Billingz Guides

Money mechanics, answered.

Invoicing, expenses, VAT, and taxes for freelancers and micro-businesses. One question per guide, answered directly.

Setting up and staying in order

The registration choice that decides your tax and your exposure, and what you have to keep once the work starts.

Sole trader or company: what actually changes

One question decides everything after it: is the business a separate legal person, or is it you? Two layers of tax against one, and what limited liability really protects.

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How long to keep invoices and records, and in what form

Four to ten years across Europe, two laws setting two different answers for the same document, and a clock that starts later than you think.

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Invoices and documents

What each document is for, what it must contain, and how to correct one that has already gone out.

How to make an invoice that gets paid

The seven things every invoice needs, numbering that will not embarrass you, and the details that decide payment speed.

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Pro forma, invoice, credit note: which document, and when

Three documents, one sequence. One asks, one records, one reverses, and only the middle one is a tax document.

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Credit notes explained: how to correct an invoice properly

Issued invoices are never edited. A proper credit note has its own number, a reference, a reason, and none of the payment elements.

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E-invoicing in Europe: which countries require it, and when

Ten markets already work with a system behind the invoice. The 2026-2030 calendar, mapped, and what a freelancer actually has to do.

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Getting paid

What you are owed when payment is late, what happens to money between their bank and yours, and why the amount that lands is not always the amount you invoiced.

When an invoice is not paid: what you are owed, and what to do

EU law already gives you statutory interest and a fixed EUR 40 per late invoice, without agreeing it in advance. What the rules say, what is only proposed, and the sequence that works.

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How to fill in a payment order from an invoice you received

Every field on the form is already on the invoice. Where to read each one, what changes outside SEPA, and why the reference is the field people get wrong.

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SEPA, SHA, OUR and BEN: what happens to an international payment

Inside the EU the charges are shared by law and nobody chooses. Outside it somebody does, and that decides who absorbs what each bank takes on the way.

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Exchange rate (FX) differences: why less money arrives than you invoiced

The client paid in full and your account shows less. How the gap appears, how to tell it from a bank fee or a short payment, and which rate belongs on the invoice.

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Tax and VAT

Which taxes reach you at all, where the registration lines sit, and what changes the moment you invoice a business in another country.

VAT, income tax, corporation tax: which ones apply to you

Four different taxes get talked about as if they were one. What each is charged on, which depends on how you registered, and why part of your balance was never yours.

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