How to Invoice a Brand as a Creator (Free Template, GST & TDS Covered)

A signed deal isn't finished until an invoice actually goes out — and for a lot of creators, that's the step that quietly stalls the longest, because "send an invoice" turns out to hide a dozen small decisions: what to call each line item, whether to charge tax, how to number it, what happens if the brand deducts something before it pays. None of it is complicated once you've seen it done right once. Most creators just haven't.

What actually belongs on the invoice

• Your business details — legal name, and if you're registered, your GSTIN. This is worth setting up once rather than retyping on every invoice.
• The brand's details — who's actually paying, not just who you were DMing with.
• Line items, one per deliverable — "Instagram Reel," "2 Story frames," "Usage rights (30 days)" — priced separately, not bundled into one vague "content" line. A brand can see exactly what they're paying for, and you have a record if a future negotiation references a past rate.
• An invoice number — and this is where a lot of DIY invoices quietly fall apart.

Why invoice numbering matters more than it seems to

A gap or a duplicate in your invoice numbers is exactly what a tax filing (or an accountant, or an audit) flags first. The reliable way to avoid it is a gapless, sequential, per-financial-year series — a number gets assigned the moment an invoice is created, so even a draft you later delete keeps its number instead of leaving a suspicious hole in the sequence. A financial year in India runs April to March, which is why a real system resets the counter there, not on the calendar new year.

GST: added to the total

If you're GST-registered, GST is charged to the brand and belongs on the face of the invoice, added to your fee to produce the total the brand actually owes. Set your default GST percentage once, and every new invoice starts from it — you're adjusting per-deal only when a deal genuinely differs, not re-deciding your tax rate every time.

TDS: tracked, never subtracted from the invoice

This is the part most generic invoice templates get wrong, because it isn't intuitive: TDS (Tax Deducted at Source) is deducted by the brand, at their end, when they pay you — not something you subtract from your own invoice total. Your invoice should print a note ("subject to TDS deduction at X%") so the brand and you both have the same expectation, and the gap between what you invoiced and what actually lands should be tracked as exactly that — a gap, explained by TDS — not as a mysteriously unpaid balance you keep chasing for money that was never coming to you in the first place.

A ₹50,000 invoice that lands as ₹45,000 because of a 10% TDS deduction isn't a partial payment problem to solve. It's the system working as designed — as long as you tracked it as TDS, not as ₹5,000 gone missing.

Sending it and getting paid

An invoice itself doesn't need to be complicated to send: a PDF, with your logo and signature if you want the polish, sent however you already communicate with the brand — email, DM, or their own vendor portal. There's no payment gateway wired into the invoice itself; you're not collecting a card payment through it. You send the PDF, and once the money actually arrives, you record it as paid — and critically, record how much arrived, since that's the number that reveals whether TDS (or anything else) came out of it.

A simple checklist before you hit send

1. Business profile filled in once — legal name, GSTIN if applicable, bank details, default GST/TDS rates.
2. Every deliverable as its own line item, priced individually.
3. GST added to the total, if applicable — never absorbed into your fee.
4. A TDS note included, if the brand will be deducting it.
5. The invoice number assigned automatically, not typed by hand.

knit.bio's Money Suite generates GST- and TDS-ready invoices with automatic, gapless numbering — free on every plan. See how invoicing works, or start free and send your first one today.