How to Send an Invoice

The right way to send an invoice

For 95% of Australian small-business invoices, the right delivery method is the same: email + PDF attachment. Other methods have specific use cases:

• Email + PDF. Default. Works for every buyer. Searchable, archivable, auditable.
• Peppol / e-invoicing. Required only when the buyer is a Commonwealth government agency or one of the larger state agencies that mandates it.
• Accounting platform invitations. Useful for recurring clients where you and the buyer use the same platform (Xero-to-Xero, MYOB-to-MYOB). Buyer needs an account.
• Post. Only when explicitly requested. Slow and easy to lose.
• SMS with payment link. Useful for ad-hoc trades with small consumer-facing jobs ($50-$500). Not appropriate for B2B.

One thing to avoid: pasting the invoice into the body of an email instead of attaching as a PDF. Accounts teams need a printable, archivable document — body-of-email invoices get lost.

How to send an invoice as a PDF

PDF is the universal invoice format because it locks the layout — the buyer sees exactly what you sent, on any device, without Word-style reflow surprises. Four settings to get right:

1. A4, portrait, one page. Australian buyers expect A4 (not US Letter). Aim to fit on one page — a two-page invoice for a small job reads as messy.
2. Searchable text. Never send a scanned-image PDF; buyers can't search it and OCR errors trigger payment delays. Generate from a template, not from a scan.
3. Sensible filename. "Invoice-INV-0042-Smith-Plumbing.pdf" — not "Document1.pdf". The buyer's accounts team needs to find it in their inbox six weeks later.
4. Under 1 MB file size. Embedded high-resolution logo images can push a 50KB invoice to 5MB. That triggers spam filters and slow inbox delivery.

How to write the invoice email

The email itself is short. Subject line does most of the work. Body is 3-4 sentences.

Why this structure works:

• Subject line includes the due date. Accounts teams scan inboxes for due dates — this gets your invoice into their workflow immediately.
• To: accounts, CC: contact. Goes straight to the people who pay you, but the contact sees it so they can chase if needed.
• Restates the amount and due date. Both are on the PDF, but stating them in the email forces a second visual confirmation.
• Mentions multiple payment paths. Lets the buyer pick the friction-free option.

How to add a payment link to an invoice

Inviting one-click payment from the invoice itself shortens the time-to-paid by 5-10 days on average. Three options for Australian businesses:

• Stripe payment links. Card-only, 1.7% + 30c fee. Buyer clicks → enters card → done. Best for consumer-facing invoices under $1,000.
• BPAY. Bank-to-bank via Australian banking app. No card fee. Best for B2B and larger amounts.
• PayID. Direct bank transfer using an email or phone number as the identifier. No fee. Best for fast small payments.

Always include BSB and account number as a fallback — some accounts teams pay everything via internet banking and won't use Stripe links regardless of how convenient they are.

When to send the invoice

Send the invoice within 24 hours of completing the work. Faster invoicing correlates strongly with faster payment — most buyers pay within a few days of receiving the invoice, so delaying invoicing by a week delays payment by a week.

For monthly work, send on the same day each month — buyers' accounts teams batch-process payments on cycles, and being predictable means you fit into their cycle. Mid-month (15th) is often better than month-end, because month-end invoices compete with everyone else's.

Avoid sending invoices on Friday afternoon. Statistically, Friday-afternoon invoices get processed the following week — losing 3-4 days versus a Tuesday-morning send.

What to do if the invoice goes unpaid

A polite, predictable escalation pattern works best. Each step assumes the previous one was ignored:

1. Day +3 after due date. Friendly reminder email. "Just checking — has Invoice INV-0042 landed with you? Happy to resend if it got lost."
2. Day +7. Firmer reminder restating the amount and adding the late-fee clause. Re-attach the PDF.
3. Day +14. Final notice email mentioning the next step (debt collection or VCAT/QCAT/NCAT for the relevant state). State that interest is now accruing per your invoice terms.
4. Day +30. Phone call to the buyer's contact. If unresolved, escalate to formal debt recovery — under $10,000 it's usually faster to use a small-claims tribunal in your state than a debt collector.

Documenting each chase in writing means you have an audit trail if you need to escalate to a tribunal.

Frequently asked questions

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