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Make an invoice for Legal

if you're writing your first invoices right now you may have a few questions and there are a few things that you should definitely pay attention to i'll show you exactly what those are in this video [Music] so that we can take a look at what a legally compliant invoice should look like i'll take you onto my screen you might be wondering why you should actually create an invoice ing to legal requirements the first reason is pretty obvious and that is that your customer will usually only pay you when he has a proper invoice it is important for your customer to have a legally compliant invoice because he or she can claim the usd amount shown as input tax in their advance ust return they cannot do this with an incorrect invoice i've created a separate video on how to do this ust advance tax return you can find it linked in the upper right corner basically if you get a wrong invoice you are always allowed to request an invoice correction and you also have a legal right to a corrected invoice what you are not allowed to do is simply correct the invoice yourself and then claim it in the advanced ust return but first let's have a look at how you write your invoices first of all we should mention that there are legal requirements and regulations of what you should write on an invoice but there's no regulation which tool or which software you should use that means theoretically it would also be okay if you just took a piece of paper and wrote all the invoice information on this sheet of paper with your pencil that would also be considered a proper invoice i would not recommend doing that in real life but from a legal point of view it would be perfectly fine now this is the web interface of contest and it's been possible for a while now to write invoices via the contest web app and we will have a look at that [Music] we'll look at all the individual invoice items that should generally be included in each of your invoices so we'll take a look at the invoices here go to preview invoices and this invoice is basically already made okay let's simply just start at the top it's always important that your invoice has a number your invoice needs a consecutive number and consecutive means that it does not have to start at one you can also start it at 326 but then the next number should be 327 328 and so on you can also theoretically bring numbers and letters into this the only important thing is that the number is consecutive and that consecutive means that you have no jumps in the middle because if you were to start with the invoice number one for example and then the next number would be five then should you be audited by the tax office then you might wonder okay where are invoices number two three and four there's a missing aren't there and then under certain circumstances the tax office will start to estimate that you have more income and you'll have to pay a lot more taxes even if these invoices never existed to avoid this you should always use a consecutive invoice number in addition you should of course list your customer on your invoice here hans meyer in neuestrasse 12 in one two three four five berlin in germany it is important here to list the legally correct description of your customer because mistakes tend to happen here if hans meyer is the sole proprietor of a business then hans meyer is the correct name if it is a gmbh then the name of your customer must be absolutely correct and if that name is hans meyer gmbh and kokg it absolutely has to be hans meyer gmbh and co kg don't leave out something there also your name and your address have to be there so in this case on the right side melissa neumann stoyan contest.com the phone number which is not legally required and neither is the email address but the address is here castanelle89b in 10435 berlin in germany it is important that you list your own address it is also important especially for the sole proprietorships and i see this over and over that a company name is made up here if you are registered as a sole proprietorship a so-called einstein then you are not allowed to for example write quick it here which would not be your company name but your brand name but you would have to use your own name as the name of the company you may include the brand name on the invoice but as a insulin denim that company is always under your personal name also your invoice must state either your tax number or your ust number in this case i've entered both numbers that's not necessary it is enough to put one of these numbers on your invoice but from personal experience i would always recommend that you indicate the ust number because as i mentioned in a previous video which i'll link here the tax number is something like the internal file number for you at the tax office and you might not want to send your personal file number at the tax office to all your customers to avoid that you can always use the ust identification number with which it is not possible to draw any conclusions about you or to request information from the tax office this is why i always recommend to use your ust number if you have it on your invoice another legal requirement is the date each of your invoices needs a date this is not a big surprise but an invoice without a date is not legally valid either you should also list what you're writing the invoice for in this case it's social media consulting for youtube and it's 25 hours times 100 euros with the ust rate of 19 which results in a net amount and here are several details that are important first of all you have to list the position that is what the invoice is actually for the um zachtoyah tax law speaks of the customer designation in type and quantity of the delivered goods or scope and nature of the service this is fulfilled if you write here for example social media consulting for youtube i have also listed a travel allowance or a continuation of travel expenses by the way there are some fairly frequent errors in the calculation of travel expenses because often the wrong ust rate is chosen i recently made a video about this that i'll link here in the upper right corner please have a look at it if you need to calculate your travel expenses you should also list the net amounts as i have done here 2 500 euros and also 150 euros and the applied ust rate this is also listed separately in each position of the invoice and in this case 19 which is a net sum of 2 650 euros plus the ust tax and the amount of only the usc tax and at the end a total gross invoice you should always present this in the same detailed way and not just write a total amount that's supposed to contain all taxes or include 19 ust tax you are actually required to always list the net invoice total the separation by tax rates the applicable tax rate and the tax amount [Music] paragraph 14 of the um zach stoya tax act actually states that all of this must be shown separately on each individual invoice in addition and this is very often forgotten a date of performance should be listed on the invoice usually the month is fine if you list a rate and you then include service date corresponds to invoice date that's usually enough what also works well is if you have a consulting service or you offer a service for example that you simply include the month in the description of the service here for example social media consulting for youtube in june 2021 that's what i'm writing this invoice for with this i fulfilled the legal requirements of the performance period however what you should not forget even if there is no legal obligation of course you need to include your own bank account details so in addition you should also provide your own account details i hope this short video has helped you if you have any further questions please leave us a comment below this video or have a look at the video description there you will find a link where you can book a free consultation and then we can talk in person also be sure to subscribe to the channel you can do that here or watch our other videos which you can find here and here [Music] you