Gnucash is powerful, flexible and free accounting software that small businesses can use for invoicing.
Until recently Gnucash was lacking necessary customisations to produce valid Australian Tax Invoice as described in official "specification": Goods and Services Tax Ruling "GSTR 2011/D1".

In April 2012 Dmitry was working with Gnucash team to improve tax invoice in order to make it suitable for Australian business invoicing.
Results of this improvements will be available with next Gnucash release. If you're lucky Debian user, you can already use improved reports starting with Gnucash version 2.4.10-3 (June 2012).
Otherwise download the following files to ~/.gnucash folder:

and follow the instructions below.

Set up customised report for Australian GST invoices

This is a sample "tax invoice" report ([Report]-->[Business]-->[Tax Invoice]) setup for GST invoices,
see Australian tax invoices

Edit Report Options:

Display (cosmetic settings - non-critical)

table:border-collapse           [*]
table-header-border-color:      [grey]
table-cell-border-color:        [silver]

Elements (allow to enable/disable report components)

column: Date                    [_]
column: Tax Rate                [_]
column: Units                   [*]
row: contact                    [_]
row: address                    [_]
row: Invoice Number             [_]        // Invoice number on right-hand side above "Invoice Date"
row: Company Name               [_]        // Display of [Customer::Company Name] on left hand side
Invoice Number next to title    [*]        // Invoice number on right-hand after [General::Report title]

General

Report name:                    [AU Tax Invoice]
Report currency:                [AUD]                   // Displayed after "Amount Due" if set.

Headings1

Report title:                   [Tax Invoice]           // Displayed on top-right
Net Price:                      [Net Price (excl GST)]
Tax Amount:                     [GST Amount]
Total Price:                    [Total Price (incl GST)]

Note:

  • Use   instead of white space to prevent word wrap.
  • Alternatively on GNU/Linux systems a non-breaking space can be entered as [Ctrl+Shift+U + a0]

Headings2

Amount Due:                     [Total Amount Due]
Invoice number text:            [#]
To text:                        [To:]

After customisation use menu [File]-->[Add report] to save report under name given in [Report options]-->[General]-->[Report name]
(Report will be available in menu [Reports]-->[Custom reports]

See sample invoice (PDF).

Read how to set up Accounts for Australian GST at Gnucash Wiki

2013-08 update

Current version (GSTR2012/D3) of "Goods and Services Tax Ruling" is available from

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