One missing line can stall a payment for weeks. If you're selling to clients abroad and want your invoices right first time, we'll help you get the wording, VAT treatment and records sorted.
You land a great client in Germany, do the work, and send your invoice. Then it bounces back: their finance team says the invoice "isn't right for VAT" and they can't pay it until it is. The payment stalls, you're chasing, and you realise you're not actually sure what's supposed to be on an invoice to an overseas client in the first place.
This happens far more often than people expect — and it's almost always fixable in five minutes once you know the rules. The good news is that for most UK service businesses, invoicing overseas is more straightforward than it looks. It mostly comes down to two questions: is your client a business or a consumer, and where are they based. Get those right and the correct VAT treatment — and the right wording — usually follows.
This is the practical how-to: what to physically put on the invoice, how to word the VAT line, and the records HMRC will expect. The underlying place-of-supply rules are covered in depth in our guide to scaling digital service businesses globally, so head there if you want the full theory first.