A blank template ready to fill in: your details, the customer, priced lines, totals, validity and planned terms. The Word file is edited directly, the PDF is printed.
Direct download, no sign-up and no email address. The template data is fictitious, including SIREN 000 000 000: replace it with your own.
A pro forma invoice looks like an invoice, but it comes before the sale. It prices precisely what the customer is about to buy: description, quantities, unit prices, taxes, payment and delivery terms.
The French customs authority defines it as an invoice "for form's sake", or a quote, showing all the elements of an ordinary invoice, but not recorded in the accounts and matching no payment. Two practical consequences:
When the sale happens, you issue a real invoice, with its own number and all its mandatory details.
No text sets a list specific to the pro forma invoice. Since it shows the elements of an ordinary invoice, the safest approach is to reuse the mandatory details of an invoice, as listed by service-public.fr, and to add what sets it apart.
What sets it apart from an invoice
What it takes from an invoice
| Quote | Pro forma invoice | Invoice | |
|---|---|---|---|
| When | Before the sale | Before the sale | After the sale or service |
| Role | Offer a price and terms | Present the future sale in invoice format | Record the sale and request payment |
| Commitment | Binds the customer once signed | No payment requested | Grounds the payment |
| Accounting | No | No | Yes, accounting document |
| Numbering | Quote series | Separate series | Chronological, continuous sequence |
In practice, the quote is used to get an offer accepted; the pro forma invoice serves the customer when a third party (bank, organisation, purchasing department) asks for a document presented as an invoice; the invoice comes once the sale is made. One sale can go through all three: signed quote, pro forma for the financing file, then invoice.
The grey areas in square brackets are to be replaced, in the Word file as on the printed PDF.
No. French customs define it as a document not recorded in the accounts and matching no payment. It is the invoice issued after the sale that is recorded in the accounts.
A number helps track exchanges with the customer. Use a separate series, for example PF-2026-0001: invoice numbering must remain chronological and continuous, and a pro forma has no place in it.
You set the period. Write an explicit expiry date on the document, for example thirty days after issue, so there is no doubt about how long the price is offered.
The pro forma calls for no payment. If the customer pays a deposit, issue a deposit invoice: that is the document recording the amount received, with its own mandatory details.
Yes. The Word and PDF files download directly from this page, with no sign-up and no email address. The data they contain is fictitious: replace it with your own.