Receipt Maker

What a receipt is, and when you issue one

A receipt is proof that money changed hands. It is written after the payment, by the person who received it, and the payer keeps it to show they paid. That is the difference from an invoice, which asks for money before it arrives, and from a quote or estimate, which prices work before anyone has agreed to it.

You issue a receipt at the moment of payment, or as soon as you can after it: cash at a counter, a bank transfer against an invoice, the month’s rent, or a deposit to book a date. The guide to invoices, receipts and quotes compares every common sales document, and how to write a receipt goes through the wording line by line with examples for each payment method.

How to make a receipt with this tool

1. Add your business details and logo once; they are saved in this browser and shared with the invoice and estimate tools.
2. Add who paid under “Received from”, or pick a client you saved earlier.
3. Keep the suggested receipt number or type your own, and set “Date paid” to the day the money arrived, not the day you happen to write the receipt.
4. Choose the payment method and add the transaction, card or cheque reference. If the payment settles an invoice, enter its number in “Invoice or reference number”.
5. List what the payment was for, one line per item or service, with quantity, price and any tax. Up to three custom fields hold extras such as a rent period or booking date.
6. Leave it as Paid in full, or switch to Part payment and enter the amount you received.
7. Pick a template, accent colour and paper size, add a signature if you want one, check the preview and select Download PDF or Print.

On a phone the editor and the preview sit on two tabs, Edit and Preview. The receipt is filed in History when you save or download it.

What a receipt should show

The same few facts appear on a useful receipt almost everywhere, and the tool has a field for each:

• a unique receipt number, so it can be told apart from every other receipt you issue
• your name or business name, and how to contact you
• who paid you
• the date the payment was received
• what the payment was for, in enough detail to match it to the sale, service or rent period
• the amount received, with any tax shown separately
• how it was paid (cash, card, bank transfer, cheque) and a reference that lets the payment be traced

The last two are the ones most often left off, and they are what make a receipt useful later. The IRS, describing the records a business should keep, says documents for an expense should show “the payee, the amount paid, proof of payment, the date incurred, and include a description of the item purchased or service received” (https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/what-kind-of-records-should-i-keep). A receipt you issue is exactly that document for your customer, so give them all five.

Who uses a receipt maker, and what goes on each receipt

The fields are the same for everyone; the detail on them changes.

• Shops and market stalls: a Cash Receipt or plain Receipt with one line per item, prices entered as tax-inclusive if that is how they are displayed, and the payment method.
• Freelancers and consultants: a receipt against each paid invoice, with the invoice number in the reference field and the bank transfer reference, so the client’s accounts team can close the invoice. The freelancer invoicing guide covers the billing side.
• Landlords: the Rent Receipt title, the property address and the period covered in a custom field, and a signature. See the rent receipt guide for what tenants and local rules expect.
• Tutors and coaches: one line per lesson or a block of lessons, for example 4 lessons at £35 each for £140, with the dates in the description so parents can match them to the term.
• Cleaners and home services: the visit dates, the address serviced and whether the payment was cash, which is when a written receipt matters most because nothing else records it.
• Contractors taking deposits: a part-payment receipt for the deposit, then further receipts for stage payments, each showing the balance remaining.
• Event organisers and venues: a receipt for a booking fee or ticket payment, with the event date and booking reference in custom fields.

Donations are the exception. Many countries set their own rules for receipts that let a donor claim tax relief; in the United States, for example, a gift of $250 or more needs a written acknowledgment from the organisation stating whether anything was given in return (https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organizations/charitable-contributions-written-acknowledgments). This tool does not produce tax-deductible donation receipts.

Payment methods and payment references

Choose Cash, Card, Bank transfer, Cheque, Mobile payment, Online payment or Money order, or type another method. The method prints on the receipt and shows in History.

The reference field is what lets a payment be traced if it is ever questioned. For a card payment, use the authorisation code or the last four digits of the card, never the full card number. For a bank transfer, use the reference the payer entered or the one on your statement. For a cheque, the cheque number and bank. For a mobile or online payment, the transaction ID from the app or platform.

Cash has no trail of its own, which is why the receipt itself is the record. Put the date, the amount and your signature on it, and keep a copy.

Receipt numbers, and making a receipt from an invoice

Receipts get their own series, separate from your invoices and estimates. The first suggestion is RCT-0001; after RCT-0006 the tool offers RCT-0007. Type your own scheme once, say R-2026-001, and the prefix and zero-padding are remembered for the next receipt. Reusing a number that is already in your saved receipts shows a warning beside the field.

When a receipt settles an invoice, the fastest route is to open the invoice in the invoice generator and choose Create receipt. The client, line items, taxes and design carry over, the invoice number is filled in as the reference, and the receipt opens here, numbered in the receipt series and marked as paid.

Work that started with a quote follows the same path one step earlier: the estimate generator converts an accepted quote into an invoice, and the invoice becomes the receipt. Each document carries the previous one’s number, so the three can be matched later.

Part payments, deposits and instalments

A receipt starts as Paid in full: the amount received equals the total of the lines, the PDF carries a PAID stamp, and nothing is shown as owing.

Switch to Part payment when the customer has paid only some of what they owe, such as a deposit, one instalment or one month of several. Enter the amount actually received. The receipt then shows the total, the amount received as its headline figure and the balance remaining, and it drops the PAID stamp so nobody mistakes it for a final settlement. If you enter more than the total, the receipt shows the difference as a credit and warns you before you download, because an overpayment is usually a typing mistake.

Say a kitchen fitter agrees a $4,800 job and takes a 25% deposit. The deposit receipt lists the job at $4,800, records $1,200 received by bank transfer, and shows $3,600 remaining. When the balance is paid, issue a second receipt for the $3,600 marked Paid in full, with the first receipt’s number in the description so the two read as a pair. Deposits on quotes covers how much to ask for and how the deposit flows through to the final invoice.

Receipt templates, logo and layout

There are three templates. Classic has a letterhead on the left, a ruled table and a dark header row; Modern runs a full-width band of colour with your logo and puts the total up front; Minimal uses hairlines and white space, with colour only where it matters. Any of them can take your logo, and the accent colour is yours to set to match it.

Choose A4 or US Letter paper, one of 48 currencies with the correct number of decimal places, and the number and date formats your customers expect. The title can be Receipt, Payment Receipt, Rent Receipt or Cash Receipt, or anything you type. The signature, drawn on screen or uploaded as an image, prints with the caption “Received by”.

A receipt can hold up to 200 lines, spread over as many pages as needed, with the table header repeated and each page numbered “Page 1 of 3”.

Receipt template or receipt maker?

A blank receipt template in a word processor or spreadsheet is fine for an occasional receipt. The trouble starts with the second and third: you copy the file, forget to change the number, overwrite last month’s figures, and the tax is only as right as the formula someone typed.

A receipt maker does those parts for you. It suggests the next number and warns about duplicates, adds up the lines and taxes with exact currency rounding, shows the balance on a part payment, keeps every receipt in a history you can reopen, and produces a PDF that looks the same on any device.

Sales tax, VAT and GST on a receipt

A receipt can show tax the same way an invoice does. Add up to six named taxes, each with its own rate, and choose whether your prices have tax added on top or already included. Untick Taxable on any line that is exempt, and mark a delivery charge or fee as taxable or not. Compound taxes, where one tax is charged on another, are not supported. Every amount is held as a whole number of the currency’s smallest unit and rounded half away from zero.

Tax-inclusive pricing is common at a till. If a market stall sells an item for $54.00 including 8% sales tax, the receipt shows $50.00 before tax and $4.00 of tax. A £30.00 sale including 20% UK VAT contains £5.00 of VAT. The sales tax calculator, VAT calculator and GST calculator check a figure on its own.

Showing tax does not automatically make a receipt a tax invoice. Each tax authority lists what its tax invoice must contain. In the UK, a retailer can issue a simplified VAT invoice for a sale of £250 or less including VAT, and VAT Notice 700/21 lists what it must show, including the VAT registration number, the time of supply and the VAT rate charged (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/record-keeping-for-vat-notice-70021). If your customer needs to reclaim tax, issue a tax invoice from the invoice generator with the title set to Tax Invoice.

When you have to give a receipt

For most private sales, nothing obliges you to hand over a receipt unless you have agreed to, but in some situations the law does, as these two US examples show.

• California Civil Code section 1499 gives anyone paying a debt the right to ask for one: “A debtor has a right to require from his creditor a written receipt for any property delivered in performance of his obligation.” (https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=CIV&sectionNum=1499)
• New York Real Property Law section 235-e requires a residential landlord who is paid rent in cash, or by anything other than the tenant’s personal cheque, to give a written receipt showing the date, the amount, the premises and period paid for, and the signature and title of the person receiving it. A tenant who pays by personal cheque can ask in writing for receipts too. The landlord must keep a record of cash rent receipts for at least three years. (https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/RPP/235-E)

Rules like these differ by country, state and type of payment, so check what applies where you trade. The rent receipt guide goes further into landlords’ obligations and partial or late rent.

Where receipts are stored, and how long to keep them

Everything you type stays in this browser. Receipts, invoices and estimates share one store on your device, together with your business profile, saved clients, logo and signature. The page makes no network request with your data and the PDF is built on your device.

Clearing your browser’s site data, or using a private window, removes what is stored. Use History, then Export all data, to download one backup file with every document, and import it on another device to carry on there. History holds the 500 most recently saved documents across all three tools, and browser storage is a convenience, not an archive, so keep the PDFs with your other records.

How long to keep them depends on where you pay tax. The IRS generally says to keep records for 3 years, and 6 years if you fail to report income that is more than 25% of the gross income on your return (https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/how-long-should-i-keep-records). In the UK, self-employed people must keep records for at least 5 years after the 31 January submission deadline of the tax year (https://www.gov.uk/self-employed-records/how-long-to-keep-your-records), and VAT records are generally kept for at least 6 years (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/record-keeping-for-vat-notice-70021).