How to add your company branding to invoices
Invoices pick up your branding from your workspace settings, so you set it once and every invoice follows. Here is where each part shows up:
- Logo: on the online invoice page your customer opens to view and pay.
- Brand colour: on the online invoice page, the invoice email and the PDF.
- Business name: on the PDF and in the invoice email.
Branding works on every plan. You need to be allowed to change workspace settings, which is usually the owner or an admin. See invoicing in startbuddi for everything else invoices can do.
Why it matters
An invoice that carries your logo, colour and name looks trustworthy, and customers are less likely to question where the payment link came from. It takes about five minutes, and every future invoice picks it up automatically.
Have these ready before you start: your logo as a PNG or SVG under 2MB, your brand colour as a hex code (for example #0057FF), and the exact business name you want on the PDF.
Steps
- Open workspace settings
Click Settings, then Workspace. The Business Identity section holds your logo and business name.
- Upload your logo
Choose your logo file (PNG or SVG, 2MB at most), then click Upload logo. A logo with a transparent background looks best on the coloured header of the invoice page.
- Check your business name
Make sure Business Name is the name you want customers to see. It prints at the top of every invoice PDF and appears in the invoice email.
- Pick your brand colour
Scroll to Brand Color ("used on booking pages, invoices, and customer-facing forms") and choose your colour. Click Save Changes at the bottom of the page.
- Set your invoice defaults
Go to Money Manager, then Settings, and open Invoice defaults. Set the Invoice prefix (for example INV), Due after (7, 14, 21 or 30 days), Tax label, Tax rate and Invoice footer note. A preview shows how it looks. Click Save changes. These apply to invoices you create from now on.
- Check a real invoice
Open any invoice from Invoices. Click View as client to see the page your customer gets, with your logo and colour, and Download PDF to check the printed version.
Your brand colour is shared with other customer-facing pages, such as your booking pages and forms, so changing it here changes it there too. Pick a colour that is easy to read text against.
If you use more than one currency or tax, set the most common one as your default. You can still change the currency, tax rate and footer on each invoice as you build it.
Next step: send yourself a test invoice by email and open it on your phone, the way most customers will see it.
Troubleshooting
My logo shows on the invoice page but not on the PDF.
That is expected. The PDF uses your business name and brand colour; the logo appears on the online invoice page your customer opens.
The logo upload failed.
Workspace logos must be 2MB or smaller. Export a smaller PNG or SVG and upload it again.
I changed the footer but an old invoice didn't update.
Invoice defaults apply to new invoices. To change an existing one, open it and click Edit invoice.
Chinedu Kalu is the co-founder and chief operating officer of startbuddi, responsible for how the company runs day to day. Chinedu writes about the operational side of a small business: registering and running the company, money, hiring and the routines that keep a team on track.
Co-founded startbuddi and runs its operations