--- title: "Invoicing as a dog walker (+ free template)" description: "What belongs on a dog walking invoice, a template you can copy, and how to stop losing Sunday evenings to working out who owes what." canonical_url: "https://woodle-app.com/guides/dog-walking-invoice-template" last_updated: "2026-09-17T08:59:48.119Z" --- Plenty of dog walkers run on bank transfers and trust, and it works right up until it does not: a client queries a month, and neither of you can reconstruct it. An invoice is the record that settles that conversation before it happens. ## What has to be on it As a sole trader who is not VAT registered, the requirements are light. What a usable invoice needs: - **Your name and address.** Your trading name if you have one, and your own name behind it. - **The client's name and address.** - **An invoice number**, unique and sequential. This matters more than it looks — see below. - **The invoice date**, and the period the work covers. - **A description of what you did**, with dates. Not "dog walking, October" but the actual walks. - **The amount**, and how to pay it. - **A payment term.** Fourteen days is common. If you are VAT registered, the requirements are considerably longer and include your VAT number, the rate applied and the VAT amount per rate. Most solo dog walkers never get there. ## Why the number matters Invoice numbers must be unique and should run in sequence without gaps. The reason is not bureaucratic tidiness — it is that a gap invites the question "what happened to number 14?", and "I deleted it" is not an answer anyone likes. If you issue an invoice and then need to undo it, you do not delete it. You issue a **credit note** — a second document, with its own number, that cancels the first. Both documents stay. Their sum is zero. The sequence stays intact. ## A template you can copy ```text Wanda Walking 12 Example Road, Exampleton, EX1 2AB wanda@example.com · 07700 900000 Invoice to: Otto Owner 5 Client Street, Exampleton, EX3 4CD Invoice number: 2026-014 Invoice date: 30 September 2026 Period: 1 – 30 September 2026 Dog walking, Rex — 12 walks (1, 3, 4, 8, 10, 11, 15, 17, 18, 22, 24, 25 September) 12 × £14.00 £168.00 Total due £168.00 Payable within 14 days to: Sort code 00-00-00 · Account 00000000 Reference: 2026-014 ``` Two details in there that are worth copying. **The dates are listed.** It turns "12 walks" from a number you have to trust into something the client can check against their own calendar, and it ends the query before it starts. And **the reference is the invoice number**, so when the money arrives you know what it was for. ## The monthly ritual, and why it goes wrong The usual method is to sit down at the end of the month and reconstruct it: scroll back through a calendar, a notes app, and a WhatsApp thread, and try to remember whether the Tuesday in week three happened. Two things go wrong, reliably. Walks get missed — and a missed walk is money you simply never receive, because nobody is going to remind you. And walks get double-counted, which is worse, because the client notices and now doubts the rest of it. Both have the same cause: the invoice is built from memory weeks after the fact, instead of from a record made at the time. ## What to do instead Record the walk when you do it. That is the whole method. Whether it is a notebook, a spreadsheet or an app matters far less than the timing — a record made on the day is right, and a record made three weeks later is a guess. If you track walks as they happen, the invoice is already written when the month ends. The Sunday evening disappears, and so do the queries. ## Getting paid State the payment term on the invoice and mean it. Fourteen days is standard. When something is overdue, send a short, unembarrassed reminder. Most late payment is not refusal — it is an invoice that got buried. The people who are worst at this are usually the ones who feel awkward asking, and the awkwardness costs them real money over a year. Keep your invoices for at least six years. HMRC can ask, and "my old phone had it" is not a record. ## Sitemap See the full [sitemap](/sitemap.md) for all pages.