Designing My Invoices {Small Business from Home}

Invoices were one thing I hadn’t really thought of. Delivering my first order up to the local gift shop, the owner asked me how I wanted to be paid. Hmm. So I took to Canva and began designing my invoices. Of course, I could have just used a simple black and white simple design. But you guys know me better than that! If I can bling it, I will!

What I Want Out of an Invoice

I obviously need an invoice which contains all the information required. All my information (website, socials and phone number), the information of the buyer, the products they have bought, cost per unit and cost of the order. But I also wanted it to be branded and perhaps to stand out a little. Therefore, I wanted it to be different from a regular black and white invoice. I also wanted the invoice to slip into the same packaging as my cards, meaning about an A6 size.

This is all well and good, but I really need to make sure that an invoice is not so elaborate that it begins to eat into any profits. Bearing this in mind, making them small means less paper and less ink. The designs I will make transparent which will naturally use less ink as well.

Designing My Invoices Using Canva

I love Canva. Even free, it offers a wonderful design program to make gorgeous logos, invoices, social media posts and much more. I have the paid version which offers a few extras which, for me, make it very worth while. One of those things is being able to remove the background in photos.

Choosing my wildflower art journal painting, I removed the background and then fitted it to an A6 page. I then gave the design 50% transparency. Lastly, I added a transparent pale yellow rectangle on top of the wildflowers. Here it is finished:

I printed this out on A4 and hated it, but when I printed it out on A6 (ie four on each A4 page) they looked so cute! And when packaged, they were perfect! The first picture shows the invoice inside the package:

The next photo shows it on top of the cards in the postage box:

I literally love all this creative stuff! And I LOVE my invoices!!