Receipt or invoice: which document do you actually need?

The short version: an invoice is a request for money, a receipt is proof that money arrived. Everything else is a variation on when in the transaction you are standing. Getting the wrong one is rarely illegal, but it delays payment and irritates accountants, which amounts to the same thing.

Updated 3 August 2026 · about 6 minutes

The one sentence test

Invoice

An invoice is the workhorse. It is a demand for payment and, if you are VAT registered, it is also the tax document your customer uses to reclaim the VAT, which is why the required fields are not optional.

• Both parties in full: name, address, company number, tax number.
• A unique invoice number that fits an unbroken sequence.
• Issue date, date of supply, and a due date.
• Line items with quantity, unit price and line total.
• Net, tax per rate, and gross.
• Payment details: bank account, variable symbol or reference.

The single biggest cause of late payment is not the customer. It is a missing reference, a missing due date, or an invoice sent to a person who does not process invoices. Fixing those three things is worth more than any dunning process.

Receipt

A receipt records that a payment happened. On a shop counter it is the whole transaction in one piece of paper: what was bought, what it cost, and how it was paid. Alongside an invoice it is the confirmation half, and useful in cash businesses where there is no bank statement to point at.

A receipt should name the payment method and, for cash, the amount tendered and the change given. That detail is not decoration. It is what settles the "I gave you a 2000" conversation at the counter.

Proforma invoice

A proforma is a request for payment before you have supplied anything: a deposit, a prepayment, a new customer you would rather not extend credit to. It looks like an invoice and is not one. It is not a tax document, the customer cannot reclaim VAT from it, and it does not belong in your revenue.

Once the money lands, issue the real tax document. Label proformas clearly, because a customer who files a proforma as an invoice will end up paying twice or not at all, and both are your problem.

Quotation

A quotation is a priced offer. Nothing is owed. What makes a quotation useful rather than decorative is the boundaries on it:

• Valid until a date. Otherwise you are honouring last year's prices.
• Scope, stated as what is included and what is not. The exclusions prevent more arguments than the inclusions.
• Assumptions. What you took as given when pricing it.
• Payment terms. Deposit, schedule, terms on the final balance.

Order confirmation

Issued after the customer accepts, before you deliver. It is the shortest document here and it prevents the most expensive kind of dispute, the one where both sides remember the agreement differently. Repeat the scope, the price, the delivery date, and send it the same day you get the go ahead.

Credit note

A credit note reverses all or part of a document you already issued. This is the correct fix for a wrong invoice, a return, or a discount you agreed after the fact.

What you must not do is edit or delete the original. Accounting records are append only in practice: the original stands, the credit note references it by number and cancels the amount. Anyone reading the file later can see what happened and when. That trail is the entire point.

Do you have to give one

Rules vary by country, but the pattern is consistent. Business to business, the buyer is entitled to a proper invoice and will need one to deduct the cost. Business to consumer, you generally must provide proof of purchase on request, and if you are VAT registered a compliant tax document once the customer asks for it. Cash businesses attract more specific record keeping rules than card ones.

In practice the safe default is to issue a document for every transaction and keep a copy. It takes seconds and it removes an entire category of future problem. For the Czech specifics, see VAT on a Czech receipt.

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