing problems start before the invoice exists. Steps 1 and 10 are the ones people skip.

1. Ask, before the first invoice, who should receive invoices, whether they need a purchase order (PO) number on them, and how they prefer to pay.
2. Create the invoice in your invoicing or accounting software, your payment provider's virtual terminal, or a document template you save as a PDF.
3. Give it the next number in your sequence and date it the day you send it.
4. List each item or service with a description, quantity, rate, and line total, and reference the quote, PO, or job number.
5. Add sales tax if you charge it, then the total.
6. State the terms and print the due date as an actual date.
7. List every way you accept payment, and add a pay link if you take cards.
8. Email it to the right person with a clear subject line, from your business address.
9. Log it: invoice number, amount, date sent, and due date.
10. Follow up on a schedule you decide in advance.

What should an invoice include?

Include enough that the customer's bookkeeper can approve it without emailing you back. Each missing detail tends to cost you a round of emails, and the clock keeps running while they go back and forth.

If you charge sales tax, show it as its own line and check your state's rules for what the invoice has to show. Selling in Canada too? GST/HST invoices have their own required fields, which our guide to invoice requirements in Canada lays out. For business customers, our B2B payments guide covers payment terms such as net 30 and early payment discounts in more depth.

How do you write the email that sends an invoice?

Keep the email short and put everything the customer needs in the subject line and first sentence. A subject line like "Invoice 1047 from [Business name], $2,500, due November 7" tells the reader what it is, from whom, how much, and when, before they open it.

Here's a template you can adapt:

A few habits make that email land:

• Send from your business email address, with the same business name that appears on the invoice and the payment page.
• Attach a PDF and include the link. Some accounts payable systems need the file; some people just want to click and pay.
• Name the file so it's findable later: "Invoice-1047-YourBusiness.pdf" beats "scan0032.pdf."
• Send one invoice per email. Two invoices in one message are easy to pay as one, or to miss entirely.
• Never ask a customer to reply with their card number. Send a payment link instead.

That last point matters for trust as well as security. The FTC tells consumers that if a text they weren't expecting asks for personal or financial information, they shouldn't click any links and should contact the company through a number or website they know is real. Tell new customers where your invoices will come from, and your link won't look like a scam.

Which way should you send an invoice?

Email works for most businesses, but it isn't the only option. Match the method to how your customer pays bills.

The last row is the one people miss. If the customer is standing in front of you when the job wraps up, the fastest invoice is a receipt: tap the card, email the receipt, done.

How do you get paid faster once the invoice is sent?

Make paying easy, and make card payments cost as little as possible. A pay link on the invoice removes one of the slowest steps: the customer finding time to write and mail a check.

Know what that convenience costs. A card paid through an invoice link is a card-not-present sale. On Visa's US schedule with rates effective April 18, 2026, a standard consumer credit card in the "all other products" group carries 1.89% + $0.10 in interchange in Visa's main card-not-present program, against 1.51% + $0.10 when the card is present (Visa USA Interchange Reimbursement Fees). Interchange goes to the bank that issued the card; your processor's markup sits on top.

Say an HVAC company in Denver finishes a $2,500 furnace install and the homeowner pays with that kind of card:

Nine dollars and fifty cents isn't much on one job. Across 40 installs a year, it's $380, and tapping also gets the money moving the same day. Send the invoice link when the customer isn't there; tap the card when they are. Our guides to payment links and card-not-present transactions explain the gap.

Can you add a card fee to the invoice? Sometimes. Visa limits a US credit card surcharge to your merchant discount rate or 3%, whichever is lower, and you have to give your acquirer 30 days' notice first (Visa). For invoices paid by Mastercard, the cap is the lesser of your average effective merchant discount rate or 4% (Mastercard). Debit and prepaid invoice payments can't be surcharged on either network. Some states go further: Massachusetts bars surcharging customers who pay by credit card (Massachusetts General Laws), and Connecticut bars surcharges on any payment method (Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection). Check our guide to surcharging rules by state first, or let our surcharging program handle compliance, disclosure, and setup.

And if you send the same invoice every month, stop sending it. Put the customer on recurring billing with their consent, and the charge runs on schedule.

When should you send an invoice, and when should you follow up?

Send it the day the work is done or the goods ship. An invoice sent at the end of the month for work finished on the 3rd has lost almost four weeks before the customer's terms even start.

Then follow up on a fixed schedule. Here's the one we'd start with:

Our opinion: call sooner than feels polite. An email sent into the wrong inbox will stay there no matter how many times you resend it, and a two-minute call usually finds the problem. Write your schedule down and use it for every customer, so nobody gets special treatment because they're friendly.

What records should you keep after you send an invoice?

Keep a copy of every invoice, the email or message that sent it, and the record of how and when it was paid. Those are the documents that tie your sales to your bank deposits.

For taxes, the IRS says you generally need to keep records that support an item of income or deduction until the period of limitations for that return runs out, which is generally 3 years from the date you filed. The same page lists longer periods: 6 years if you leave out income that's more than 25% of the gross income on your return, and 7 years if you claim a bad debt deduction. That last one is worth remembering for invoices that never get paid.

Card payments add one more record to watch. Whoever settles your card sales reports the gross amount on Form 1099-K, before fees or refunds (IRS), so match your card-paid invoices to your deposits as you go. Our guide to Form 1099-K shows how to reconcile the two.

Common invoicing mistakes

• Waiting until month end to invoice work finished weeks earlier.
• Sending the invoice to your contact on the job instead of the person in accounts payable.
• Leaving off the PO number the customer asked for.
• Writing "net 30" with no actual due date.
• Offering only one way to pay.
• Reusing invoice numbers, or skipping around, so payments are hard to match.
• Sending an invoice link to a customer who's standing in front of you.
• Asking for card details by email when a payment link would do.
• Following up once, getting no answer, and then waiting a month.

A plumbing company in Phoenix and a design studio in Boston send very different invoices, but both get paid faster by fixing the same short list. If you'd like help with the payment side, our home services and professional services pages cover the setups we'd suggest for each.

Next step

Clearo's virtual terminal sends invoices and payment links, takes card payments over the phone, and runs recurring billing, all on interchange-plus pricing with no long-term contract. If you already take card payments on invoices, send us a recent statement for a free statement review and we'll show you what those payments cost next to your in-person sales. Or contact us to set up invoicing that gets paid sooner.