What should an invoice include?

A complete invoice includes eight things: your business details, your client’s details, a unique invoice number, an issue date and due date, itemized work with quantities and rates, subtotal and total, any tax, and clear payment terms with a way to pay. Get those right and you’ll get paid faster — and look professional doing it. Fee-Lion fills in most of this for you automatically.

The invoice checklist

Here’s everything a clean, professional invoice should carry. If you can tick all of these, you’re in great shape:

• Your details — business name, logo, contact info, and your address.
• The client’s details — who you’re billing, pulled from their contact or company record.
• A unique invoice number — so you and your client can both reference it later.
• Dates — the issue date and a due date driven by your payment terms.
• Itemized work — each task (hours × rate) or fee/unit (qty × rate), described plainly.
• Discounts or surcharges — any line that adjusts the price, shown clearly.
• Subtotal, tax, and total — the math, laid out so there’s no guesswork.
• Payment terms and a way to pay — when it’s due and the button that lets them pay.

How each element maps to Fee-Lion

The good news: you don’t assemble most of this by hand. When you build an invoice — whether you start fresh or it converts from an approved estimate — Fee-Lion pulls the pieces in for you.

1. Open the invoice from Invoices in the left sidebar. Your business name and logo come from Settings → Preferences → Branding, so every invoice is on-brand without extra steps.
2. Pick the client. Their name and details fill in from the contact or company you’ve linked, which becomes the “bill to” block.
3. Add line items: tasks bill as hours × rate, fees and units as qty × rate. You can layer in discounts and surcharges, and Fee-Lion totals the subtotal as you go.
4. Apply tax. Your default rate lives in Settings → Preferences, so it’s already on the invoice — adjust per-line or per-invoice when a job calls for it.
5. Confirm the due date. It’s calculated from your default payment terms, which you set once in Preferences (Net 7, Net 30, due on receipt — whatever you use).
6. Send it. Your client gets a portal link, sees a clean itemized invoice, and pays with the Pay button.

The invoice number is assigned for you, and the issue date is stamped when you create it — two things you’ll never have to remember.

Tip: Set your logo, tax rate, and payment terms once under Settings → Preferences before your first invoice. After that, every invoice arrives complete and consistent — you’re just choosing the client and the work.

The Pay button is the part people forget

An invoice that lists everything but offers no way to pay is just a reminder. In Fee-Lion, once you’ve connected your own Stripe account, every invoice carries a Pay button. Your client pays by card straight into your Stripe — no login, no account to create on their end — and the money lands in your bank on Stripe’s normal payout schedule. A small platform fee applies, and the funds are genuinely yours, not parked with us.

A note on tax

What you’re required to show — tax IDs, specific rates, mandatory wording — varies by where you and your client are based, and it changes by trade. Fee-Lion gives you the tools to handle it: a default tax percentage, per-invoice overrides, and a deposit percentage when you collect up front. For what you’re legally obligated to include, check with a local accountant — they’ll tell you the specifics for your situation, and you can set those defaults in Preferences once and forget them.

What’s next

• How to create an invoice
• Add line items and edit an invoice
• Configure your tax defaults
• Connect Stripe to get paid