Why a proper invoice matters
As a hairdresser or beauty professional, you want to focus on your craft. But when a client asks for an invoice, or when you work with business clients, that invoice needs to be correct. Tax authorities have specific requirements for what should appear on an invoice, and mistakes can lead to problems during an audit.
In this article, we show you exactly what an invoice should look like for a hair salon or beauty salon — with and without VAT.
What must appear on every invoice?
Regardless of whether you charge VAT, every invoice must contain:
- Your business name and address (or your own name as a sole trader)
- Your business registration number
- Client's name and address
- Invoice date
- Unique invoice number (sequential, e.g., 2026-001)
- Description of the treatment
- The amount
- Your bank account number (IBAN)
- Payment terms (usually 14 or 30 days)
Find more details in our article on invoicing for hairdressers.
Example 1: hairdresser invoice without VAT
If you qualify for the small business VAT exemption, you don't charge VAT and don't need a VAT number on your invoice. You do need to state that you're exempt.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Studio Hair & More Church Street 12, 5611 AB Eindhoven Chamber of Commerce: 12345678 To: Lisa de Vries School Street 5, 5612 CD Eindhoven Invoice number: 2026-014 Invoice date: 18 April 2026 Description Amount ───────────────────────────────────── Women's haircut € 35.00 Blow-dry and styling € 15.00 ───────────────────────────────────── Total € 50.00 VAT exempt under the small business scheme (KOR). Payment within 14 days to NL01 INGB 0001 2345 67 in the name of Studio Hair & More ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Example 2: beauty salon invoice with VAT
If you do charge VAT, you must separately list the amount excluding VAT, the VAT amount, and the total including VAT. Your VAT number must also appear on the invoice.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Beauty by Anna Market Square 8, 1012 AB Amsterdam Chamber of Commerce: 87654321 VAT: NL001234567B01 To: Salon Events BV Prinsengracht 100, 1015 DV Amsterdam Invoice number: 2026-042 Invoice date: 18 April 2026 Description Amount ───────────────────────────────────── Bridal makeup € 120.00 Trial makeup € 60.00 ───────────────────────────────────── Subtotal excl. VAT € 180.00 VAT 21% € 37.80 ───────────────────────────────────── Total incl. VAT € 217.80 Payment within 30 days to NL02 RABO 0098 7654 32 in the name of Beauty by Anna ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Example 3: nail salon invoice
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Nails by Kim Village Street 22, 3511 HA Utrecht Chamber of Commerce: 11223344 To: Sophie van Bergen Park Road 7, 3514 BC Utrecht Invoice number: 2026-008 Invoice date: 18 April 2026 Description Amount ───────────────────────────────────── Gel polish hands € 35.00 Nail art (2 nails) € 10.00 ───────────────────────────────────── Total € 45.00 VAT exempt under the small business scheme (KOR). Payment within 14 days to NL03 ABNA 0012 3456 78 in the name of Nails by Kim ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Common invoice mistakes
These are the most frequent errors we see:
No unique invoice number – Every invoice needs a sequential, unique number. Use a consistent format like 2026-001, 2026-002.
Missing business registration number – Required on every invoice you send as a business owner.
Showing VAT when you're VAT-exempt – If you don't need to charge VAT, state this clearly. You may not charge VAT or show a VAT number.
No payment terms – Without payment terms, the client doesn't know when payment is due.
Vague description – "Treatment" is too vague. Specify what you did: "Men's haircut" or "60-minute facial".
Never create invoices manually again
The easiest way to create invoices? Let it happen automatically. With a booking system like Bookura, an invoice is automatically generated with every payment. Connect it to Moneybird or e-Boekhouden, and everything lands in your accounting instantly.
No templates to maintain, no numbers to remember, no invoices to send. Your clients can download their invoice directly after booking.
Looking for the right invoicing software for hairdressers? Read our comparison.
Conclusion
A good invoice is clear, contains all required details, and takes just seconds to create — if you use the right tools. Use the examples above as a reference, or have your invoices created automatically with Bookura.
Never want to think about invoices again? Try Bookura for free.