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Influencer invoice template for Operations

[Music] hey guys it's Alice again so today I am joining you for the very first freelance Friday video if you didn't catch last week's update I'm actually doing any little series on this channel called freelance Fridays and I'm basically covering a bunch of topics to do with freelance work whether it be invoicing speaking to hires finding clients making money anything I can think of and anything you guys request I'm going to cover it so if you aren't already subscribed please make sure you do we're going to do this for as long as I have a topic to talk about so I hope you're going to enjoy it and let's get straight into it so for this week's as you can tell from the title is all about invoicing I'm going to talk you through a pretty boring topic but something that you don't get taught about in schools I wish you did so I actually have compiled a list of the things that I kind of go through and the things I've learned when invoicing clients now I actually have put this list onto my blog which I will leave in the top line of the description so if you want to recap on anything I've said or if you want a little bit more of a detailed version go over to my blog and you'll be able to copy that over there and read it whenever you want I'm also offering a free download of an invoice template so I've made up a template which you can easily download to your computer you can use Google Documents to edit it and make it your own and you know so you've got your own invoice template and you're all set up hopefully once you've listened and read all the information I have for you you're a little bit clearer in the world of invoicing because to be honest I'm still learning if you have anything to tell me that I've missed that you think I might found useful please do let me know we're all about sharing ideas and information on this channel so let's go home I'm already a breath so the general time when you should submit an invoice is when you have already completed the work so for example if let's say someone hired me to cover their event with social media to post an Instagram story or an Instagram photo the time that I would send the invoice is once I have done that on that evening I would probably get home and then send the invoice and the usual kind of payment terms for invoices are either 30 days 60 days or 90 days generally it is usually around 30 days that's most common that I have come across so 30 days from completing that work you should be paid for it should be fingers crossed but I'm hoping that by following these steps we can avoid late payments as much as possible so the main thing to include in the invoice is all of your information every single thing that that person paying you possibly needs to you know pay you without it being complicated so that includes your name email address house address like your account number sort code you need to put on there if you're getting paid via PayPal you need your PayPal address if you get impaired by cheque you need your actual home address you need to put your name on there as it appears on your bank account there's just a whole list of things you need to include this will all be in the blog post but some companies actually do ask for an eye bang code Iban yes that's the thing I'll just checked my notes or a Bic number and that only applies for like overseas transactions so for example if you're working for someone in Canada and they're trying to transfer you funds into your bank account they'll need an extra bit of information now you don't always need those numbers but if you do and if someone asks you about them you can very easily find them on your online banking system and in mine is just in like the more account information drop-down and then the two numbers are there so that is something I've definitely learned the hard way because overseas accounts and need that extra bit of information so definitely bare their mind all the things to list is like a breakdown of the work you've done so if I've done a paid Instagram post or a paid Instagram story I would list those and then list next to them the cost per each one sometimes it's an overall cost so put that on the end and then add a total final sum everything added up together in the bottom in a bigger bit of writing so your client can see how much it is that you're owed also include an invoice number just for your own records so you can keep track of which ones which and also make sure you pour a due date on it so for example if I sent mine today on the 7th of September I would put the 7th of October I forgot which order the months were in then I'd put the 7th of October I usually check on my calendar to make sure that the 7th of October is actually a weekday date if not I kind of arrange it or move it backwards or forwards a couple of days to make sure that when it's Jew is like an office day so the person doesn't have an excuse to not pay it on time something that you need to do before you even consider creating and sending an invoice is to ask your client whether they need a purchase order number or po4 short generally people ask for a Pio rather than like the full name so just make sure you understand the terms and a purchase order number is basically that company's way of filing you into their system and in these cases companies that do use purchase orders need to have that number on your invoice otherwise they can't process it for example in the past I have sent over my complete invoice of all the information on it I thought I needed my address bank account all that kind of stuff and then a few days later when my client actually looked at that invoice they told me that they needed a purchase order on it which meant that I had to go back to my invoice template out of the purchase order and resubmit the invoice with a later date so there was couple of days make a big difference in men that I had to push back my due day and it just delayed the payment and it was just a whole lot of hassle that didn't need to happen I definitely learned it the hard way so please make sure if you are starting with a new client to ask whether they need a purchase order and generally for every job you do if you have to charge them and send them another invoice you'll need another purchase order so you need to ask them every single time so when you are actually creating your invoice you need to also include the information of the person you are actually charging so you need their name their contact email maybe phone number in some cases and also their address this makes it clear who is that owes you the money so if there were a chance that you needed to take this further and chase it up you have a record of who you sent it to in the first place generally it is a lot better to direct it directly to the person in charge of Finance sometimes that is harder than it seems because there are a lot of different departments and I know I've had the trouble of invoices getting lost so if you can direct it directly to the finance department or to that person who is in charge of paying it it kind of reduces the chance of your invoice getting lost amongst emails and kind of get input to the bottom of the pile because again you're going to slow things up and it's going to be frustrating for everyone so if you can get into it like the top dog so it goes through as few hands as possible and hopefully gets to the right place faster now invoicing documents are not attractive they're not a document that's made to be visually appealing at all they are literally serving a purpose it's basically a bit of a receipt for the work that you've done so don't be too fussy about the design and don't go overboard be clear and concise so of course it's nice to have a little bit of branding so if you want to put your logo in the top corner or I'd like a little bit of watermark or a little bit of design on the bottom whatever just so you can distinguish it from yours definitely go ahead but the actual general body information of text needs to be as simple and as clear as possible so make sure your address is on one side and all your information their addresses on the other side and all the information and each kind of product or service and cost is listed separately so that there's no chance of confusion or at least we hope so I feel like there's always something that's missed but if you can keep it clear and concise generally the person who's paying the invoice should be able to work it out just like that it'll be like second nature they see them every single day so they don't really care of your invoices fancy or not as long as it looks professional and clear and neat you'll be good kind of going against everything that I've just said if you aren't in the position to send invoices just yet if you don't really do enough work freelance to need to then there is another system I use that is amazing for like getting money from people and it's PayPal not me so I feel like everyone knows of PayPal I feel like most people have a PayPal account as long as you're over 16 or 18 I think it is and it's basically a little link that you can set up with your own name on the end or your business name and people can pay through that link and you can customize the link so it's so it shows a set number so if I wanted someone to pay me 20 pounds I would put forward slash 20 on the end of my link and it would automatically ask the client to pay me 20 pounds people can pay via their PayPal account through that link people can pay by a debit or credit card it's kind of like a general thing for people to pay you obviously that doesn't mean that you still need to account for that money going into your into your business account or whatever you need to tell the taxman that you're getting paid through PayPal rather than your actual bank account because they will check but that is just a hole quicker and easier way I tend to use that method when I'm doing like commission work because generally I'm working one-on-one with another individual rather than business-to-business so I find it a lot simpler and a lot easier just to send someone a link that they pay through because it's a whole lot less confusing and then looking at an invoice so another system that I've actually recently started using is QuickBooks and this is like an online accounting and invoicing system so this also helped me out with my tax returns and filing things for the taxman which I can go into in another video if you want me to but QuickBooks also is now where I kind of supply my invoices and send them from so basically they have their own template it's super simple you put in all the information you need and they will email your client on your behalf and send them an invoice and you can actually track you can see when the invoice has been viewed you can chase it up if it's late you can mark it as paid and it's it's like a visual record of seeing when and where and who all the money is coming from I find this it's so much easier I used to track it all in my calendar which worked perfectly fine for me and I didn't have that money coming through but now I have like a few different jobs from into different areas it's becoming a little bit tricky to keep on top of it QuickBooks it is like a couple of pounds a month but to be honest for the money it saves me I think it's amazing I've had it for about a month and a half now and I I just haven't looked back so I'm enjoying it so far definitely recommend QuickBooks if you haven't tried it before but if like I said you aren't in the market for something like that you can use your own calendar what I'd recommend is color code in it so in blue I would mark down when the invoice is due and try and keep track of it that way you do have to be quite proactive doing that but as long as you're organized it should be okay so in terms of like calendars and marking it down you've got to remember to remind people to pay you your invoice I was quite naive at the beginning and I used to think that people would just remember to pay me sometimes I will admit people paid early or on time and it's amazing it always shocked me it kind of blows my mind but a lot of the times people do forget it's bound to happen they have a lot of money going in and out they're gonna forget so they don't mind a friendly reminder so in general I will send a reminder a week before just saying hi there I just want to send this friendly reminder over to let you know that the attached invoice is due on this date and I will put the date and then I'd probably say prompt payment would be greatly appreciated it's been a pleasure working with you thank you Alice so something simple like that and then I would attach the invoice and send it back to them and generally they'll reply and say thank you so much for Amanda me whatever if by some chance they haven't replied yet I then usually message them the day before the due date and then if it gets to the day after the due date and I still haven't been paid that's when I talk about late fees so late fees of something that I didn't actually know about until one of my lecturers at university told me so there is actually a law for this let me just read it it is called the late payment of commercial debts regulations 2003 and that is all linked in the blog if you want to read it but basically it means that you can charge either forty pounds 70 pounds or a hundred pounds depending on how much your invoice is worth for being late so if you put those little terms in the bottom of your invoice to say basically look if you're gonna pay me late this might happen and it might encourage your client to pay on time so I definitely have had to go through this thing before I have generally just said look you know a week overdue I usually give them a bit of Lee where you know I'm not I'm not totally cruel and if it's like a week to two weeks overdue I'll message them and be like look ing to the late payments Act I am going to have to charge you a late payment fee of forty pounds and this is due to X Y Zed you've not paid it basically and generally that kind of gives them the kick up the bum to pay you on time I've found that that kind of just happens because obviously they don't want to spend more money most of the time you don't actually get that late payment fee and because now here's the catch hopefully this makes sense because if you do a late payment fee you're gonna have to reissue the invoice so you if I have issued an invoice for a hundred pounds and I've charged them 40 pounds for being late I'd have to start again an invoice for a hundred and forty pounds which takes me right back to the beginning of the process and adds another 30 days on to the payment terms so you can have to weigh up the pros and cons in general I have never actually got a late payment C and I don't really chase it up too much but I do use it as a little bit of like a nudge to say like look if you don't pay me you're gonna have to pay more and finally if you like I've been bubbling on for so long I will put all this into writing on my blog automation saves a lot of time so things like QuickBooks things like PayPal dot me and there's actually a site called Chaser and these are all things that help kind of make the boring admin tasks a little bit easier so that's something I've definitely got into in the past few months sorry guys my battery died but yeah QuickBooks helps me keep track of my tax things and also lets me visually see the amount of invoices I'm waiting to be paid the amount that have been paid the ones that are overdue and I can actually like nudge my clients to remind them and things like chaser are actually plugins that you can add to QuickBooks that will do that all for you now I did look into chase it and unfortunately it is a little bit pricey for me right now but if you're a bigger business and you're looking into a way of automation I've heard really good things about like systems like that and PayPal dot me obviously takes out the hassle of invoicing altogether and you can just take business payments for a small fee and PayPal kind of cover it all for you which I really really like I absolutely love PayPal so I think that's about it if I have missed anything and be sure to go over to my blog post let me know what you think of this first freelance Friday video I've actually really enjoyed kind of putting all this together I feel I feel quite good about sharing the noise you know and again I'm not an expert if you have anything to add and please do in the comments below recommend anything that you've tried and let's start a conversation and don't forget to go and download the free invoice template from my website and yeah I hope you've enjoyed this video if you have you know to do thumbs up subscribe for the next one and I'll see you next week for another freelance Friday bye [Music] Oh [Music]