Receipt: templates and forms

For someone doing occasional self-employed work in Italy without a VAT number: the receipt, in Italian, that the worker gives the client on being paid, with both parties' details and tax codes, the work, the gross fee, 20% withholding tax if the client is a withholding agent, the net amount, the outside-VAT statement and a space for the €2 revenue stamp above €77.47. It is not an invoice: anyone with a VAT number invoices only electronically through the Exchange System (SdI).

For employer and employee in Spain when an employment contract ends, whatever the reason. It itemises the settlement — outstanding pay, the proportional part of the extra payments, holidays not taken, any severance and deductions —, the total in words and figures, whether it is signed before a workers' representative (art. 49.2 of the Spanish Workers' Statute) and space for the employee to write remarks, for example disagreeing with an item. Both sides sign it. In Spanish.

The receipt in which someone in Greece who takes money from a private person confirms it: who paid and who received, the sum in figures and words, what it was for, the date and method of payment, and whether it settles the whole debt or is paid on account, with the balance. A debtor who pays is entitled to a written receipt and, on paying the whole debt, to the return of the debt document (art. 424 of the Greek Civil Code). It goes with the loan agreement, the acknowledgment of debt and the settlement.

A record of taking in a phone, computer, bike or appliance for repair, issued to the customer by the workshop or drawn up by the customer for the workshop to sign: the job number, the workshop's and customer's details, the item with its serial number, accessories, visible condition, the fault reported, the estimated cost and time, and a rule that more expensive work needs the customer's consent. At collection it proves the condition the item was left in.

For a creditor in Italy who receives payment of a debt – a loan repaid, a saldo e stralcio, the last instalment of a plan – and must issue a receipt, as article 1199 of the Italian Civil Code requires. The document, in Italian under Italian law, names the parties with their codice fiscale and states the amount, date and method of payment, the original debt and whether payment is in full or on account. The creditor signs it. Above €77.47 a €2 revenue stamp (marca da bollo), bought at a tobacconist's, must be affixed.

For every time you leave originals with someone else — an accountant, a lawyer, an employer, a bank, an agent. The receipt lists the documents one by one, marks which are originals and which copies, and gives a date for their return. An original handed over without a receipt is later chased with no evidence that it was ever handed over at all.