Pick the page size first

A5 — 148 × 210 mm — is the default bill book size across the Gulf and South Asia, and every print shop stocks paper for it. Receipt pads and restaurant order slips usually run A6 (105 × 148 mm) or a third of A4 (99 × 210 mm), which is also the standard voucher size.

Choose before you lay anything out. Moving a finished design from A5 to A6 means redoing the table, not scaling it — the row height stops being writable by hand.

What goes on the page

A bill book is a form somebody fills in with a pen, so the layout is mostly blank space with labels. Working down the page:

Header block — logo, business name, address, phone, email, and your tax registration number. This is the part your customer photographs, so keep it legible at arm's length.
Document title and serial — top right. The serial is the reason the book exists as a book rather than loose sheets.
Customer fields — name, address, mobile, date, and their tax number if you invoice other businesses. Dotted rules, not solid, so they read as writable.
Item table — eight to ten ruled rows. Columns for serial, description, quantity, rate and amount. Rows want at least 6 mm of height or nobody can write in them.
Totals block — subtotal, tax at your rate, and the final total. Bottom right, aligned with the amount column.
Footer — terms line and a signature rule.

Serial numbering is the whole point

A numbered book means each set carries a unique serial, printed before you ever use it. It's what makes the book auditable, and it's why a tax authority will accept it.

Four decisions: a prefix (INV-, EST-, 2026/), how many digits (001 or 0001), where the numbering starts, and how many sets the book holds. If your last book ended at 250, start the next one at 251 — the sequence should run unbroken across books, not restart.

Print shops charge extra to add numbering, because on their side it's a separate pass. If your PDF already has every page numbered, that line comes off the quote.

Duplicate and triplicate books

Carbonless paper — often sold as NCR — copies what you write onto the sheets beneath. Two sheets per set is a duplicate book: one copy for the customer, one stays bound. Three is triplicate, usually customer, accounts and driver.

Every sheet in a set carries the same serial, and each is labelled Original, Duplicate or Triplicate. Getting that wrong is the most common mistake in a home-made bill book — a set where the copies have different numbers is useless for reconciliation.

The print specs a shop will ask for

Bleed — 3 mm of artwork past the trim on every edge. Cutting is never perfect, and without bleed you get white slivers along the edges of coloured bands.
Safe margin — keep text at least 5 mm inside the trim line so nothing important gets cut.
Crop marks — corner marks showing where to trim.
Vector, not pixels — a vector PDF stays sharp and stays small. A 50-page book of 300 DPI images can run into hundreds of megabytes, and most shops can't accept the file by email.
Live text — keeping text selectable lets the printer preflight the file and check fonts. Some shops will ask you to outline fonts instead; ask before you send.

Tax fields differ by country

The label on your registration number is not universal. It's TRN in the UAE, GSTIN in India, NTN in Pakistan, BIN in Bangladesh, and VAT number in the UK. Rates differ too, and so does date order — day-month in most of these markets, month-day in the US.

A template built for one country will look wrong in another, which is worth checking before you print five hundred copies.

What to check before you send the file

Print one page at true size on plain paper and write on it. Rows too tight is the failure you only notice with a pen in hand.
Check the first and last serial actually match what you set.
Read the tax number character by character.
If there's a QR code on the page, scan the printed version — not the screen.
Confirm the page count: 50 sets in duplicate is 100 printed pages, not 50.

How to design an invoice book for printing