Invoice
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
An invoice is a commercial document issued by a seller to a buyer, indicating the products, quantities and agreed prices for products or services with which the Seller has already provided the Buyer. An invoice indicates that, unless paid in advance, payment is due by the buyer to the seller, according to the agreed terms. It contains a serial number and date of issue. Invoices are often called bills. ==owed. In function debit memos are identical to invoices.
- Self Billing Invoice - A self billing invoice is when the buyer issues the invoice to himself (e.g. according to the consumption levels he is taking out of a vendor managed inventory stock).
- Timesheet - Invoices for hourly services work (such as by lawyers and consultants) often pull data from a timesheet.
- Invoicing - The term invoicing is also used to refer to the act of delivering baggage to a flight company in an airport before taking a flight.
[edit] Electronic Invoices
With the popularization of the internet, many invoices are not paper based anymore, but done electronically. It is still common for electronic remittance or invoicing to be printed in order to maintain paper records. The regulation on how to do electronic invoicing varies widely from country to country. B2B standards have created messages and implementation guidelines for electronic invoices. See for example EDIFACT or RosettaNet.
[edit] What is on an Invoice?
A typical invoice contains:
- Purchase order (PO), invoice and internal order numbers
- Tax ID number and/or Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS)
- Entry, Shipped, order and invoice dates
- Billing or "sold to", shipping, and "remit to" addresses
- Terms of payment including due date, discount due date and discount amount
- Line-item list of products, quantities and prices
- Shipping method and cost
- Total number of items and sum of amount due
