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E invoice format for small businesses

today we're gonna break down an invoice to a client how it should look how you should send it everything in between [Music] so coming on the heels of the how to charge a client video i got a lot of questions about just invoicing and just professional documents and and whatever so i thought it'd be i thought it'd be good to just touch on a video strictly on an invoice how an invoice should look how it should be how you should send it off and deal with the clients and furthermore just kind of talk about that but just break down every step of this invoice here so as you can see from the invoice i've blocked out as far like personal information so the client's personal information address phone number as well as my information phone number etc but everything else is an exact this is what was sent to the client this is an invoice dealing with a very large um global company so here you can see up top uh what you're going to want to do is put your production company's name your info and as well as all of your info from you know your company's address email phone number etc you want to then have a bill to section of which you're going to have all of that company's information as well same thing the company's name their address phone number email just for your records you need all that information uh on the invoice up here we have the date of the invoice the invoice number and then yeah some of the just basic information up top here with uh the location you know production date etc so on your invoice i like to make it pretty clear uh what the invoice is for sometimes it's way more detailed sometimes it's a little more cut and dry and simple but as you can see here the description of this project was a behind-the-scenes video an unboxing review and and social media content posts now i could have gone into a little more detail there about what those content posts were such as you know two story posts one feed post etc but we had a contract and agreement outlining all of that in detail so i didn't feel the need to add it to the invoice because it was very clear and laid out in the contract agreement that we had as well so those worked this invoice and that worked simultaneously together and it was outlined clearly so i just had to give a brief description of what was expected and what the company could look at and go okay this is what we're paying so the total cost of this you know entire project is twelve thousand dollars now when you're dealing with a company they're not just gonna pay you twelve thousand dollars up front but you also don't wanna wait for the twelve thousand dollars until everything is done you should certainly get a deposit and in this case um you can see the breakdown here you always wanna break it down uh and of course give a little terms and conditions here but the the breakdown for this invoice is as follows the total was twelve thousand six thousand fifty percent do immediately that's before any work is done i need a 50 deposit to uh get started on this project so then i broke it down as follows with the final 50 uh 25 was due with delivery of the rough cut and then the of the rough cuts of you know all these things mentioned here and then the final 3000 or the final 25 was due upon final delivery of all assets and you know that was again um you know that all totals up to be thousand dollars but immediately right now six thousand dollars is due immediately and so you wanna highlight what is due whenever you're sending the invoice you wanna highlight what is due so it is clear what is due and then when you would make up you know a second invoice on the back end sometimes companies want you to to have the secondary invoice showing uh what's been paid and now what is due so on the second invoice if they ask for another invoice you would mark this as paid and then this would be due etc but in this case this is the very first invoice i sent so this is the breakdown 50 due this is what's due right now then below all that you know a nice little message always you know helps just to thank them for their business it's a pleasure that's just something i always like to add into there just to make it feel a little more personal and then of course at the bottom all your payment information and how you can be paid so for me i take direct deposit and or you know check i have my address here and then i take paypal as well but make a note that you know depending on whatever payment that you're accepting um that you have your your stipulations in there so if sent via paypal must be sent as friends or family otherwise paypal takes a large per you know it takes a large percentage of that payment that you're not gonna see so i'm letting the client know hey if you send us paypal that's fine but it needs to be sent as friends or family then that way also if they do send via paypal and you don't have that message down there and you just have paypal email and they don't send it as friends and family there's there's nothing that's telling them there's nothing that has told them that you only accept payment this way and so you have no leg to stand on when you come back to and be like hey paypal took that i need you to send it as this well you didn't make it clear you have to outline everything very clear when it comes to your invoicing your contracts with the client it's super important to outline everything and be clear and transparent about everything that's going down with your guys business now i broke it down in the last video typically it works like you know in the music video industry or just industry in general you can break down into payments whether it's 50 50 or 75 up front 25 on the back end etc that's typically how i do it but because of all the different facets with this one with there was like three different pieces from the behind the scenes the unboxing the social media content posts um and it was a decent sized little project budget um i broke it down into three payments that's kind of what we had agreed to when we spoke on the phone and i was totally fine and cool with that so there are ways you you're there's no right or wrong way in the sense of like oh it has to be 50 25 25 or 50 up front 50 on the back end it's up to you and the client to kind of decide those terms um but you as the production company hold the power in that regard and be like hey this is how i work i take 50 up front 50 do on the back end with completion or if you want to make it i take 75 up front 25 on the back end that's up to you to to decide um and and work it out with a client but you hold a lot of that power as a production company of like hey this is how i do my work so you can either kind of formulate this template yourself in like pages or a text document uh we also at tropicolor have you know templates production templates for all different types of things like i want to show you guys this real quick here so here this is like a template that we have in our production essentials documents for uh that we have a tropical color this is like a work for higher agreement so we'll do this all the time if we're hiring someone and we'll come up with an agreement so we would fill this out you know if we were hiring someone to do some work for us just so there was uh it's basically like a contract it's just a work for hire agreement so if i was hiring someone to do behind the scenes for me i could fill this out with you know my production company name the job that i would put all their information here i would you know lay out the payment terms the work days the start and end date uh just the list of deliverables and so this is just like a easy simple like contract if you will a work for hire agreement so that you know you have those details outlined so this would work simultaneously with this the company that i worked with here for this invoice sent me their own contract um an agreement um that they have made up and have created but this would work in the same capacity so they could put all their information here their production company name the job my information and the terms of which you know the deliverables and what what they expected on you know as far as like my rate they would put the twelve thousand dollars right in here and so um these these two things can work simultaneously together and uh you should always have an agreement that backs up what you're doing with your invoice if nothing else trying as best as you can lay out all project details in the description the invoice if you're not doing a contract i wouldn't recommend not doing a contract you should always at least have that but yeah these are from right here this is from our production essentials pack a tropicolor and that's pretty it that's the the simple breakdown of the invoice your information the company's information the description of the project the the breakdown of the cost highlight in red whatever is due right then with this invoice that you're sending whether that's the money up front or this is the secondary invoice that you send and this is money on the back end highlight it so it's clear put your terms in there so as soon i have it a hundred percent of this payment is due upon receipt so meaning as soon as they receive this invoice this six thousand dollars is due my payment information a little personal message you know the date invoice number that's really it that's the breakdown right there so hopefully this helped you get a little idea into what a a formal or proper invoice should look like and moving forward you can you know come off a little more professional to to any future clients because i know when i started out and i was making videos i didn't do any of this like this just it was so foreign to me i didn't go to business school i didn't have a mentor teaching me or telling me how to run a business and it's it's hard starting out to like run and operate a business because your mind doesn't work that way you're just trying to make and create videos and you're not sitting there thinking like of all of these little details that go into running and operating a business so hopefully this can help some of you guys and give you an idea on uh how to properly write and submit an invoice thumbs up smash the like button comment below if there's anything that you guys want to see uh else any other topics that you want me to cover um i'm here i'm trying to just pump out as much content for you guys as possible i'm reading all the comments as far as like what you guys want to see so just let me know what you guys want to see and i'll make a video covering it so appreciate you guys i'm jacob owens for the buff nerds and i'm out peace you