How to Invoice as a Sole Trader in Australia (ABN and GST)

Short answer: As a sole trader in Australia, if you are not registered for GST, issue a plain invoice — never one headed ‘tax invoice’ — showing your name, ABN, a unique number, the date, what you supplied and the total, with no GST line anywhere on it. Once your GST turnover reaches $75,000 you must register within 21 days and start issuing tax invoices carrying the seven details the ATO requires, plus the buyer’s identity on any invoice of $1,000 or more. Keep copies five years.

Australian invoicing runs on two documents that look almost identical and are not the same thing. Below the GST threshold you issue a plain invoice, and almost nothing about its contents is prescribed. Above it you issue a tax invoice, and the ATO sets out precisely what has to appear on it. If the business is not set up yet, start with becoming a sole trader in Australia; for what you will owe on the income these invoices produce, see sole trader taxes.

What goes on an invoice if I am not registered for GST?

Nothing is strictly prescribed. Australian law specifies the contents of a tax invoice, and those rules do not reach you until you are registered. What does reach you is one hard prohibition: the words “tax invoice” must not appear, and neither may a GST amount. business.gov.au is blunt about it: on a regular invoice you use the word “invoice”, and you must not use “tax invoice”.

A workable non-GST invoice shows:

• The word Invoice, and a unique invoice number
• Your own name, plus any business name registered with ASIC
• Your ABN
• Contact details — address, email, phone
• The client’s name or business name
• The date of issue
• A description of the goods or services, with quantity and unit price
• The total due, in Australian dollars
• Payment terms and how to pay — BSB and account number, or a payment link

business.gov.au publishes that list as common practice rather than law. Two entries earn their place for commercial reasons rather than tax ones: the ABN and the payment details.

Do I have to put my ABN on an invoice?

No statute forces you to. Leave it off, though, and your client is obliged to take almost half the payment before it reaches you.

Where a supplier does not quote an ABN and the payment for goods or services is more than $75 excluding GST, the payer must withhold at the top rate of tax and remit it to the ATO. The ATO states the rule as “the top rate of tax” rather than a fixed percentage. For 2025–26 that works out at 47% — the 45% top marginal rate on income above $190,000, plus the 2% Medicare levy — so check the current resident rates before relying on the number. You get a PAYG payment summary for withholding where an ABN was not quoted, and the money back through your tax return, which may be a year away.

Supplies that are private or domestic in nature, or a hobby rather than an enterprise, are exempt; the payer takes a Statement by a supplier not quoting an ABN instead. For anyone genuinely in business the fix is an ABN — free, through the Australian Business Register — printed on every document you send.

When do I have to register for GST and start issuing tax invoices?

Trigger	Threshold
Current GST turnover — this month plus the previous 11	$75,000
Projected GST turnover — this month plus the next 11	$75,000
Taxi, limousine or ride-sourcing travel	No threshold — from the first fare
Non-profit body	$150,000
Claiming fuel tax credits	No threshold

GST turnover is gross business income minus any GST included in it — turnover, not profit. A contractor billing $80,000 and keeping $50,000 after costs is over the threshold. You must register within 21 days of crossing it, and if you are not registered the ATO expects you to check monthly. One relief in the two-limb test: even where your current GST turnover is already at or above the threshold, you do not have to register if your projected GST turnover will come in under it.

Missing the trigger is expensive: the ATO can require GST on sales made from the date registration became compulsory, even though you never charged it, with penalties and interest on top. Backdating is capped at four years. Voluntary registration below the threshold is allowed and generally commits you for at least 12 months. The ride-sourcing line catches people every year — drivers register from the first fare, whether they own the car or lease it.

What must an Australian tax invoice show?

For a taxable sale of less than $1,000, the invoice must contain enough information to clearly determine seven things.

#	Required detail
1	That the document is intended to be a tax invoice
2	The seller’s identity
3	The seller’s ABN
4	The date the invoice was issued
5	A brief description of the items sold, with quantity (where applicable) and price
6	The GST amount payable, if any
7	The extent to which each sale on the invoice is a taxable sale

For sales of $1,000 or more, add the buyer’s identity or ABN. The ATO expressly allows an invoice meeting the higher-value rules to be used for smaller sales too, so the sane approach is one template that always names the client, and no threshold to remember.

On presenting the GST: if the amount is exactly one-eleventh of the total — which it is when everything on the invoice is fully taxable — a line stating that the total price includes GST is enough, with no separate column. Where an invoice mixes taxable items with GST-free or input-taxed ones, it must clearly show which items are taxable, and show each taxable sale, the amount of GST to be paid and the total amount to be paid.

Rounding: with a single taxable sale, round the GST to the nearest cent, half a cent upwards; with several, the ATO allows either the total invoice rule or the taxable supply rule, and you and your customer need not use the same one. Format: paper is not required. A PDF emailed to the client is a valid tax invoice if it carries all the required information, and an eInvoice exchanged over the Peppol network satisfies the “intended to be a tax invoice” test through the A-NZ specification even without those words.

If a customer asks for a tax invoice you must supply one within 28 days, unless the sale was $82.50 including GST or less.

How should I number my invoices?

An invoice number is not one of the seven requirements — a genuine quirk of the Australian rules, and not a licence to skip it. business.gov.au lists a unique invoice number as standard practice, and any accounts department will expect one.

• Plain running sequence: 001, 002, 003
• Year-prefixed: 2026-001, 2026-002
• Per-client: KOWALSKI-001, KOWALSKI-002

Pick one scheme and never reuse or delete a number. If a job is cancelled after invoicing, issue an adjustment note against the original rather than deleting it — invoice vs receipt covers why both documents survive in your records.

One arrangement hands the numbering to the client. Under a recipient-created tax invoice, the client issues the tax invoice for your work — common in labour hire. It requires both parties to be registered for GST, a current written agreement that you will not issue your own, and a supply type covered by the Recipient Created Tax Invoice Determination 2023.

What payment terms should I set, and can I charge interest on a late invoice?

Australia has no statutory default payment period for private commercial invoices and no automatic entitlement to late payment interest. If your terms did not provide for interest before you supplied the work, you generally cannot add it afterwards. State terms on the invoice and in whatever you sent the client beforehand:

• A stated period — 7, 14 or 30 days from the date of issue
• An interest rate or late fee, agreed in advance
• How to pay, and by when

Government clients are the exception. Under the Commonwealth’s Supplier Pay On-Time or Pay Interest Policy (RMG 417), a non-corporate Commonwealth entity that has receipted a correctly rendered invoice must pay within 5 calendar days for an eInvoice exchanged over Peppol where both sides have the capability and agreed to use it, and 20 calendar days otherwise. Interest is payable where the accrued amount exceeds $100. That five-day figure is the strongest practical argument for getting onto eInvoicing.

Large private clients report under the Payment Times Reporting Scheme, whose public register lets you compare how quickly they pay small business suppliers — worth a look before agreeing to 60-day terms. More tactics in how to get clients to pay.

Does the date I send the invoice change when I owe the GST?

Yes, if you account on a non-cash (accruals) basis. GST is then payable in the activity statement period in which you issue the tax invoice or receive payment, whichever comes first. An invoice dated 29 June falls into the April–June quarter even if the client pays in August, which means finding the GST out of your own pocket in the meantime.

A sole trader with aggregated turnover under $10 million can choose cash accounting instead, where GST falls in the period you actually receive the money. For a one-person business routinely waiting 60 days to be paid, that is usually the kinder choice.

Quarter	Period	BAS due
1	Jul–Sep	28 October
2	Oct–Dec	28 February
3	Jan–Mar	28 April
4	Apr–Jun	28 July

If you lodge online you may be eligible for an extra two weeks on each quarter except Q2, whose due date already includes a one-month extension.

How long do I keep copies, and where do receipts come in?

Five years, and note where the clock starts: for business records, five years from when you prepared or obtained the record, or completed the transactions it relates to, whichever is later — not from the date you lodged. Records must be in English or readily convertible to English, and digital ones must be indexed and extractable into a standard format such as CSV.

An invoice asks for payment; a receipt confirms it arrived. Under the Australian Consumer Law you must give a consumer a receipt for anything costing over $75, and where they ask for one on a smaller purchase the ACCC gives you 7 days to provide it.

On the buying side, once registered you need a valid tax invoice from your supplier before claiming a GST credit on any purchase costing more than $82.50 including GST, and four years in which to claim it — the practical reason to photograph receipts as you go rather than in a heap each quarter, covered in expenses and receipts. Invoices are never attached to the return; they sit with you, behind the business figures in your tax return.

Where does Keel fit into this?

An invoice is only half the record. The other half is the receipts proving what a job cost and the trips you made doing it — the parts that disappear, because nobody photographs a fuel docket at eleven at night.

Keel: Invoice Maker & Receipts, by Ilura Technology OU, runs entirely on your iPhone. No account, no sign-in, no bank connection; the App Store privacy label reads “Data Not Collected”. You build invoices as PDFs with your own numbering sequence, logo, brand colour and a payment link as a QR code, photograph receipts for Apple Intelligence to read on device, log mileage, and export the year as one file for your accountant.

The honest tradeoff: nothing imports itself. With no bank feed, every invoice is typed and every receipt is photographed — the direct cost of data never leaving the phone. What you get back is an append-only, hash-chained ledger held on your device and nowhere else. Keel is on the App Store; the free tier gives unlimited invoices, receipts and mileage with a “Made with Keel” footer, and Keel Pro is a one-time $249.99 Lifetime purchase, not a subscription.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need an ABN to invoice as a sole trader in Australia? No law forces you to print one, but the consequence of omitting it is severe. Where a payment for goods or services exceeds $75 excluding GST and no ABN is quoted, the payer must withhold at the top rate of tax and send it to the ATO — 47% for 2025–26, being the 45% top marginal rate plus the 2% Medicare levy. You recover it through your tax return, potentially a year later.

Can I charge GST on an invoice if I am not registered for GST? No. If you are not registered, your invoices must not be headed “tax invoice” and must not show a GST amount. Showing GST you are not entitled to collect is a liability rather than a windfall, and it also misleads a GST-registered client into claiming a credit they cannot support. Issue a standard invoice with a single total instead.

What has to be on a tax invoice in Australia? Seven things for sales under $1,000: that the document is intended to be a tax invoice, the seller’s identity, the seller’s ABN, the date of issue, a description of the items with quantity and price, the GST amount payable, and the extent to which each sale is taxable. Sales of $1,000 or more also need the buyer’s identity or ABN.

Do I have to put an invoice number on an Australian invoice? An invoice number is not one of the ATO’s seven tax invoice requirements, which surprises most people. It is still standard practice, listed by business.gov.au, and every accounts department expects one. Use a unique number on every invoice, never reuse or delete one, and issue an adjustment note if a job is cancelled after billing.

Can I charge late payment interest on an overdue invoice in Australia? Only if the client agreed to it before you did the work. Australia has no automatic statutory right to interest on private commercial debts, so an interest rate or late fee has to sit in your written terms from the start. Commonwealth government agencies are different: they owe interest under RMG 417 where the accrued amount exceeds $100.

How long do I have to keep copies of my invoices in Australia? Five years, running from when you prepared or obtained the record or completed the transactions it relates to, whichever is later — not from the date you lodged the return. Records for depreciating assets and CGT assets run longer: for as long as you hold the asset, plus five years after you dispose of it.

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This article is general information, not tax advice. Consult a qualified Australian tax professional.