Issuing receipts isn’t the most glamorous part of running a business. But it can’t be avoided.
At some point, you’ll be asked for a receipt. Refusing to provide one can alienate customers and hamper long-term loyalty to your brand, irrespective of whether you’re focused on retail or business markets.
Putting infrastructure in place which streamlines the process of issuing receipts saves time and money. Specifically, companies that rely on templates do away with the time-consuming task of creating receipts from scratch. Setting a standardized receipt structure across your business also ensures that necessary information is always included.
In this post, we’ll outline the scenarios in which receipts might be necessary, provide templates in Word and Excel, and show you how to create your own templates.
What Is a Payment Receipt?
A payment receipt is simply a statement of goods or services which have been sold, issued by a seller to a buyer. Most people will be familiar with receipts. Consumer businesses such as clothes and food retailers tend to provide receipts after purchases.
Payment receipt templates are documents which provide a framework for writing receipts, allowing issuers to quickly list items, calculate costs, and provide customers with relevant company details.
Generally speaking, business and retail customers will ask for receipts for two reasons. First, receipts fulfil accounting obligations when an invoice or other document hasn’t been issued. Second, receipts act as proof of purchase when a buyer wants to claim certain entitlements associated with a sale; these might include returning an item, cancelling a delayed order, or seeking repairs under warranty.
What’s the Difference Between a Payment Receipt and an Invoice?
Invoices and receipts are often confused. The main difference is that invoices are issued before payment (usually as a notice that remittance is due) whereas receipts are provided after payment has been processed.
Invoices also tend to be more detailed than receipts. Usually, they include item-by-item breakdowns of a purchase along with extensive company details, especially relating to bank account numbers, contact information, and physical addresses.
Most B2B companies issue invoices instead of receipts. Invoices are useful for accounting purposes, enabling UK businesses to fulfil their record-keeping obligations and claim expenses. Most invoices are issued electronically using contract management software.
When Should You Send a Payment Receipt?
There are no stipulations in UK law that demand businesses provide their customers with receipts.
The one “exception” to this rule, which may be responsible in part for the belief that a company must issue its customers with receipts, relates to the exchange of invoices between VAT-registered entities. If one VAT-registered company makes a sale to another VAT-registered company, an invoice (not a receipt) must be issued.
There’s one other point that’s worth mentioning. In the UK, limited companies and sole traders must collect proof of expenditure or income. VAT-registered companies will always receive invoices. But unregistered companies may not, which creates a need to issue or ask for receipts on their part.
Business Receipt Templates
Below, you’ll find templates across a number of formats. Click on the link to get the required file.
- Payment Receipt Template for Word and Excel
- Payment Receipt Templates for Google Docs
How to Create Your Own Business Receipt
Custom templates are useful when you can’t find a standard template that contains all the information you’d like to include or space for custom branding.
It’s good practice to include the following pieces of information in your template:
- The name of your company.
- The term “receipt” to avoid confusion on the part of recipients.
- The date the receipt is sent.
- A breakdown of the items (or services) purchased, including their names, amounts, and the total cost (per line) including VAT.
- The total overall amount paid.
- Your company’s address and contact details.
You may also wish to include the name and address of the client. As receipts act as proof of purchase, this is a good idea when large sums of money are involved. Some companies also opt to include a short message thanking customers for their business.
Should You Use Contract Management Software to Send Receipts?
Contract management software can help you streamline a range of tasks related to managing templates and issuing receipts, potentially saving hours of staff time every week.
Employees simply need to access a pre-built library of templates to auto-generate receipts and send them to appropriate recipients. Customer details and order information, which are already stored on the platform, will populate the relevant fields without any input on your part. You can even set a monthly auto-receipt for subscription customers.
Paperless solutions are relatively inexpensive and can boost the efficiency of document processes across your whole company, with scope well beyond receipt generation.
Wrapping up
Creating and sending receipts should be a straightforward and inexpensive task. Yet many businesses are needlessly frittering away staff resources by relying on outdated and inefficient processes.
With the use of templates and document management apps, it’s now possible to generate receipts and send them to customers in seconds.
By spending some time crafting a custom template – or choosing one provided in this post – and using it as part of an automated document workflow, you’ll free up yours and your team’s time, enabling you to focus on more important tasks.
