How to invoice international clients

To invoice an international client, work out where the sale is taxed, then issue a normal invoice with the client's legal name and tax number, the right tax treatment, a stated currency and full bank details. Goods and services follow different rules, and whether the client is a business matters more than how far away they are.

This guide is written from the seat of a VAT-registered seller in the EU, with the UK further down. If you sell from anywhere else, your own country's rules decide what you charge, though the questions are the same.

Do you charge VAT when you invoice a client abroad?

Whether you charge VAT on a foreign invoice depends on what you sell, whether the client is a business, and whether they are inside the EU. These are the usual answers for a VAT-registered EU seller.

The article numbers refer to the EU VAT Directive. The €10,000 figure is the EU-wide threshold, and it counts digital services and goods shipped to consumers together. It applies to sellers established in one EU country, and it tests the current and the previous calendar year (Irish Revenue sets out the conditions).

Some services ignore this table. Work on land or buildings, admission to events, passenger transport, and restaurant and catering have their own rules in Articles 47 to 55, and are often taxed where they happen. Check those before you rely on the table.

What must an invoice to a foreign client include?

An invoice to a foreign client needs everything a domestic invoice has, which our guide to VAT invoice fields lists, plus the details that support the tax treatment and get it paid.

• The client's legal name, address and country. The company on the contract, not the contact who emailed you.
• The client's tax number. Article 226(4) requires an EU client's VAT number when the client is liable for the VAT. Outside the EU, a VAT or similar business number is part of the evidence that the client is a business, under Article 18(3) of Implementing Regulation 282/2011.
• A line explaining the tax. Zero VAT with no reason looks like a mistake. The guide to reverse-charge wording has text to copy.
• A date nobody can misread. Write "3 April 2026". In the US, 03/04/2026 means 4 March.
• The currency code. "USD 3,000.00" is clear. A bare dollar sign could be American, Canadian or Australian.
• Bank details that work abroad. Give the IBAN and BIC/SWIFT, and say who pays the bank charges.
• Their reference. Larger companies often can't pay without a purchase order number.

Your own country's invoicing rules normally apply when the client accounts for the VAT, or when the sale takes place outside the EU (Article 219a). So you follow your home format, not your client's.

How do you word an invoice to a client outside the EU?

An invoice to a business outside the EU usually carries no VAT and one line saying why. EU law sets no fixed wording for this case, so check what your home tax authority expects. A plain sentence is a sensible default:

No EU VAT charged. Services supplied to a business established outside the EU (Article 44, Directive 2006/112/EC).

For goods, the sentence changes:

VAT exempt: export of goods outside the EU (Article 146, Directive 2006/112/EC).

Keep the evidence behind that sentence. For services, that means proof the client is in business. For goods, it means proof they left the EU, such as a transport document or customs record. Goods crossing a customs border also need a commercial invoice.

Two other things can catch you out. An EU country can choose to charge VAT on a service that is actually used on its territory, even when the client is abroad (Article 59a). And some countries make the client withhold income tax from payments for services. Ask before you quote, because a 10% withholding on €3,000 leaves you €2,700. A tax treaty may reduce it, usually in exchange for a certificate of tax residence.

How do you invoice a UK client from the EU?

A UK client counts as a client outside the EU for VAT. The European Commission's VIES service stopped validating GB VAT numbers on 1 January 2021, so use HMRC's Check a UK VAT number service instead. A UK business buying your services accounts for UK VAT under its own reverse charge, and your goods are an export from the EU.

Northern Ireland is the exception, for goods only. A business trading goods under the Windsor Framework uses a VAT number with the XI prefix, which VIES does check. Services aren't covered by those arrangements.

If you are the UK seller, the picture flips. HMRC's Notice 741A treats most services to a business abroad as supplied where the customer belongs, so they are outside the scope of UK VAT, and an EU customer's VAT number is the best evidence that they are in business. Goods sent from Great Britain to the EU follow the export rules in Notice 703.

A worked example: three clients, one month

Here's an invented example. An EU design studio, VAT-registered with a 20% home rate, bills €3,000 of design work to each of three clients.

Only the third invoice adds to the VAT the studio pays over. The German sale also goes on the studio's EC Sales List. The Spanish sale doesn't count towards the €10,000 threshold, because a designer's work isn't an electronically supplied service. Article 7 of the Implementing Regulation keeps that term for services that are essentially automated, so emailing the files doesn't change the answer.

Invoicing international clients in ERPFlow

In ERPFlow, a client's VAT ID sits on the customer record and prints beside your own on the invoice PDF. Both are frozen when you issue the invoice, so later edits to the record don't touch it.

• You choose the tax per line. A new line starts with your default rate, so change it for a cross-border sale. ERPFlow doesn't pick a rate from the customer's country. Tax rates can have the type reverse charge, exempt or zero-rated. The type is a label and the percentage does the sum, so you create those at 0%.
• The number of rates depends on your plan: one on Free, two on Starter, three on Growth, and unlimited on Business and Enterprise.
• The explanatory sentence goes in Notes, which print on the PDF.
• Foreign currency needs a paid plan. Multi-currency gives you one extra currency on Growth and any number on Business and Enterprise. Free and Starter bill in the base currency only.
• The PDF comes in 19 languages, set on each invoice.

ERPFlow has no VIES lookup, and it doesn't file VAT returns, EC Sales Lists or One Stop Shop returns. Invoices export as Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 XML, which you pass to your e-invoice operator. ERPFlow doesn't send them over the Peppol network itself.