UK VAT Invoice Template

What GOV.UK requires on the document

10 things have to appear before this counts as a valid invoice in United Kingdom. The one people miss most often is the vat registration number, which belongs near your business details where an accounts team looks for it.

• A unique, sequential invoice number
• Your business name and address
• Your VAT registration number
• The invoice date
• The time of supply (the tax point) if different from the invoice date
• The customer's name and address
• A description of the goods or services supplied
• The VAT rate applied to each item, and the amount excluding VAT
• The total amount excluding VAT
• The total VAT charged, in sterling

Verified against GOV.UK on 2026-09-11.

The tax point, and why it is not the invoice date

UK VAT has a concept most invoicing tools ignore entirely: the time of supply, or tax point. It decides which VAT period the sale falls into, and it is not automatically the date you typed at the top of the invoice.

• The basic tax point is the date the goods were delivered or the service completed, not the date you got round to invoicing.
• If you issue the invoice within 14 days of that, the invoice date becomes the tax point instead. Invoice later and the earlier date stands.
• Take payment first, and the tax point is the date you received the money, for that amount.
• Where the two differ, HMRC expects both dates on the document.

This matters at quarter ends. An invoice raised on 3 April for work finished on 28 March belongs in the earlier VAT period, and filing it in the later one understates that return.

Simplified invoices, and when £250 changes things

Retail supplies up to £250 including VAT can use a simplified invoice, which is a genuinely shorter document rather than a relaxed version of the same one.

• It may omit the customer's name and address entirely.
• It shows the gross amount per VAT rate rather than net plus VAT.
• It still needs your name, address, VAT number, the date, a description, and the rate applied.
• Above £250, or for any business customer who will reclaim the VAT, issue a full VAT invoice.

A business client cannot reclaim input VAT from a document that fails the full requirements, so a simplified invoice sent to a company is likely to come straight back.

From April 2029: VAT invoices move to structured e-invoicing over Peppol

HMRC has confirmed the direction, not yet the fine print. The mandate itself is set for B2B and B2G VAT invoices from 1 April 2029, and Peppol has been confirmed as the interoperability network it will run on, but the detailed technical rules are still being written.

• The scope announced so far covers B2B and B2G VAT invoices from 1 April 2029; it does not yet include real-time reporting to HMRC.
• HMRC confirmed Peppol as the e-invoicing network in a June 2026 Tax Update, ahead of publishing the detailed technical specification expected between October 2027 and April 2028.
• Nothing changes before then: an emailed PDF is a fully valid VAT invoice today, for B2B and B2C alike.
• Once the mandate takes effect, a structured e-invoice over Peppol is what the rule requires, a PDF is not expected to satisfy that on its own.

This is worth building toward now rather than at the deadline, the generator will need an export path beyond PDF before April 2029, and the technical spec due in 2027-2028 is what will define it.

Construction: the domestic reverse charge and CIS are two different deductions

A UK construction invoice can carry two separate withholding mechanisms that are easy to conflate, one is VAT, the other is Income Tax, and getting either wrong on the invoice causes a different problem for the other party.

• VAT domestic reverse charge (since 1 March 2021): for most construction services between VAT-registered contractors, the supplier does not charge VAT at all. The invoice must state that the reverse charge applies and how much VAT is due under it, HMRC's own example wording is “Reverse charge: VAT Act 1994 Section 55A applies.”
• CIS deductions are separate and apply to payments, not VAT: contractors deduct 20% from a registered subcontractor's labour, 30% from an unregistered one, or 0% if the subcontractor holds gross payment status, in every case only from the labour element, not materials.
• A reverse-charge invoice still needs the normal VAT invoice details, it just states the VAT due under the charge instead of adding a VAT line to the total.

Verified against HMRC's reverse charge manual (VATREVCON37100) and HMRC's CIS deduction guidance.

VAT registration and the value thresholds

The rules below only bite past a certain amount, which is what makes them easy to miss: an invoice that was fine last month becomes non-compliant the first time it crosses the line.

• A simplified VAT invoice is allowed for retail supplies up to £250 including VAT, it can omit the customer's details and show the gross amount per rate.
• VAT registration is compulsory once taxable turnover passes £90,000 in any rolling 12 months.
• If you are not VAT registered, do not show a VAT line or a VAT number. Charging VAT without registration is an offence.
• The VAT Cash Accounting Scheme, paying VAT on what you've actually been paid rather than what you've invoiced, is open to businesses with VAT-taxable turnover of £1.35 million or less, and you leave once it passes £1.6 million.