Italian tax laws permit a company or freelance to anticipate expenses "in the name and on behalf of the client" provided that these expenses are highlighted in (and relevant documents attached to) the final invoice.
Example
Let's assume I am Freelance working for Customer and it has been agreed that Customer pays me a train ticket. In order to avoid paying extraneous taxes and social security contributions on the price of the ticket, it needs to be accounted for separately from my work.
Let's also assume my VAT rate is 0%.
In this case, Freelance would buy the ticket from Train company but provide the billing information of Customer to said company. This way the invoice for the ticket will contain Customer as the purchaser.
Freelance would pay the ticket and then ask the money back by listing this expense in the invoice.
A typical invoice of Freelance then would look like this:
Description Amount
Did some stuff 100.00
Expenses paid in the name and on behalf of the client Amount
Train ticket 5.00
Sub-Total (net) 100.00
VAT 0.00
Sub-Total (expenses) 5.00
Total 105.00
Having the train ticket invoice attached as well.
Software I am looking for
I would like to use a software that is capable of generating invoices and can handle two different sub-totals, one for taxable items (if applicable) and one for expenses.
Must-have:
- free or open source
- multi-platform support
- support for two different sections with sub-totals
- possible to translate strings easily (either by setting the language or editing a template file)
- PDF generation
- keeping a list of invoices
Nice to have:
- preferrably online or self-hosted web based solution
- tracking paid/unpaid invoices (manually)
- sending invoices via email
- ability to show/hide some text notes on the bottom, w.r.t. the total reaching a certain threshold
