Invoicing an Overseas Client, From Draft to Cleared Funds

You finished the work for a client in Germany. Your bank is in the US. They pay in EUR, you want USD, and their accounts payable team will not touch the invoice without a VAT ID, a PO number, and a billing entity that matches what is on their master vendor file. This is where most cross-border invoices stall for two or three weeks. The fix is to do a few things in the right order before you ever hit send.

Step 1: Confirm the legal billing entity before you draft anything

The name on the contract is often not the entity that pays. A client might sign as "Acme GmbH" but pay from "Acme Europe Holdings B.V." in the Netherlands for tax reasons. Email your contact one line: "Which legal entity should I invoice, and at what billing address?" Get the entity name, registered address, VAT or tax ID, and the name of the AP contact who actually processes payment. If they answer "just send it to me," push back politely. You will save a version cycle.

While you wait for that reply, decide whether you need a tax form on file. US contractors invoicing foreign clients often need to provide a W-8BEN or W-9 depending on direction. A non-US contractor billing a US client almost always needs to send a W-8BEN before the first payment, or the client may withhold 30 percent.

Step 2: Pick the currency and lock the FX assumption

You have three choices: invoice in your currency, invoice in theirs, or invoice in a third currency like USD. Invoicing in the client's currency is friendlier and usually paid faster, but you take the FX risk between issue date and payment date. If you go that route, run the amount through a currency converter at the spot rate and add a small buffer (1 to 2 percent) to cover the spread your bank will charge on conversion. Write the rate and date on the invoice as a note so there is no argument later.

If the project is large enough that a 3 percent FX move would hurt, invoice in your own currency and put the exchange burden on them. Most enterprise AP teams are fine with this. Smaller clients sometimes are not.

Step 3: Get the bank routing right the first time

For payments into a European account, you need IBAN and BIC/SWIFT. Validate the IBAN before you put it on the invoice; a single transposed digit will bounce the wire back five days later with a fee. The IBAN validator catches the obvious mistakes. For payments into a US account from abroad, include the SWIFT code of your bank, the ABA routing number, the account number, your full name as it appears on the account, and your bank's street address. Foreign banks ask for that address more often than you would think.

If you accept wires, mention who pays intermediary bank fees. The default on a SWIFT wire is "SHA," which means you eat a 15 to 40 dollar correspondent fee on your end. If you want the full invoice amount to land, specify OUR (sender pays all fees) on the invoice terms. Not every bank honors it, but asking helps.

Step 4: Draft the invoice with the fields AP actually needs

Open a new invoice and fill in the line items, payment terms, and bank details. The fields that get cross-border invoices rejected are almost always the same ones: missing PO number, wrong billing entity, missing VAT ID, missing tax note. Add a clear note line for the tax treatment, for example "Reverse charge applies, Article 196 EU VAT Directive" if you are a non-EU supplier billing an EU business. The full picture lives in the international invoicing playbook, including how the reverse charge and country-specific quirks work.

Set the due date with care. "Net 30" with a US client usually means 30 days. With a French or Italian enterprise it may mean 60 or 90 by local practice. Use the due date calculator to put a real date on the invoice, not just "Net 30," so there is no ambiguity across time zones.

Step 5: Send the link and let the client fix their own fields

Share the invoice link with your contact. They open it without signing up. If the PO number you have is wrong, or the billing entity is slightly off, they edit it directly and you get notified. You can revert if something looks suspicious. If they need a different currency or payment terms, they submit a change request and you approve or decline; that creates a new version (V2) which is the one they then forward to AP. This is the whole point of letting the recipient edit their own invoice: the back-and-forth that usually happens over five emails happens in the document itself.

Ask your contact to forward the invoice to AP from inside the link, with the AP contact set. Then watch the view status. If it has not been viewed by AP within three business days, nudge.

Step 6: Track approval, then watch for the wire

Once AP approves, the invoice version locks. That is your green light. Cross-border wires typically take 1 to 5 business days to clear after AP releases payment, longer if the funds route through a correspondent bank or hit a compliance review. Note the value date your bank shows, not the date the funds appear in your balance; some banks hold cross-border deposits an extra day.

If the wire is late by more than a week after approval, ask AP for the wire reference number and the date sent. With that, your bank can trace it. Without it, you are guessing.

What to do differently next time

Two changes pay for themselves on the second international invoice. First, save the client's full billing entity, VAT ID, AP contact, and preferred PO format the moment you confirm them, so the next invoice ships in five minutes. Second, if you bill the same overseas client repeatedly, send a signed quote upfront with the currency and terms locked, so the invoice is just paperwork. For broader tactics on shaving days off the cycle, see the notes on getting invoices paid faster. The international part stops being scary once the first one clears.