My friend Aditi does UX design for startups. She doesn’t have an office, a GST number, or a company name — just her skills, a laptop, and clients who pay project by project. Every few weeks one of them asks for an invoice and she used to spend twenty minutes figuring out what to include, how to show the amount, whether to mention GST. She’s not unique. Most freelancers in India hit this exact wall the first few times.
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Do you need GST on your invoice
Probably not, if you’re starting out. Freelancers in India only need to register for GST if their turnover crosses ₹20 lakh in a financial year (₹10 lakh in special category states like Uttarakhand, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, Tripura, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, and Puducherry for services). Below those thresholds, you’re not required to charge GST and you shouldn’t show it on your invoice.
If you’re above the threshold and registered, use the toggle in the generator to pick CGST+SGST (same state as client) or IGST (different state). Most freelancers working with clients across India will use IGST for clients outside their own state.
One thing freelancers often miss: voluntary GST registration is allowed even below the threshold. Some clients, especially large companies, prefer to deal with GST-registered vendors because they can claim input tax credit on the GST you charge them. If most of your clients are companies, registering might actually help you get paid faster.
TDS: what to mention on your invoice
TDS (Tax Deducted at Source) is the client’s responsibility, not yours. But knowing how it works prevents confusion when the payment you receive is less than the invoice total.
Clients paying a freelancer for professional or technical services deduct TDS at 10% on payments above ₹30,000 in a financial year to the same person. So if you invoice ₹50,000, you might receive ₹45,000 and get a TDS certificate for ₹5,000 that you claim as a tax credit when filing your return.
Include your PAN on every invoice. It’s how the client files the TDS deduction. No PAN on the invoice often means the client deducts at the maximum rate (20%) rather than 10%, because they have no verified PAN to link it to. Add your PAN to the notes field in the generator.
Bank details on a freelancer invoice
India still runs substantially on NEFT/IMPS/UPI for freelance payments, not cheques or cards. Include your bank details on every invoice: account number, IFSC code, bank name, and branch. If you accept UPI, add your UPI ID too. Clients having to ask for payment details delays payment by a day or two every single time.
Put this in the notes field at the bottom of the invoice. Something like: “Bank transfer: [Account No] | IFSC: [IFSC] | [Bank, Branch] | UPI: yourname@upi”
What to put as your “business name”
You don’t need a registered company to use a business name on an invoice. Freelancers often use their own name or something like “[Your Name] — [your specialty]”, for example “Aditi Sharma — UX Design” or just “Aditi Sharma, Freelance Designer”. Clients are used to this. Just be consistent across invoices so your record-keeping stays clean.
If you want to formalize at some point, setting up a sole proprietorship is the simplest step: register your name as a business with your local municipal body, get a current account in the business name, and your invoices start looking like they come from a proper firm.
Invoice numbering that doesn’t confuse you at tax time
Pick a format and stick to it. Something like INV-2026-001, INV-2026-002 works. Or FS-001 if you want to keep it short (FS for your initials). Running sequential numbers per financial year (April to March in India) is cleaner than calendar year because your income and expenses are reported that way.
What not to do: start from 001 every year without a year prefix, because in three years you’ll have three Invoice #001s and no way to tell them apart without looking at the date.
Related tools: GST calculator to check the tax amount before billing, and the income tax calculator to estimate what you’ll owe on your freelance earnings.