Consultant Invoice Template

Consultant Invoice Template refers to the standard format available for consulting service providers to prepare invoices feasibly without having to devote much time. Maintaining a consultant invoice template enables the professional consultant or a consultancy company to focus on its consulting goals and not stress much about invoicing.

A consultant invoice template will need inputs like the company’s details, clients’ details, invoice number, date of invoice, agreement, purchase order, payment terms, date of service, description, the rate per hour, line total, receipts, or payment instructions and the calculations for deriving the net total.

Consultant Invoice Template is a standard format designed to help service providers prepare invoices without having to do anything manually. These templates are ready-to-use with customizable feature. As a result, service providers can have this template ready with their own specific inclusions or exclusions as required.

A consultant invoice is a highly resourceful document for a professional consultant or a consultancy company. It allows the consultant or a consulting company to perform services for their customers and provide them with an itemized statement of these services. It simply contains all the necessary fields required for invoicing the customers. Professional consultants or consultancy companies use it for invoicing their clients.

Consulting services providers have multiple clients to serve and hence invoicing might become difficult for them in some cases. The consultant invoice template allows service providers to use the already-built formats or customize them in accordance with the clients’ needs.

Different clients opt for different levels of services, hence the templates chosen might differ. However, a service provider can opt for one format to be used for their professional purposes and customize it as per the level of service being provided to respective clients.

A professional consultant invoice template comprises the name, logo, contact information, and other details of the consultants. In a standard template, service providers get the normal elements already included in it. However, one may add extra columns or spaces for notes and additional details that clients must know for making payments.

A consultant invoice template is preferred over a manually prepared one as it exhibits significant traits. Let us have a look at the characteristics of these templates in brief:

• These templates are tailor-made. A service provider can tailor the templates as per their requirements.
• They can be customized. Fields can be added for more accurate invoicing.
• Detailed and clear invoices can be prepared hassle-freely without devoting much time to it.
• The standard format is professional in nature and it helps maintain similar presentation of details for all clients.
• The template details can be printed, if hard copies are required.

The template attached in the article depicts the following aspects:

#1 - Header at the top:

The invoice must always bear a heading. In addition, this invoice must be named as a consultant invoice template. Labeling the template makes it easier for the companies or users to evaluate the purpose of the invoice.

#2 - Invoice Number:

The users must always number their invoices to keep track of it so that if any invoice is lost, one can easily look for a duplicate of the same.

#3 - Date of Invoice:

The invoice date by a consultant company or consultant keeps track of its issuance.

#4 - Company's Details:

The consultant or a consultant company must fill up all its details such as name, address, contact number, email ID, registration number, unique reference number, and fax.

#5 - Client's or Customers' Information:

One must never skip the details of the client. Failure to provide the client’s information can create a lot of commotion and confusion in the future. One must always fill up the client’s information with due care. One must never skip the client’s name, address, email ID, and contact number. These details are mandatory and crucial too. One must fill it with due care.

#6 - Agreement Details:

A professional consultant or a consultancy company must offer the agreement details. It will lay out the terms on which one must prepare the invoice.

#7 - Purchase Order Number and Payment Terms:

The professional consultant or a consultancy company must also provide details like purchase order number and payment terms in this template. One must provide the terms of payment as per approved by both parties, that is, the client and the professional consultant or a consultancy company.

#8 - Date of Service:

The professional consultant or a consultancy company must also offer a service date for each service provided to the client.

#9 - Description of Services availed by the client:

One must describe the services availed by the client in the description box. Mentioning the services separately in the description box will clarify the services the client avails of and at which date. In addition, it will further ease the calculation since evaluating each service's rate will also become easier for the billing party.

#10 - Calculation of the total for each line:

One can calculate the line total by ascertaining the number of hours of services availed by the client and multiplying the same with the rate per hour. Finally, one must add the results obtained for each line total to the total.

#11 - Net total:

The total ascertained will be deducted for discounts and added with tax to arrive at the net total. It would be the final amount that the client will be required to pay to the professional consultant or a consultancy company.

A consultant invoice template can be used in multiple ways. Following are the steps that have to be followed to use this template:

• Users can use the template and calculate the total bill for clients. This template will make it easier for a professional consultant or consultancy company to raise invoices and bill their clients. A professional consultant or a consultancy company can use this template by filling in all the details. E.g., date of invoice, invoice number, client details, company’s details, date of service, description, rate per hour, line total, remarks, receipts or payment instructions, gross total, tax, discount, and eventually finding out the net total.
• It would help if one always starts by filling up the invoice number and date of invoice and then proceeded with the following details.
• Users must provide the company’s name, address, contact number, email id, fax, and registration number.
• One must then fill in the client’s name, number, and address.
• Service providers must then complete the details about the agreement, purchase order number, and payment terms.
• Users must proceed with the next segment and fill up the description of the services available, the service date, the number of hours, the rate per hour, and the line total. One must calculate the line total by multiplying service hours with a rate per hour.
• One must add the line totals to arrive at the sub-total. The latter will be subtracted from the discount and added with tax to arrive at the final amount the client will need to pay to the professional consultant or a consultancy company.

Let us consider the following instances to understand how consultant invoice template is prepared and used:

Example #1

Shelly is a consultant, who serves clients based on their requirements. When she started, she used to make an invoice on Microsoft Word. The number of clients being less, she hardly bothered to focus more on how she presented the invoice.

The first few clients were not as professional in approach as the later ones. However, when she shared the same unprofessional invoice with the next few clients, they asked her to share a proper template for the same. In fact, she lost one client after sharing the MS Word template. When asked, that client said that her invoice template showed how casual she was about her business and hence she cannot be trusted.

Given such negative feedback, Shelly opted for a consultant invoice template and included her name, logo, and other specific details in it and made sure all her clients received the same later on. This shows how an invoice template can help build a business’ image.

Example #2

Given below is a sample template to show how it differs from a manually made consultant invoice template in Excel:

Source

Using consultant invoice templates offers myriad of benefits to service providers who offer consulting services of any type:

• It saves a lot of time of service providers, who when manually prepare an invoice for different clients have to make each invoice from scratch. Using these templates gives them a chance to have a standard presentation of data for all clients, by including or excluding fields as required.
• When a business builds a brand, having a standard template with similar visual features indicate a sense of professionalism among the service providers. As a result, the clients take them seriously.
• If one has this template, there is no need to train another set of professionals for invoice creation when business starts to expand.
• The payment process becomes more smooth and organized.