Self Invoicing - what's that about?

[Ardesco]

You dont need to raise your own invoice to spot a mistake.

No but if it is done for me i'm more likely to be lazy and assume it's right.

And, how can self billing be anything to do with permiedom!?

Self billing doesnt even have any relevance to IR35 either in case anyone thinks it does.

I didn't say it was anything to do with permiedom, or anything to do with IR35, it just doesn't feel like the sort of thing a small business owner should do to me. I feel happier making my own invoices, it's personal preference.

The arrangement the agent has with hmrc is that if you are self billing, you dont raise an invoice as you create another tax point for VAT.

I dont have a problem with invoicing or using self billing. My last contract was self billing. One before that I invoiced.

As I said, I dont see why anyone has any qualms over it.

Some like it, some don't, each to thier own I say. Me personally, I don't.

[Morlock]

Double-entry Bookkeeping

If you don't raise your own invoices then you can't keep track of your debtors in a double-entry book-keeping system. The self-billing system instead relies on you as the supplier "remembering" what you're owed from the customer rather than accounting for it properly; effectively the timesheet becomes your record of sale - problem is there's no monetary amounts recorded on the timesheet. So, agencies self-billing you is probably fine if you've only got one customer and 12 timesheets per year, but otherwise it's got potential to lead to accounting errors.