Other forms: invoices, invoicing, invoiced
An invoice is the formal bill one business sends another: what was supplied, how many, the price, the tax, and the date the money is due. The printer sends an invoice for two thousand leaflets; the freelancer sends an invoice on the last day of the month and then waits, and waits.
It is a verb as well — we'll invoice you in March, invoice the client for the extra hours. Keep the family apart, because learners mix them up: an invoice asks for money, a receipt proves money was paid, and a quote says what a job would cost before it starts. Businesses invoice each other; a restaurant brings you the bill, never the invoice. The set phrases are raise an invoice, issue an invoice, settle an invoice, and an outstanding invoice is one nobody has paid yet.
1nouninvoiceA document listing goods or services supplied and the money owed for them.~98%
“The invoice arrived with a thirty-day payment term.”
2verbsendTo send someone an invoice.~2%
“We'll invoice you for the materials separately.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 8 sentences found in the wild and placed 8 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
invoice is a business document.
Invoice came from Middle French envois, the plural of envoi, from the verb envoyer, 'to send'. An invoice was originally the list of things sent. The English word envoy — a messenger dispatched on someone else's behalf — grows from the same verb, which makes a neat pair: one sends the person, the other sends the paperwork.
Middle French
envois
English, today
invoice
Built from
Borrowed from Middle French envois, plural of envoi, from the verb envoyer (“to send”). See also envoy.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA