- What's the difference between a receipt and an invoice?
- An invoice is a request to be paid — it's what you send before the money arrives. A receipt is proof a payment already happened — it's what you send (or hand over) after the money arrives. Same parties, same line items often, different stage. If you're billing a client for work you've done and waiting on payment, you want the Invoice Generator. If they've already paid and you need to give them a paper trail, you want this one.
- Does the tool save my receipt or send it anywhere?
- No. The whole thing runs in your browser. The form auto-saves to your browser's localStorage so you don't lose work on a refresh, but nothing is uploaded to a server, logged, or shared with us. Close the tab and clear your browser data and the receipt is gone. The PDF download happens entirely on your machine — your customer only gets it when you email it to them yourself.
- Do I need to charge tax on a receipt?
- Depends on your jurisdiction and what you sold. In most US states, sales tax is charged at the point of sale for tangible goods and some services. In the EU, VAT is built into the price. If you're a freelancer in the US doing service work, you usually don't charge sales tax (check your state). If you're unsure, leave the tax field at 0 and check with an accountant — wrong tax on a receipt is a real problem; missing tax can usually be corrected.
- What payment methods can I select?
- Five: cash, card, wire transfer, check, and other. There's a free-text 'reference' field next to it where you can record specifics — the last 4 digits of a card ('Visa ****4242'), a check number ('Check #0042'), a wire confirmation, a Zelle reference, a Venmo username. The combination of method + reference is what makes a receipt useful for a tax audit or a customer dispute.
- Is this receipt legally valid?
- Receipts don't have a strict legal format in most jurisdictions — what matters is that the document records the parties, the date, the amount, and what was paid for. The receipts this tool generates include all of that. For sales tax purposes some US states require specific fields (the seller's tax ID, the tax rate broken out separately) — both are present here. If you're in a regulated industry (legal, medical, regulated trades) check your industry's specific requirements; you may need a numbered, sequential receipt book.
- Can I add my logo?
- Not in this version. The PDF is text-only — clean typography, no images. If you need a logo on the receipt, generate the PDF here, open it in Preview (Mac), Acrobat, or any free PDF editor (PDF24, Sejda), and drop your logo into the header. The simple PDF is the priority for v1.
- What currencies does it support?
- Any. The Currency field is a free-text box — type whatever symbol or code you want: $, €, £, ¥, ₹, USD, EUR, CAD. Number formatting follows US conventions (comma as thousands separator, period as decimal).
- How many line items can I add?
- Practically unlimited. The tool caps at 100 lines per receipt on reload from localStorage, which is well above what a normal receipt has. The PDF paginates automatically — if your line items overflow one page, you get a clean second page.
- Should I number my receipts sequentially?
- For a business, yes — sequential numbering gives you an audit trail and makes it harder to lose a receipt without noticing. Common formats: 0001, 0002, 0003; or RCT-2026-01, RCT-2026-02; or by month, 2026-04-001. The IRS doesn't dictate a format — they care that you can show the audit trail and don't reuse numbers. The tool's default is '0001' so you can change it to whatever scheme fits your books.
- What if I made a mistake on a receipt I already sent?
- Don't edit the original. Generate a new receipt with a note like 'Replaces receipt #0042' and a new number. Then mark the original in your records as 'voided — see receipt #0043'. This is the standard accounting practice — silently editing a receipt that's already in someone else's records makes the audit trail useless.
