What's the best way of numbering invoices?

Question

I'm self-employed and have never really known what's the best way of numbering invoices. I've come up with my own system whereby I number them with the date, preceeded by the client's initials, for example MB211207. It seems to work as I can always find what invoices I issued in any given month, but I wondered if there is a more efficient or beneficial way of doing it. Any business people have any advice?

Answer 1

It doesn't matter if it works for you. We don't send many and just have a 5 number number stamp and put them on a list then file by invoice number and type the list into a spreadsheet and print a list by customer the sort and print by date or invoice number but we only send about 10 invoices a month at the most and each is backed by a file folder or box of back up data. When we send a partial invoice then we add a letter to the number for each additional invoice on the same job.

Answer 2

QuickBooks is good. Very useful, but it costs about $200. However, everything is on the computer so it's easy to search invoices and manage accounts.