Create and download an invoice

The invoice generator is a separate free tool from the pay stub side of OakPaystubs. You fill in your details, your customer's, and what you're charging for, then download a professional invoice PDF. There's no account, no payment, and no limit on how many you create.

One thing to know before you start: nothing you enter is saved. The values are used to render your PDF and then discarded, so there's no invoice history to come back to. The file you download is the only copy.

1. Open the invoice generator

Go to the invoice generator. You can use it signed out — an OakPaystubs account only matters on the pay stub side, where it saves employer and employee details and keeps your order history.

An invoice number and today's date are filled in for you. Change the number to match your own numbering if you keep a sequence.

2. Enter your details and your customer's

Add your business name and address under From, and your customer's under Bill To. Only the two names are required — everything else is optional and is simply left off the PDF when blank.

Worth filling in anyway:

• Email and phone, so a question about the invoice reaches you instead of stalling.
• Your logo, uploaded under the From section. PNG or JPEG, up to 2MB. It prints above the heading and is scaled to fit, so a wide wordmark and a square mark both sit correctly.
• Tax identifiers, if they apply. The business side takes an EIN and formats it as you type; the customer side takes a TIN, left as free text because it may be an SSN, an ITIN, or an EIN, and each is punctuated differently.

Set the issue date and due date while you're here. These are two different dates, and together they're what makes an invoice overdue rather than merely outstanding.

3. Add your line items

Give each item a description, a quantity, and a rate. The line amount and the running subtotal update as you type. Use the add button for another row and the delete icon to remove one; an invoice holds up to 100 lines.

Itemize more than feels necessary. If a customer disputes part of the job, a detailed invoice narrows the conversation to one line while the rest gets paid on schedule.

4. Apply tax, discounts, and payments received

Below the items you can adjust the totals:

• Tax — set a rate and, if you want, rename the label from "Sales Tax".
• Discount — either a percentage of the subtotal or a flat amount.
• Shipping — added after tax.
• Amount paid — any deposit or retainer already received.

The order matters and is handled for you: the discount comes off the subtotal first, tax is calculated on what's left, shipping is added on top, and anything already paid is subtracted. The balance due at the bottom is what your customer actually owes today. If you enter an amount paid larger than the total, the balance shows as a negative figure rather than zero — that's the overpayment, shown honestly.

Notes and payment terms are free text at the foot of the invoice. Terms are the more useful of the two: saying how you want to be paid, and by when, is what makes a due date enforceable rather than decorative.

5. Preview and download

Press Preview to see the finished invoice. This is the real PDF, not an approximation of it, so nothing changes between what you check and what your customer receives. Download straight from the preview when it looks right, or close it and keep editing.

Tip: The form keeps everything you entered until you reset or leave the page, so you can correct a figure and download a fresh copy. Once you navigate away, you'd have to re-enter the details.

Common questions

Is the invoice generator really free?

Yes, entirely. No charge, no watermark, no cap on how many invoices you create, and no account needed. This is different from the pay stub generator, which is free to build and preview but charges once at the point of download — see Pricing & payment methods.

Do you store the invoice or my customer's details?

No. The values are sent to our server, used to render the PDF, and discarded when the response finishes. There's no database record, no file kept on disk, and nothing attached to an account. That's also why there's no invoice history.

Which currency does the invoice use?

US dollars. Every figure — line rates, tax, and the balance due — is formatted in USD, and there's no currency selector.

Why won't my logo upload?

The logo must be a PNG or JPEG under 2MB. Other formats, including SVG and WebP, are rejected on upload rather than failing later when the PDF is built. A file renamed to .png without being converted will be rejected too, because the image itself is checked rather than the file extension.

Can I edit an invoice after downloading it?

The PDF is final, but the form still holds everything you entered until you reset or leave the page. Change a figure and download again for a corrected copy.

Is this a valid invoice for tax purposes?

The layout includes the fields a standard commercial invoice needs: an invoice number, issue and due dates, both parties, itemized charges, tax, and the balance due. What a tax authority requires varies by country and by what you sell, so check the rules that apply to your business. OakPaystubs doesn't provide tax or legal advice.

Should I send an invoice or a pay stub?

An invoice asks a client to pay you, and goes out before the money arrives — it's what a freelancer or contractor sends. A pay stub records a payment already made, breaking gross pay down into tax withheld, deductions, and net pay. If you're billing a client, use this tool; if you're paying someone or need proof of your own income, see Create your first pay stub.

The download didn't start

The invoice PDF is delivered the same way pay stub PDFs are, so the same fixes apply — see PDF won't download. If it still fails, contact support and tell us what you were downloading.