Receipt generator
A receipt records a payment that has already happened. Enter what was paid, how it was paid and what it was for, and print or save the result — it is the document your customer keeps for their own books, and the one you will want if the payment is ever queried.
Receipt
Fill in the form above and this receipt updates as you type.
From
Your name and address
Received from
Client name and address
| Description | Qty | Unit price | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| No line items yet. | |||
A receipt is not an invoice, and the difference is the tense
An invoice asks for money. A receipt acknowledges money that has arrived. They often list the same items at the same prices, which is why the two words get used interchangeably, but they do opposite jobs in a set of accounts: the invoice creates a debt and the receipt discharges it.
That difference decides what belongs on each. An invoice needs payment terms and a due date. A receipt needs neither — it needs the date the payment was actually made, the method it came in by, and a clear statement that the balance is now nil. If part of the amount is still outstanding, say so explicitly with the amount remaining, because a receipt that looks like it settles everything is very hard to argue with later.
The one thing they share is the numbering. Receipts want their own sequence, separate from your invoices, so that "REC-0042" is never confused with "INV-0042" in a folder or a bank reference.
What belongs on a receipt
Who received the money, who paid it, how much, when, for what, and by what method. That is the whole list, and the method matters more than people expect: "paid by card ending 4412" or "bank transfer, ref INV-0042" turns the receipt into something you can match against a statement line months later, while "paid" does not.
If you charge sales tax or VAT, the tax has to appear as its own line here too. A customer reclaiming input tax needs the rate, the tax amount and your registration number on the document they keep — a gross figure alone is not enough for their accountant, and they will come back and ask.
For cash payments the receipt is the only record either side has, which makes it the one case where a signature and a printed copy for the payer are genuinely worth the paper. Card and transfer payments already leave a trail; cash leaves nothing but this.
How long to keep them
Retention periods vary but the practical answer is longer than you think: six years in the United Kingdom for company records, at least three years for the IRS in the ordinary case and seven if you want to be comfortable, and a similar range across the EU. The cost of keeping a folder of PDFs for seven years is nothing; the cost of not having one during an audit is a reconstruction exercise.
Because these are generated in the browser and never stored anywhere else, saving each one as a PDF at the moment you create it is not optional housekeeping — it is the only copy. Name the file with the receipt number and the date and the folder sorts itself.
How the numbering runs on
The last run of digits is the one that increments, and the zero-padding is kept until the number outgrows it. These are produced by the same function the button uses.
| This document | The next one |
|---|---|
REC-0001 | REC-0002 |
REC-0099 | REC-0100 |
REC-9999 | REC-10000 |
2026-001 | 2026-002 |
7 | 8 |
CASH-0042 | CASH-0043 |
Common questions
What is the difference between a receipt and an invoice?
An invoice requests payment and carries a due date; a receipt confirms payment that has already been made and carries the date it arrived. The same job can produce both — an invoice when the work is delivered and a receipt when the money lands.
Do I have to give a receipt for a cash payment?
Rules differ by country, but cash is the one payment method that leaves no other record, so a receipt is the only evidence either side holds. Issue one as a matter of routine and keep your copy with the same numbering as the rest.
Should receipts use the same numbering as invoices?
Use a separate sequence with its own prefix, such as REC-0001. Mixing them makes reconciliation harder and creates the risk of two documents in your records sharing a number, which is exactly what sequential numbering exists to prevent.