Taxi invoice template: what to put on a UK taxi invoice

Invoice or receipt — which do you need?

They are two different documents and account work usually needs both.

• A receipt confirms money already paid: date, journey, amount, and who took it. Many councils' licence conditions require you to give a passenger a receipt on request, so check your own conditions.
• An invoice is a request for payment, sent before the money arrives. It carries payment terms and a due date, and it's what a school, care provider, hotel or company account needs before their finance team will pay you.

If you only ever take cash and card at the end of a trip, a receipt book is enough. The moment you take account work — the steady, pre-booked, commission-free work worth having — you need proper invoices.

What to put on a taxi invoice

There is no single statutory template for a sole trader's invoice. What matters is that it identifies both parties, the work, and the money clearly enough for the customer to pay it and for HMRC to follow it later. Include:

• The word "Invoice" and a unique invoice number — sequential, with no gaps.
• Your name and trading name, address (or a business contact address), phone and email.
• Your licence details — driver badge number, licensing authority, and vehicle plate where relevant. On account work this is exactly the reassurance a procurement team wants.
• The customer's name and address, plus their purchase-order or account reference if they use one.
• The invoice date, and the date or period the journeys cover.
• A line per journey — date, pickup, destination, passenger or booking reference, and the agreed fare. Waiting time, tolls, parking and airport drop-off charges go on their own lines so nobody has to guess.
• The total due, any deposit already paid, and the balance.
• Payment terms and method — for example payment within 14 or 30 days, with your bank name, sort code and account number.

Numbering and VAT

Number invoices in one unbroken sequence — INV-0001, INV-0002 — across every customer. Gaps and duplicates are the first thing an accountant or an HMRC enquiry picks up, and they make it hard to prove your takings are complete.

Most independent drivers are below the VAT registration threshold and simply don't mention VAT. If your turnover passes the current threshold on GOV.UK you must register, and your invoices then become VAT invoices with extra required detail: your VAT number, the VAT rate, the VAT amount and the net and gross totals. Never show a VAT line if you aren't registered — charging VAT you aren't registered for is a serious problem, not a rounding error.

Account customers: getting paid on time

• Agree the rate in writing before the first job, including waiting time and cancellation.
• Invoice on a fixed rhythm — weekly or monthly, covering all that period's journeys — rather than one invoice per trip. Finance teams pay batches faster than they pay a drip.
• Send it to the right address. School and council finance inboxes are rarely the person who booked the car.
• Chase politely and early. A short reminder the day after terms expire recovers more than a stern one a month later.

Keeping the records behind the invoice

The invoice is the visible half; HMRC cares about the trail. Keep copies of every invoice and receipt, your booking records, and your mileage log for at least five years after the 31 January Self Assessment deadline for that tax year. Digital copies are fine, and Making Tax Digital for Income Tax is being phased in, so clean digital records now save real pain later. See our guide to taxi driver tax and expenses for what those records feed into.

Stop retyping invoices

Building each invoice by hand in a word processor is where evenings go — and where numbering mistakes creep in. Original Drivers turns completed jobs into numbered invoices with your details and licence already on them, tracks what's paid and what's overdue, and rolls the totals into an accountant-ready year-end summary. No commission on any journey, ever.

Note: this guide is general information, not tax or legal advice. Check current HMRC guidance, your council's licence conditions, and your accountant for your own situation.