Issuing an Invoice from an LLC in Usa

How Do You Prepare Invoices After Product and Service Sales from Your Company in Usa?

After setting up an llc in the USA and taking care of the payment and bank account process, the next thing to do as an e-commerce business owner is to issue invoices.

How Do I Invoice? Is There a Need for an Accountant?

In this article, I will offer you a few alternatives on how to invoice. As for an accountant, it will be costly in the beginning, so you can do your own work and keep your preliminary accounting records yourself. After forming an llc in the USA and obtaining an EIN, there is no process like in Turkey.

We can explain it like this:

After forming an llc in Turkey and obtaining a tax certificate, the invoicing process is under the supervision of the tax office. It is necessary to get an invoice number and print a stub or become an e-invoice payer in the new system. In addition, every company has to fill out monthly tax returns, etc. For such transactions, one must agree with a financial advisor or accountant.

In Usa, there is no such thing as having an agreement with an accountant, receiving an invoice stub, or being an e-invoice liability. There is a declaration-based system, and you can issue your own invoice by creating a template yourself. Or online software that provides preliminary accounting and complete invoice automation is the best solution for this job.

If you prepare the invoice in Excel, you can send a copy to your customer and keep a copy for yourself. If you are taxed as a real company (multi-member LLC or Corp) rather than an individual, the invoices or sales records (pre-accounting) you prepare while having the accountant fill out your tax declaration will make their job easier and reduce your accounting costs.

How to Prepare an Invoice?

Since Usa does not have an invoice system like our country, you can prepare this yourself in a few ways. Some of the options are:

1. 1. Word or Excel: If you want, you can prepare an invoice template with the office application and make invoices with your own template and keep the records yourself. This process may cause confusion over time, you need to file properly.
   2. FreshBooks : You can use an online invoicing system. The most professional example of this is FreshBooks. With FreshBooks, sign up for the free version here (no credit card required) and get started. I recommend you at least become a member for free and see their skills and what they can do. With the $15/month package, you can invoice unlimited customers and keep your own online accounting. This software is a complete accounting system. It has numerous capabilities such as invoicing the customer, automatic sending of invoices via e-mail, integration with all e-commerce applications such as Stripe, Shopify, Woocommerce, monthly, annual, daily sales reporting and templates.

For example, when a customer buys something from your Shopify store, it keeps his account, opens an accounting record, automatically issues an invoice and sends an e-mail. You do not have to store this information, all information is stored in the cloud.

If it's time to collect sales tax, it automatically calculates the tax rate by state, saving you from an incredible workload.

The application has a lot of capabilities, probably even if you hire a paid accountant, it may not be able to keep track as efficiently. I can say that it guides you at every stage and takes you to the next stage about what you need to do.

FreshBooks which we also use for our own companies , and even send payments such as digital products and services to the customer along with the invoice by connecting it with Stripe.

In the payment integration section, you can connect it to payment gateways, especially Stripe and PayPal, with a single click.

We have connected Stripe to our company account with Freshbooks. When we sell digital services (marketing, advertising management, web design, license sales, special software, consultancy), we can prepare an invoice here and send it to our customers with an embedded payment link along with the payment due date. It also has features such as payment reminders and sending e-mails to the customer before the due date.

The software has an incredible set of tools in its admin panel Once you become a member, you can use all the features.

Like your accountant:

The most asked question after opening this blog was;

-What about accounting after forming an llc in Usa?

-Why don't we keep accounting?

-Are we going to keep it?

-What are the preliminary accountant prices?

Here's an accountant for you! Automate all preliminary accounting. There is no need to collect invoices and receipts as in Turkey, and there is no need to send e-books etc. to the monthly tax office with a declaration for each transaction. Even though we talked about the tax advantages, there are still people who are not comfortable about paying taxes and doing accounting. At this stage, you invite the accounting firm you have agreed with to freshbooks. Since your EIN is also defined in the system, they can make your tax declaration thanks to this software.

So everything is automatic and based on solid foundations.

If you hire an accountant for taxes, all you have to do is give him/her authorization from freshbooks. It handles everything online and easily prepares your declaration. Every accounting firm or CPA in America knows about Freshbooks Become a member of Freshbooks, use at least the free version and understand the software, integrate Freshbooks into your online store and sit back, it's an automation that takes care of everything itself.

To become a free member and see its advantages, you can create an account without needing a credit card from this link.

1. Stripe: If you use Stripe to receive payments, the management panel has a mini accounting software and also a template tool with which you can prepare electronic invoices. To do this, you can log in to your Stripe admin panel and open a customer client here https://dashboard.stripe.com/invoices
2. Invoice template: Thanks to online tools that provide templates, you can download free invoice templates and choose one. There are many online tools on the internet for this job, for example, the most well-known one is invoice home . You can prepare your invoice by immediately downloading a template and adding your logo.

Issuing Invoices with Stripe (Preparing Invoices)

If you use Stripe, you may have discovered that it has a mini accounting tool. If you don't know, log in to the stripe panel and view the invoices section at www.dashboard.stripe.com/invoices.

You can customize the invoice template before issuing an invoice. You can create a letterhead by uploading your own logo and applying your own corporate colors.

To do this, you can start by entering the branding

This customization is reflected in both your invoice template and the emails sent to customers upon successful payment.

Preparing Invoices

To create a manual invoice via Stripe, you first need to create a customer record. To do this, click customers from the left menu.

And click on the “Add customer” button in the upper right corner

Fill in your customer's current information and save it.

After creating a new customer record, click on the invoices link under customers.

Click the “create invoice” button in the upper right corner.

Find the customer you will invoice for, fill in the price and all required fields and save your invoice.

Then you can see the invoice you created in the incoices section. If you want, you can send it directly from here via e-mail, or download it as a PDF and print it.

Sample Invoice: 

Below is a screenshot of a stripe invoice I created for example purposes.

In this way, you can both create invoices and keep your accounting records amateurly.

What Should Be on an Invoice? Should I Write an EIN?

In an invoice, information such as customer name, phone number, tax number (if any), address, name of your service, number, date, creation date, your address, phone number and company name must be precise. You can write your company's EIN number if you want, but you are not required by law to do so. However, writing an EIN can give confidence to the customer, so it is up to you whether to write it or not.

Conclusion

Creating an invoice for your company in America is different from the practice in Turkey. Everyone can issue their own invoices within the framework of some rules. You can use online applications or templates for this. FreshBooks to keep records and calculate income and expenses gives you an advantage. When you agree with an accountant, it can reduce your accounting expenses because it reduces the accountant's workload.