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Freelance artist invoice template for Accounting

hey everybody jesse nyberg here welcome back to the channel and today like the title says the video is going to be all about design contracts and invoicing so i wanted to make this video because i've heard a lot more of talk about these things in the communities i'm in around design lately and it kind of took me a while to get the hang of these things during my time in college so i wanted to put out a video to help people out and as well as like share the knowledge that i've gathered on this subject over the years so basically in this video we're just going to be going over my indesign template i'm going to link that in description for you guys to download super easy you could just change out all the text and everything and then we're going to go over that pretty much how i handle pricing and dealing with clients and like just protecting yourself and the client for many issues down the road then we're going to also be going over uh wave apps which is a software i use to do like accounting bookkeeping and just basic invoices and things like that that's been really helpful so if this video is helpful to you please remember to like comment subscribe and let me know in the comments if there's anything that you do when it comes to client work and any best practices you've kind of gathered over the years and with that being said we're going to head over into indesign and take a look at the contracts [Music] so just to go over this uh quickly how i do this is i have my name up here you can put your logo whatever kind of brand like fonts you use and things like that and then i usually highlight it with like my kind of brand identity orange so feel free to switch that out so right here basically i would put the client and company name and that would be uh you know if they don't have a name if it's just an independent person you can put their name there too and then i'll put the date so february 9th 2021 uh put whatever you want obviously whatever the day is going to be there but and then you want to have your name client name and then project description so for the sake of the template in this video i did a logo design and album art and all these rates and things are kind of arbitrary they're not exactly like what i do but just wanted to give you a general example so scope of work this is where i kind of outline basically what i will be doing all the deliverables the person will get and then in the next area i go over the timeline of how long each of those stages of the project will take so this is an important little piece right here all prices are baseline prices additional fees may be applied these fees cover the design not the production cost so you know let's say you're creating a business card or a poster or a website and they need to buy hosting domain print materials you're not your fee is not all comprehensive and it doesn't cover like whatever production they have to be doing because i mean most people know that these days but it's always helpful to throw that in there and then i say baseline prices because you want to set up an agreed amount of revisions that way you can reference back to the contract if they if you've already done five revisions and that was your limit that each one after that will be an extra charge and you'll see that later down so right here you have vector logo design in all file formats so i'll pretty much give the person the ai spg eps jpeg png whatever they need and so for this it's vector logo design and then two to three drafts up front and one final revision upon review with designer and client so basically i'll create like two to three sometimes i'll create one if i'm really confident on it and i felt like me and the client had a good understanding of what we were going for and so but then after the review i'll do another refinement stage to kind of take that concept they chose break it out into like maybe one or two more options and then from there if we if it's good to go it's good to go if not i'll do one more and depending on the price and their budget sometimes i'll give people a big discount if like the less revisions are going to be required or vice versa you know if they're paying a lot you kind of probably have to deal with some more revisions and things so then we'll review that'll be good to go and this is kind of a two-part project for the example so album cover art design so you'll we'll use the we'll do the logo first and the album cover art and so timing this is an important part because you want the client to be able to know how long each phase is going to take and i usually give myself more time like five weeks maybe long for just a logo design at your time but you want to give yourself enough time that way in case anything does come up and you know how life can throw a wrench in some of your sometimes so you want to be able to protect yourself that way after the contract sign and the first payment is received we'll begin the process so this timing doesn't start when i send the contract it signs when the 50 up front is paid and the contract is signed that way you know they're not sitting on it for a week in email and that week goes wasted so we'll have sketching ideas mood boarding you probably have already done that maybe in the earlier stage for the mood board and went through something with the client the next week initial ideas then the final logo album art you basically just want to break it down whatever the project is and so pricing this is everyone's favorite part obviously you want to make money so fifteen hundred dollars for this project let's say fifty percent up front and the rest upon completion so if you get to decide this project on your own terms that's usually my preferred way basically half and then the other half will be at the end and then i'll show you later in the video i use this software called wave to do invoicing and payments and things and then each extra revision after second is an additional 75 dollars so that number isn't really fixed i'll change it depending on like if the project's a really like low budget project it may not be 75 if the entire project's only a few hundred dollars you know and then down here at the on the contract i basically have you want to have your website email phone number phone numbers kind of a if maybe a personal preference you might not want everyone having it but it's always good to be there and so the next page it kind of follows the same header and like subheading i just let that go throughout the entire document this is where kind of the more like legal stuff comes in and there's a lot of good resources online for like aiga and a few other places and i'll link them in the description that can help you craft one of these like more legal documents and i kind of used that and a few other sources and came up with this one the work client requests desire to create all that is specified under pricing of the proposal work includes the final deliverable art and not any preliminary work or sketches payment 50 and then you want to put i put within 14 days of the receipt and then basically you with the invoice 30 45 and 60 days from the original invoice basically what the second part is is the payment 50 up front 50 at the end and setting days like net 30 net 45 net 60 where each time you cross those thresholds if the client still hasn't paid yet it's like a late fee so estimates this is saying that this entire project is all estimated and there may be more charges if you you know go over a crazy amount of revisions you're granting rights to yourself to use the work in your portfolio this is an important one because you always want to like you might not always be able to use the logo on like social media or just like blast it everywhere because the client wants it to be like more private but if you can get this in there it's really helpful that way unless you're locked under an nda you can um have the logo in your portfolio and it'll help you get you know other jobs or whatever it is logo album art that's basically what this says right here too um cancellation so this one is uh pretty important it's called like a cancel fee kill fee you can look up more online there's a lot about that basically what this does is protects you from you know you set a set fee minus 200 for this project so let's say i work on one third of the project of 1500 that would be 500 bucks you may not get all that 500 because the person's like quitting on you or doesn't want to work anymore but you want to implement a kill fee that way if they don't want to finish the project you're not completely screwed and that fee will pay to like kind of void everything and they can move on you can move on whatever so this is basically just saying that the client agrees that they'll not be liable if anything happens to you or failure to perform or whatever and then uh the eight and nine look up stuff a little bit more about this because it depends on your state so in california mine's kind of set up for that so you may want to make sure if you're in europe asia or another state that all these rules still apply and everything and then right here just basic designer name designer signature client name client signature and what i do is i send this as i export this as a pdf this is file export and then i take that pdf into acrobat and from there i just do the digital sign send it to them get it back i usually print out a copy throw it in a folder and then also save a copy in a digital folder so if this is helpful please make sure you um get the template in the description and i hope it helps you out and gets you a better understanding of like client work and pricings and things and so the next part here i'm going to be showing you uh the app i use for invoicing so every contract you know is paired with the invoice so we'll go here waveapps.com your account let me just get into the account so type in my information and all that okay so this app is really cool because it has not only invoicing capabilities but it has like accounting you can hook up your banking to it i use it for taxes as well because i check like how much i'm spending things like that and just kind of personal finance app all like it's like calling all inclusive with that stuff but the main one you're going to want to do is you go to this left sidebar once you get your account set up and you go to sales invoices and so see these are just some past invoices uh and then i usually number them and it keeps these it keeps them all organized so you can go back and you have the proof you have it for your 1099 for your taxes and you have it for um basically like if you ever need to reference it or see that you haven't been paid or you have been paid and just a random quick tip if you're working as a freelancer my role with them at least living in california and in the united states i usually try to save around 30 percent of whatever the income is from the project that way i'm not owing a bunch of money in taxes and i have it all covered and i just put it away and if you're interested in hearing more about stuff like taxes and just like personal finance within like freelancing and self-employment let me know in the comments and i can probably work on another video for that all right so from here you want to go on the top right create an invoice and let's say this will be your first one this is where you add a customer so you'll have different customers that you've used in the past and then you can just type it in and if you need to create a new one that's new to this the customer will be uh youtube and then this stuff you might not need shipping and things that'll be more for if like you're sending physical products or you need it for checks or anything you'll save that there and this will start you out normally at invoice.0001 and then from there on it'll keep track and go to the next one the next one and so on and so here you'll put the date of the invoice so you'll create that that date will be the date that you created on the contract and then the payment due date is when uh it's due and usually you'll do the 50 so i'll usually create the invoice for 50 send that over and then the next due date will be at the end of the project okay so and then right here this is pretty cool you just add the item so let's say logo design and if you broke it into different parts you know you can write a little description vector files all right to client the quantity is kind of irrelevant for like design work unless it's like 50 social posts or whatever let's say the price let's say you split it up where it was the project was 1500 and you did the the logo for you know 800 and then you did the next part would be then you did the album art so created in photoshop or whatever description you want to write for it and let's say you did the album art for 700 and it shows you the total right here so then you have fifteen hundred dollars total you can choose which type of currency it is depending on where you are i'm pretty sure this will auto generate if you have like location services on and things and then the notes you know maybe you put uh the terms like very important from your contract or you can put just um anything really like have a nice dare thank you for your thank you for this like opportunity or thanks for working with me you know it's always good to like be respectful and nice to the clients because without them you're not making any money and without you they're not getting the designs they need so it's good to have like a mutual respect for each other once you do that you're going to go save and continue and then it'll tell you this is a draft blah blah blah you'll kind of go over it and you can brand this more if you want in the settings and things i know a lot of people like to do their own invoices in like indesign or illustrator and i think that that's good for like making a super branded invoice but i personally like this because it keeps track of it better and it it gives them links and it'll remind them to pay without you having to go in an email like hey where's my money or instagram dm or whatever so that's always pretty nice to have the ai just send it out for you you can kind of cower away and design so you're gonna approve the draft and then you can set reminders for the due date like i was just talking about and then what i do is so you can do credit card recorded pay so let's say you're gonna be sending them it to charge through a card that's the way but other people may have their own ways of um kind of doing things so record a payment manually let's say you'll write in your notes paid through zell paid through paypal paid through vemma whatever you're using cash that way you can kind of set this down and record that it's been paid and everything and write it in the notes like on the date and like what type of payment they gave you and you can keep track of it even if it wasn't done through their exact like way of charging people through wave and so that's what i usually do um there's a ton of options for that i like using zell if you're working with like a lot bigger company and it's like an over a 500 thing they may have you sign a w9 and that's for their tax purposes and they may have their own contract so you gotta kind of keep your stuff synonymous with theirs and just see like how important is to you to work with that through their terms or your terms or whatever it may be if you have any questions about this app like let me know in the comments and i'll try to answer them and you can definitely go check out all their faq and everything wave something i'm a little bit newer to but i've been using it the past year or so and i've really liked it rather than creating my own pdf invoices it just makes the process a lot more seamless and it keeps track of it well you can print the pdf send them over that way what i usually do is i'll i'll save the pdf out of their site and then i'll just send it over and then if it's through zell i'll be like zell and give them my information thank you so much for watching i appreciate all the support if you want to support any further you can get exclusive content tutorials print assets and things on the patreon that's in the description the description will also have the contract template the discord community all that good stuff remember to like comment subscribe and i'll see you guys next time [Music] peace [Music] [Music] you