How to Create Invoices for Clients Using WordPress (Free)

If you’re a freelancer or run an agency, you need a simple way to bill clients and get paid without paying for accounting software every month.

The good news is that you can do it inside WordPress for free. You’ll create the invoice in your dashboard, keep your client records on your own site, and send clients to a payment page on your own domain.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to create invoices for clients in WordPress, step by step.

Why Create Invoices for Clients in WordPress?

Most freelancers start out billing from a spreadsheet or a Word file. That works until you’re chasing five clients at once and can’t remember who has paid and who hasn’t.

The Sliced Invoices plugin fixes that without adding a monthly bill.

It also keeps your billing where you already work. When a client asks about an invoice you sent three months ago, it’s sitting in the same WordPress dashboard you log into every day.

If invoicing is only one part of your bookkeeping and you need expense tracking and tax reports, then a paid accounting service is a better fit. For everything else, WordPress can handle it.

One thing before we start. This tutorial covers creating unique invoices for individual clients. If you’d rather let visitors order from your site and pay right away, then see our guide on how to create an online order form in WordPress.

Let’s get started.

Step 1: Install and Set Up Sliced Invoices

First, you need to install and activate the Sliced Invoices plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, head over to Sliced Invoices » Settings to set up the plugin.

In the ‘General’ settings, the first fields are Year Start and Year End. You need to set them to match your tax year so your yearly totals line up with what you actually file.

The next section is Pre-Defined Line Items. This is where you save the work you bill for again and again, like a monthly retainer or your hourly rate, so you don’t type it out every time.

Enter the price as a plain number with no currency symbol. Each item you save here is then ready to pick from when you add a new invoice.

After that, click the ‘Save’ button.

Step 2: Add Your Business Details

On the same page, click on the ‘Business’ tab. The information that you add here prints at the top of every invoice you send.

You should start by uploading your Logo. If you skip this option, the plugin prints your Business Name on the invoices.

Next, you need to enter your Address. The plugin prints exactly what you type, so you should format it the way addresses are written in your country.

In the Extra Business Info section, you can enter a tax or VAT number, a business registration number, or a phone number. Anything your client needs in order to file the invoice on their end belongs here.

The last option is your website’s URL. If you enter the URL here, your logo and business name become a link back to your site.

Then click on the ‘Save’ button.

Step 3: Set Your Invoice Defaults

Now open the ‘Invoices’ tab. Everything here applies to every invoice you create from now on, so setting it up once saves you from repeating the work on each invoice.

Start by checking the Auto Increment option so each new invoice takes the next number automatically. Then set the Next Number to where you want the sequence to begin.

The Next Number field accepts leading zeros, so 0001 works fine. The Prefix and Suffix fields wrap text around that number. A prefix of INV- gives you INV-0001, and a suffix of -2026 gives you 0001-2026.

Next is the Due Date field, where you enter how many days a client has to pay.

Enter 14 and every invoice will be due 14 days after the day you create it. You can still override the date on any single invoice.

Terms & Conditions prints on every invoice. You can use it to spell out when payment is due and what happens if it’s late.

The Footer field is the last line at the bottom of each invoice. You can add a short thank you and your email address.

At the bottom of this page, you can also select an invoice template design. Below it, there’s a Custom CSS field if you want to change the colors or fonts beyond what the template offers.

Click on the ‘Save’ button to continue.

Step 4: Set Up Your Payment Methods

Now you should click on the ‘Payments’ tab. This is where you set how money appears on your invoices and how clients actually pay you.

Start by adding your Currency Symbol, choose whether it sits on the left or right in Currency Position, then set your Thousand Separator, Decimal Separator, and Number of Decimals.

You should keep in mind that these settings are for currency display only, and the plugin doesn’t convert between currencies.

Sliced Invoices creates a blank page called Payment when you activate the plugin. This is the page your clients land on when they pay online.

Leave it selected unless you’ve built your own payment page.

Now scroll to the Payment Methods section below. The free version gives you three options to collect payments against your invoices.

You can add your bank account details for direct transfers, or use the Generic Payment box for other arrangements like paying by check. Both print straight onto the invoice.

If you want to collect payments online, click on the arrow next to the PayPal Gateway option and enable it.

For PayPal, you’ll need the PayPal API credentials, which you can find in your PayPal account under Account Settings » API access » NVP/SOAP API integration » Manage API credentials. Copy each one into the matching field.

If you’d rather take card payments through Stripe, or use Authorize.Net or 2Checkout, those are paid extensions of the Sliced Invoices plugin.

Click on the ‘Save’ button and everything is ready for you to create your first invoice in the next step.

Step 5: Create Your First Invoice

Let’s create your first real invoice. You need to go to the Invoices » Add New Invoice page.

Start with the title at the top. This one is for you, not for your client, so use something you’ll recognize in a list later, like “Acme Co, October retainer.”

Next is the Line Items section. Each row takes Qty, Item Title, Adjust (%), Rate ($), and Description.

If you’re billing for more than one item, you can click on the Add Another Item button. The invoice totals update as you add details, such as price and tax percentage.

In the Invoice Details box on the right side, you should click on the Add New Client button and a popup will open to add client details.

Sliced Invoices stores clients as WordPress users, so this step creates a user account on your site. The plugin doesn’t email your client their login details, so they won’t hear anything until you send the invoice in the next step.

Choose the Create New User option and fill all the required details for your client. Now click on the ‘Add New Client’ button.

You can also pick an existing user if the client already has an account on your site. Either way, a client is attached to the invoice automatically.

Other details like the invoice number and due date are already filled from the previous invoice settings. You can change any of these settings here and it will override the general settings for this invoice.

When everything looks right, click on the ‘Publish’ button and your invoice is ready.

Step 6: Send the Invoice to Your Client

Upon publishing the invoice, you’ll notice a new Sliced Invoices row appears in the Publish box on the top right corner.

Click on the envelope icon that says Email to client.

A popup opens with Send To already filled in from your client’s record, along with the Subject and content from your Emails settings.

You can edit anything you like in the email, and separate addresses with a comma to copy more than one person.

Then click on the ‘Send The Email’ button.

Your client gets an email with a link to the invoice on your site. They can read it and pay the invoice using the payment methods you added.

If your client says the email never arrived, the problem is almost always your WordPress email setup rather than the plugin.

We recommend WP Mail SMTP, which sends your emails through a proper mail service, so it stops landing in the spam folder. For more details, see our guide on how to fix the WordPress not sending email issue.

Step 7: View and Manage Your Invoices

Now click on the ‘Invoices’ menu in your WordPress dashboard to see every invoice you created in one list.

Each row has an actions column with the same email button, so resending an invoice takes one click. It also shows when you last emailed that invoice.

Invoices carry one of five statuses: Draft, Unpaid, Paid, Overdue, and Cancelled.

Sliced Invoices moves an unpaid invoice to Overdue on its own once the due date passes, so you don’t have to watch the dates.

You can use the View all statuses dropdown and click on the Filter button to see every unpaid invoice. Click on the Export as CSV button when your accountant needs the year’s invoices.

Send Automatic Payment Reminders

You can also send payment reminders to late payers. Go to Sliced Invoices » Settings, open the Emails tab, and scroll down to the Payment Reminder option.

You can select one or more reminder options to set up automatic payment reminders. We recommend adding a reminder the day before payment is due, since a nudge before the deadline stops many invoices from going late at all.

One thing to keep in mind: reminders go to every invoice that is still Unpaid or Overdue, and the plugin only records payments it handles itself through PayPal. When a client pays by bank transfer or check, open that invoice, set the Status in the Invoice Details box to Paid, and click the ‘Update’ button. Otherwise the reminders will keep going to a client who has already paid.

Frequently Asked Questions: Creating Invoices in WordPress

Here are some questions frequently asked by our readers about creating invoices in WordPress:

Will clients get invoice emails automatically?

No. Publishing an invoice doesn’t send anything. You send it yourself by clicking the Email to client button, which gives you a chance to check the message first.

The one thing that does go out on its own is the payment reminder, once you’ve set it up. If your emails aren’t arriving at all, install WP Mail SMTP, so your site sends through a proper mail service instead of landing in spam.

Can I create a free PDF invoice in WordPress?

Not automatically. The free version of the Sliced Invoices plugin emails your client a link to the invoice on your site, and you or your client can save that page as a PDF from the browser’s print dialog. If you want a PDF attached to every invoice email, Sliced Invoices sells a PDF extension in its paid bundles.

Can I connect my WordPress invoices to QuickBooks?

No. Sliced Invoices has no QuickBooks integration. You can use the Export as CSV button on your invoices list and import that file into QuickBooks, which is usually enough.

We hope this article helped you learn how to create invoices for clients using WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on the best WordPress invoice plugins.

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