A consulting invoice needs your business name and contact details, the client’s, an invoice number, the issue date and the due date, the period the work covers, one line per piece of work with its date, hours and rate, then the subtotal, any tax, the total, how to pay and your terms.

The template below has all of them, filled in with a made-up example.

A consulting invoice template you can copy

Copy the block and replace the example with your own details. Square brackets mark what only you can fill in. Kestrel Advisory and Brightpath Health are invented: a two-person consultancy billing a client for 8.75 hours of board reporting work in September 2026, at $180 an hour.

INVOICE

Invoice number:  KSTRL-0042
Issue date:      October 1, 2026
Due date:        October 31, 2026
Billing period:  September 1–30, 2026

From
  Kestrel Advisory
  [Street address]
  [City, state or region, postal code, country]
  [Email], [phone]
  [Tax or registration number, if your country requires one]

Bill to
  Brightpath Health
  Attn: Marcus Lee
  [Billing address]
  [The client's PO or reference number, if they gave you one]

Project: Board reporting

Date    Person      Description                    Hours     Rate   Amount
Sep 4   Owen Price  Pulled July and August metrics  1.50  $180.00  $270.00
Sep 14  Lena Cho    Built the Q3 KPI dashboard      2.25  $180.00  $405.00
Sep 21  Owen Price  Drafted board pack for Q3       3.00  $180.00  $540.00
Sep 25  Owen Price  Reviewed the draft with Marcus  0.75  $180.00  $135.00
Sep 28  Lena Cho    Final edits to the Q3 pack      1.25  $180.00  $225.00

Total hours                                         8.75
Subtotal                                                         $1,575.00
Tax [name and rate, if it applies]                                   $0.00
Total due (USD)                                                  $1,575.00

How to pay
  Bank transfer: [bank name], [account name], [account details]
  Card or bank debit: [payment link]
  Please quote KSTRL-0042 with your payment.

Terms
  Net 30. Payment is due by October 31, 2026.
  [Late fee, only if your signed agreement has one: rate and start day]
  Questions about this invoice: [name], [email]

There is no file to download. Paste the block into a blank Word or Google Docs document and set the font to Courier New at 10 point, which keeps the columns aligned on a Letter or A4 page with one-inch margins. If you’d rather keep your usual font, move the line items into a six-column table. Send the invoice as a PDF, so the client can’t change it by accident.

What each part of the invoice is for

From top to bottom, this is what each part does and what tends to go wrong without it.

Part What it’s for When it’s missing
From Your business name as it appears on your contract and bank account, with an address, email and phone number. The client’s accounts team can’t match the invoice to a supplier, so it waits.
Bill to The client’s legal name and billing address, whoever approves invoices, and their PO number if they use one. It reaches the person you work with and waits to be forwarded.
Invoice number A unique number in a sequence you never reuse. A payment arrives with no reference, and you can’t tell which invoice it settles.
Issue date and due date The day you sent it and the last day to pay, both written as dates. “Net 30” alone leaves room to argue about which day the 30 started.
Billing period The first and last day of the work billed. The client can’t tell whether the end of August was on the last invoice or on none.
Line items One line per entry, with the date, person, description, hours, rate and amount. A single line for the month gets a request for the breakdown before anyone approves it.
Subtotal and tax The lines added up, then sales tax, VAT or GST with its name and rate, when it applies. Without a subtotal the client’s bookkeeper has to work out the pre-tax figure, and a wrong tax line means reissuing the invoice.
Total The amount to pay, with its currency. To a client abroad, “$” can mean more than one currency.
How to pay Bank details or a payment link, and the reference to quote. The client writes back to ask, and days pass before anyone can pay.
Terms The payment term from your contract, any late fee it sets, and who to ask. The client first reads about the late fee on a reminder, and disputes it.

The line items take the most care. Describe each entry in words the client would recognize: “Drafted board pack for Q3” tells them more than “Reporting work”. Hours are easier to check as decimals, where 1.50 is an hour and a half, because the client can multiply them by the rate. When more than one of you bills, name the person on each line. Ask at the start who approves invoices and whether a PO number has to be on them.

The same month billed three ways

Here is Kestrel’s September for Brightpath, the same 8.75 hours at $180, under each way of selling them. If you haven’t chosen one, how to bill clients for hours compares the three.

Hourly in arrears Monthly retainer Prepaid block
Invoice date October 1, after the work October 1, before October’s work September 1, before any work
Lines One per time entry The fee, then one per overage entry One, for the block
September’s entries appear on The invoice A list attached to the invoice The statement of hours

Hourly work billed in arrears

This is the template above. It goes out on October 1 and every line is time already worked. The client has until October 31 to pay, which is almost two months after the hours worked on September 4.

A monthly retainer

Now say Brightpath pays $1,440 a month for 8 hours, the same $180 an hour with no discount. The fee is billed in advance, so hours beyond the 8 go on the following month’s invoice. The October 1 invoice therefore carries October’s fee and the 0.75 hours by which September ran over. These parts change:

Invoice number:  KSTRL-0042
Issue date:      October 1, 2026
Due date:        October 1, 2026 (due on receipt)
Billing period:  Retainer for October 1–31, 2026
                 Overage for September 1–30, 2026

Retainer fee
  October 2026, 8 hours included                                 $1,440.00

Hours beyond the September retainer (8.00 included, 8.75 worked)
Date    Person      Description                    Hours     Rate   Amount
Sep 28  Lena Cho    Final edits to the Q3 pack      0.75  $180.00  $135.00
        Part of a 1.25 h entry. The first 0.50 h used the last of
        September's 8 hours.

Subtotal                                                         $1,575.00
Tax [name and rate, if it applies]                                   $0.00
Total due (USD)                                                  $1,575.00

Terms
  The retainer is due on receipt, before the month it covers.
  Unused hours [expire at month end / roll over for 3 months].
  Hours beyond the retainer are billed at $180.00 an hour.
  Attached: every September entry, with date, person and hours.

The total matches the hourly invoice because this retainer has no discount, but $1,440 of it pays for October before any of October is worked. How consultants price a retainer covers the fee, the rollover rule and the overage rate.

A prepaid block of hours

With a block, the invoice comes first and bills no time entries. Say Brightpath bought 20 hours for $3,600 on September 1, again at $180 an hour, with six months to use them.

Invoice number:  KSTRL-0039
Issue date:      September 1, 2026
Due date:        September 1, 2026 (due on receipt)

Description                                      Hours     Rate     Amount
Prepaid block of consulting hours                20.00  $180.00  $3,600.00

Total due (USD)                                                  $3,600.00

Terms
  Hours are added to your balance when this invoice is paid.
  Unused hours expire on March 1, 2027, six months after payment.
  Work beyond the balance is billed at $180.00 an hour.

September’s 8.75 hours then come off the block. No invoice goes out for them, because they were paid for on September 1. On October 1 the client gets a statement of hours instead, with the same entries and no rates or amounts.

Statement of hours: Brightpath Health, September 1–30, 2026

Opening balance (September 1)     0.00 h
Hours added                      20.00 h   Block, invoice KSTRL-0039
Hours used                       -8.75 h
Hours expired                     0.00 h
Closing balance (September 30)   11.25 h

Hours used: Board reporting
  Sep 4   Owen Price  Pulled July and August metrics   1.50 h
  Sep 14  Lena Cho    Built the Q3 KPI dashboard       2.25 h
  Sep 21  Owen Price  Drafted board pack for Q3        3.00 h
  Sep 25  Owen Price  Reviewed the draft with Marcus   0.75 h
  Sep 28  Lena Cho    Final edits to the Q3 pack       1.25 h
                      Total used                       8.75 h

Your 11.25 remaining hours expire on March 1, 2027.
Nothing is due on this statement.

The next invoice is for the next block, or for hours worked after the balance reaches zero. There is a fuller statement template in how to answer “how many hours do we have left?”.

Payment terms and late fees

Net 30 means payment is due 30 days after the issue date, net 15 means 15 days, and due on receipt means as soon as the client has the invoice. It’s common to write net 15 or net 30 for work already done, and due on receipt for hours bought in advance, such as a retainer fee or a prepaid block. Print the due date beside the term.

The invoice should repeat the terms in the contract the client signed. If the contract says net 30 and the invoice says net 15, expect to be paid at 30. A late fee works the same way. Agree the rate and the day it starts in the contract, then repeat that sentence on every invoice. I left the rate as a bracket in the template because how much you may charge depends on where you and your client are.

None of this is legal or tax advice. What an invoice has to show, whether you add sales tax, VAT or GST, and how much interest you can charge on a late payment depend on your country and your client’s, and your accountant decides them. In the UK, for example, GOV.UK lists what an invoice must include and gives statutory interest on late business-to-business payments as 8% plus the Bank of England base rate, which you can’t claim if your contract names a different rate (both read 13 October 2026).

Common mistakes on consulting invoices

  • Overage folded into the retainer fee makes the fee look as if it changed. Bill $1,440.00 and $135.00 as separate lines.
  • Hours that came off a prepaid block get invoiced a second time, or the block reaches zero unnoticed and the hours after it are never invoiced.
  • An invoice edited after it was sent leaves two versions of KSTRL-0042, and the client may pay the old one. A correction goes out as a new document with its own number.

How Timebun produces this invoice

Timebun, the time tracking and billing software we build, doesn’t produce a Word document. It creates each invoice through Stripe, in your firm’s own Stripe account, from the time your team tracked, so clients pay you directly.

For hourly work you choose the client, a period such as Through end of last month, and the projects to bill. Timebun drafts the invoice with one line per time entry (date, project, person, description) and the billing period at the top. You can reword a line, change its hours or rate, or remove it before you click Finalise and send. Stripe then numbers the invoice, and Timebun emails it to the client’s invoice recipients with a Pay invoice button and a PDF link.

An invoice for work as the client opens it in the Timebun portal: one line per time entry, with the date, project, person and description.

Payment terms are one setting, 0 to 365 days from the day you finalize. Reminders can go once before the due date and every few days after it, up to a limit you set, and Timebun checks Stripe before each one so a client who has just paid isn’t chased.

Retainers differ from the combined invoice above, because in Timebun the fee and the overage are two invoices. The fee is a subscription that Stripe invoices and charges automatically each period, and the hours arrive when the payment clears. Time the retainer covers is left off invoices, and anything beyond it goes on the client’s next invoice for work, at their hourly rate or, if they have none, at the retainer’s own price per hour.

A prepaid block is a bundle of hours with a price and an expiry: 3, 6 or 12 months from payment, or none. The client buys it in their portal or you raise the invoice yourself. Either way it’s due on receipt, and the hours are added once it’s paid in full. With statements of hours turned on, each client with hours is emailed their opening balance, hours added, entries used and closing balance, monthly or twice a month.

Timebun’s invoices have some limits. Line dates print as month/day/year, an invoice holds at most 250 lines, and the PDF’s logo, colors and business details come from your Stripe account. Timebun itself doesn’t calculate tax or add a tax line.

FAQ

What should a consulting invoice include?

Both parties’ names and addresses, an invoice number, the issue and due dates, the period, one line per entry with its date, hours and rate, the total with any tax, how to pay and the terms.

Is there a consulting invoice template for Word?

The template on this page is plain text. Paste it into Word or Google Docs, set the font to Courier New at 10 point to keep the columns aligned, and save it as your own template.

How do you invoice a consulting retainer?

Bill the fee before the month it covers, as one line naming the month and the hours included. Put hours beyond the retainer on separate lines, and say what happens to unused hours.

Should a consulting invoice include tax?

It depends on your country and your client’s. Ask your accountant once for each kind of client you have, then set the tax line in your template to match.

If you bill clients for your time as a consultant, see how Timebun works for consultants.