It’s 9 a.m. on Monday morning — already your phone is quaking with notifications and your calendar is a kaleidoscope of colors. And even though you double-booked projects, you caught up over the weekend. But that didn’t leave you time to check out that bill template for Excel, so you still haven’t invoiced the three projects you finished last month.
If this experience sounds all too familiar, take a breath, silence your phone, and sit back — we’re about to get you paid. Down below, we’ll dive into invoicing with Microsoft Excel and invoice design. We’ll also show you other ways to put some blank space back on your calendar without turning down work.
What is a bill template for Excel?
For busy small business owners and freelancers, the path to steady cashflow leads directly through optimization and automation. Any task that takes time away from the activities that earn you money should be minimized significantly. In short, if you’re manually creating every invoice you send, there are better methods.
A bill template for Excel is a ready-made spreadsheet designed to save you time by streamlining your invoicing process.
The right Excel invoice template has formulas capable of calculating hours billed, material costs, or payments for services rendered. Good templates also include customizable headers so you can add relevant business info and branding such as your logo, custom colors, and contact details. You fill it out once, save the template, and the only thing you change is the client and billing details. This has several benefits for your business.
Why use a bill template for Excel?
With a bill template for Excel, the time you trim from invoicing is considerable — no more tapping calculators and rechecking totals for accuracy. You simply add your client and monetary details and Excel does the rest. Some other reasons to use a spreadsheet include:
- Excel is an invoicing standard: Everyone uses Excel or a similar spreadsheet format, including your clients. Popular payment providers like PayPal and Square have free Excel templates that link to your account, making it easy for customers to pay you.
- Improved accuracy: Even the most detail-oriented task masters slip up. By reusing a template with tried-and-true formulas, you significantly reduce the chance of errors. And if you’re keeping copies of your invoices (and you should), you’ll thank yourself come tax season.
- Better finance management: Billing with Excel means you can link invoices together and analyze your business’s financial performance. While it does require some time investment to learn and master, Excel is a powerful tool for managing business finances.
- Branding is important: Good branding is good business, and you should capitalize on every opportunity to make an impression. A good billing template lets you embed your business logo, tweak fonts and colors, and add verbiage to make the invoices you send uniquely your own. You’ll demonstrate trust and professionalism instead of presenting a few line items and an amount due.
Now that we know the benefits an Excel template provides, let’s take a look at the types of billing documents you can send. Here’s a hint: Excel can do it all.
What are some examples of a bill template for Excel?
Billing and invoicing are certainly not one-size-fits-all, though there are a few standards. Including the details outlined above, a bill template should generate a unique invoice number. That said, whatever service or product you provide, there’s a template suited to your needs. Here are a few examples:
- Standard sales templates: This template normally has minimal information apart from fields to list products sold or services provided, along with a total invoice amount.
- Timesheet templates: This kind of billing template is perfect for businesses and freelancers that charge hourly. It includes a table list of services, the hourly rate, and the number of hours for each service, which the template calculates and totals for you.
- Pro forma templates: While not technically an invoice, these templates are an important part of many service businesses. Pro forma invoices are essentially estimates or quotes, though some businesses and freelancers ask for partial payment upfront before they start work. Depending on the type of business, pro forma invoices can be standard, hourly, or a combination.
While these are the most popular template formats for billing, there are numerous others, such as recurring payment templates, templates for commercial invoices, or even a simple bill of sale. As we mentioned earlier — you have options. One of these options is monday.com.
Creating a bill template for Excel on monday.com
Excel templates are powerful and accurate, the perfect companions to many professionals. But for others in need of a more sophisticated approach to invoicing, automation, and data analysis, a robust Work OS like monday.com is a better alternative. While its data analysis capabilities are powerful, Excel can be a little hard to learn. monday.com, on the other hand, packages similar features into an intuitive interface that’s quick to learn. With dozens of customizable templates available, choose the one suited to your business and turn it into an invoicing power tool. Better still, your workspace data is automatically connected, so managing your entire business from monday.com halves your time invested in administrative busy work.
This leads us to the most significant difference between spreadsheet templates and monday.com: our powerful automation. Easily configure automatic actions, like generating invoices with client information. To really streamline your processes, use monday.com’s macro tool to record an action and use it again and again. How’s that for efficiency?
Related templates on monday.com
Have a look at these templates to explore monday.com’s capabilities and see how it compares to Excel. If you need a Work OS that does more than invoicing and number crunching, you might like what you find.
Simple invoice template
Our customizable Simple Invoice Template lets you craft a fully branded invoice that’s ready to go in minutes. And since the data you enter for your invoice lives on monday.com task boards, you can access it in every way imaginable. Manage your entire business on our Work OS, from invoicing to task management, and define your metrics for success with powerful dashboards that provide deep business insights.
Invoice tracker template
For maximum finance management, keep tabs on every invoice you send with our Invoice Tracker Template. Stay on top of payments made and payments due, invoice numbers, and your customer data, all from a single board. With a few clicks, you can easily turn that data into different charts and graphs. You can even use this template to track your business expenses — no Excel expert skills necessary.
Frequently asked questions
We wouldn’t want to leave you wondering about anything invoice related, so here are a couple of questions and answers to help you get your money’s worth.
How do I create an invoice?
Invoices vary wildly from business to business, but there are a few rules to making great ones:
- Choose your software: While an Excel template definitely works, there are numerous options for speeding up invoicing. Pick an app or platform that’s easy to use and makes your billing more efficient.
- Information complete: In addition to business and contact information, include everything your client needs to understand your invoice. This includes totals in the form of hours worked, services rendered, and materials sold.
- Be professional: Invoices should be clean, clear, and attractive. Give prominence to the important information and use lots of white space. Clients tend to process invoices quicker if they’re easy on the eyes and simple to understand.
What’s the best free invoice template?
Every business is different and so are invoices. A bill from a construction company and a bill from a freelance designer are likely worlds apart in content and presentation. For some, a simple Excel or Word template is all it takes. Others may need templates and software with more capabilities. The bottom line is that the best free template is one that makes your invoicing process simple, quick, reliable, and accurate.
Send invoices, get paid, grow your business
Broadly speaking, the tool you choose to send invoices and get paid depends on what you provide your customers. What’s essential is selecting a tool that decreases your time spent invoicing and increases your time spent billing, so to speak. Whether it’s a Work OS or a bill template for Excel, what matters most is that you keep your customers happy, earn your payments, and grow your business.
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