Web Development Invoice Template

A web development invoice asks the client to pay for a stage of a website project: the milestones you've reached, any extra hours the client asked for, and the hosting, domain and software costs you paid on their behalf. Keeping those three kinds of charge apart is what makes the invoice easy for the client to check.

This template is for a project billed in stages. Other templates suit other arrangements:

• A fixed monthly fee for ongoing maintenance or support, with included hours: use the retainer invoice.
• An advisory engagement billed by milestone and advisory hours: use the consulting invoice.
• App or design work: see the app development, Android development and web design invoices.

Bill each part of the project the way your agreement prices it:

• Milestones suit fixed-fee work with clear sign-off points, such as design approval or launch. Bill a milestone when it's reached, and put the approval or completion date in "Details", as the sample does with "Approved Oct 30, 2026". If an earlier milestone was billed separately, say so; the sample's note says Milestone 1 was billed on invoice WD-0901.
• Hours suit work that can't be fixed in advance. Bill them under "Additional hours" at the rate in your agreement, with the dates or the request they relate to.

If you track your time in Billed, time tracking lets you create and export timesheets, and filter the time tracking report by date range, to back up the hours. See the guide to milestone invoicing for more on staging payments.

Bill third-party costs you paid for the client at what you paid, in their own section, with the provider, registrar or vendor named. The sample's note says these costs are billed at cost, without markup, and that the renewals are in the client's name. Agreeing whose name the hosting, domain and license accounts are in is worth doing early, because it decides who controls them after the project.

In the template, these pass-through costs are added after the subtotal and the "Sales tax on development services, if applicable" line, so the tax line doesn't apply to them. That is how the file is built, not a tax rule: whether sales tax applies to web development services, hosting, domains or software licenses depends on where you and your client are, so check the rules where you work and adjust the lines if your situation differs.

Who owns the code, the design files and the content, and when ownership or a license passes to the client, are contract terms. Agree them in writing before the project starts; your agreement, not the invoice, sets them. If ownership is tied to payment, reference the agreement on the invoice, as the template's "Agreement" field does. For anything beyond that, take advice from a lawyer where you work. See freelance contract essentials for the clauses worth covering.

1. Enter your business details, the invoice number and date, the payment terms, the due date and the project number.
2. Enter the client and the project: the project name, the site and the agreement reference.
3. List the milestones reached, with their approval or completion dates, and any additional hours with the request or work dates.
4. List hosting, domain and license costs at what you paid, with the provider.
5. Type the retainer you're applying, if any, and set the sales tax rate if tax applies to your development services.
6. Edit the billing notes and payment details, then send the invoice and keep a copy.

In the Excel file, each line amount is Qty × Rate. The section subtotals, the subtotal, the sales tax, the pass-through line, the total and the amount due are formulas. The sales tax rate sits in its own cell, starting at 0%, and applies to the subtotal of milestones and additional hours; the "Hosting, domain and licenses, passed through at cost" line adds up that section; "Total" is the subtotal plus tax plus the pass-through costs; and "Amount due" is the total less the retainer applied, which you type. To leave out the tax, set its rate to 0%; with no retainer, set "Less: retainer applied" to 0.00. Don't delete either row, because the totals refer to them. Each section has one blank row; to add more lines, insert a row above that blank row and copy the amount formula into it, then check that the totals include it. In Word or on the PDF, work out the amounts and enter them.