How to Invoice a Foreign Client in English From Portugal

I checked something this week that I'd been assuming was true for years: that if you don't want to pay for invoicing software, you can always fall back on the government's own tools. That's correct if your client is Portuguese. It stops being correct the moment your client needs the document in English.

Portal das Finanças, the free government invoicing tool ("Faturas e Recibos Verdes"), has an English toggle. So does ATGO, the AT's own mobile app. Switch either one to English and the menus, buttons, and field labels change. The invoice itself doesn't. Generate one, and what lands in your client's inbox is entirely in Portuguese: Fatura, Total a Pagar, the works. There's no language setting on the document. Not a checkbox, not a dropdown, nothing.

For a freelancer invoicing only Portuguese clients, this never comes up. For anyone with clients abroad, an accounts payable clerk in Stockholm or Berlin isn't going to process a document they can't read, and asking a client to run your invoice through Google Translate isn't a good look for a professional relationship you're trying to build.

So is invoicing in English even allowed?

Yes, and this part surprises people. There's no rule requiring Portuguese invoices. The Portuguese-language default comes from general commercial law, not from the tax code specifically, and EU VAT rules are explicit that a member state cannot impose a blanket translation requirement on invoices. Portugal's tax authority can ask you to produce a Portuguese version if they audit you. It cannot require every invoice you issue to already be in Portuguese.

Practically: you can issue in English, or in your client's language, as long as you can produce a Portuguese rendering on request. If your invoicing records are structured data rather than static images, that's normally trivial. This is standard practice among certified invoicing platforms, most support a per-customer language setting.

What has to stay in Portuguese, regardless

Two things don't move, even on an English invoice:

The certified-software statement. Every fiscally valid Portuguese invoice carries a fixed legal line confirming it came from AT-certified software, something like "Processado por programa certificado n.º XXXX/AT". This is a prescribed legal expression, not a label you translate. An English gloss underneath it is fine. Replacing it isn't.

VAT exemption or reverse-charge wording. If you're VAT-exempt under Article 53, or applying the reverse-charge mechanism for an EU business client, the specific statutory phrasing that justifies the exemption has to appear on the invoice. You can add an English explanation next to it. The Portuguese wording is what makes the invoice legally correct.

Everything else, the document title, line item descriptions, payment terms, your notes to the client, can be in English cleanly.

Why this pushes people off the free route

Here's the actual consequence of the government tools being Portuguese-only: it's not that invoicing in English is hard. It's that the free path can't do it, so anyone who needs an English invoice ends up looking at AT-certified third-party software whether they wanted to pay for something or not.

ATGO has a second limit worth knowing about if your foreign clients need the two-step invoice workflow: it can only issue a fatura-recibo. No standard fatura, no separate receipt, nothing else. That's fine for a client who pays the moment you invoice them. It's not enough for a foreign accounts-payable process that needs a fatura first and a receipt once payment clears.

That's a reasonable thing to need software for. But it's worth being precise about why, because "the free option can't do this specific thing" is a narrower problem than "the free option is bad." If your only client is a construction firm in Braga, you don't need any of this. If half your invoices go abroad, the free portal was never going to cover your workflow anyway, this is just the specific gap that makes that obvious.

One thing worth checking before you commit to a tool: an English interface on the software itself isn't the same guarantee as an English invoice. It's the exact same trap the government tools fall into. Generate a real test invoice, not just click through the settings, before you assume the document your client receives matches the language you picked in the menu.

How Descodify handles this

Every customer profile carries a preferred invoice language. Set it once, and every invoice to that client renders in that language automatically, English or Portuguese, with the certified-software statement staying in Portuguese underneath, exactly as the rules require. You don't choose a language per invoice; you set it once per client and it's consistent from then on. It's part of the free invoicing feature, not a paid add-on.

The bottom line

The AT portal and ATGO will happily show you an English menu while handing your client a Portuguese document, and that mismatch is easy to miss until a client actually asks for a copy they can read. English invoices are legal in Portugal. Two specific lines, the certification statement and any exemption wording, stay in Portuguese no matter what language you pick for everything else. And if you need that English document regularly, the free government tools simply don't produce one, which is a real and specific reason to use certified software, not a vague one.

Related: Invoicing foreign clients as a solo entrepreneur in Portugal, the VAT rules for EU and non-EU clients, cash-basis timing, and the two-step fatura workflow.

Related: Certified invoicing software for freelancers in Portugal, what "AT-certified" actually requires and how the free and paid tiers compare.