I have collected two standard documents from three different companies. One of which is a standard letter and the other an invoice. The three companies that I have chosen are ‘Abbey National’, ‘The Sheffield city council’ and ‘M and M sports’. The reason for these choices is that they are all different organisations and therefore I can compare and contrast the differences between them. The purpose of an invoice is basically that it is a receipt. The most common type is to show a customer the details of a purchase such as buying a car, or something which deals with a payment i.

e. taking money out of a bank account. It shows the customer the date which the payment was made and in some cases is the proof that they actually bought it. A standard business letter has different purposes. The most common purpose of business letters is to inform readers of specific information. However, you might also write a business letter to persuade others to take action or to propose your ideas. Business letters at times are also used for advertisement purposes. Although the three invoices are from different companies, they all share a common ground.

Each of the invoices shows a description of what the invoice is for and calculations that show the amount of money involved. As most invoices are set out in a similar way it is clear to see that the three invoices are in a table format. The invoice from Abbey National differs slightly to the other two. This invoice shows a deposit of money into an account, where as the other two are showing the customer details of a payment that has been made. Similarly these two invoices show the prices of each item.

In the case of the Sheffield City Council invoice it shows the charge for servicing the drainage system in the road. The Sports catalogue, M and M sports invoice is giving the amount charged for each of the items purchased. They both show the individual costs, the VAT rate and amount if any, and the sub and grand totals. The font that is used is used throughout the entire document. The font that is used is Arial. The areas of the invoice which are meant for the customer are in capitals. The description which the organisation wants the customer to read first is in capitals.

It is made so that the bits of the invoice that are important and need to be read stand out more than the rest of it. When you look at it you get drawn to the areas where the font is capital rather than the areas where the font is regular. Like this invoice, the M and M sports one also uses the Arial font with a capital style. It differs however, as it only uses the capital style on the section that is naming the products that have been bought. It also uses the bold style to draw the attention of its reader to the list of products and the total.

This organisation chooses to bring more attention to the total of the purchase. The text used is larger than that of the rest of the document. The text is white on a black background which instantly shows the reader exactly what the amount paid was. The third invoice that I am going to look at is from Abbey National. It is quite a lot different that the other two. As it is an invoice for a deposit and the amount will vary, it has been made in two stages. The invoice has been pre printed blank and it has been put into a dot matrix printer so that the details can be printed onto it.

Looking at the three invoices it is clear to see which one is the most reader friendly and which one is the easiest to understand. In the case of the Sheffield City council: It is printed on yellow paper which not only makes it not only clearer to read but it also allows you to access it easily. For example if you were trying to find the invoice from M and M Sports amongst a pile of other letters it would be difficult because they are all the same colour. Where as if you were looking for the Council invoice which is yellow it would be obvious where the invoice was.

All three of the invoices are easy to understand because they are all set out in a table format with clear headings of the different sections. As mentioned before, the fonts and styles used on the invoices allow them to be easily read. Although the three can be easily read, the one which is the easiest to understand is the deposit invoice from Abbey National. Instead of giving details about everything such as the ref no etc, it gives just the necessary information. The name of the customer, the details of the customer, the date and the signature of the cashier that dealt with the deposit are the only bits of information on it.