Create Your Invoice for Graphic Design Work for Operations Effortlessly

Invoice for graphic design work for Operations

hello everyone it's Paola welcome back to my art and graphic design channel uh follow me on Instagram I'm posting over there a lot and I had a lot of info over there recently I was on Adobe live there was a lot of stuff happening you might have missed it so welcome to today's video where we are updating my contract and invoices in my freelance design career what I use as a designer so maybe you are looking into how to get started in a contract or invoice or what you need to have in it and I did a video on this like years ago now and the info is pretty much the same because it works really well but I recently rebranded so definitely go check that video out um and I want to add the new elements and kind of redesign it but kind of go over the info that's in there it is warm in here but let's go into everything let's do this okay so let's go into the contract right away the contract has a lot of different parts so I'll go into them and this also applies to International it's not just us-based or now I'm Australia based so like I said it works across different countries it's just a very general thing that you can use to protect yourself have your clients sign and it just helps everyone involved so first what's changing um I'm going to be changing the logo the logo is my initials I'm going to be changing it to my updated initials I think that works and then I'm going to put my type based logo at the top of the second page so yeah a lot of the same layout I mean not a lot changes but I also am going to change up the typefaces here in all the design and then get rid of that pink pink is no longer one of the brand colors I mean there's a really bright pink but yeah it's not one of the main colors like this soft pink so I'm definitely changing that as well I've chosen a typeface that I think complements my logo really well and I just feel like it looks a little bit more elevated for the contracts and for the invoice as you'll see and yeah it just is a really nice fresh take on it I think that's the main reason I just wanted to update everything thing and make sure it's all up to date for new clients and then even with my invoicing for brand deals and stuff I send that invoice so on the first page of the contract is a little bit of my info a little bit of my clients info and then a project description what's the scope of this project we're working on together what are we collaborating on and what are we creating it then goes into a provisional breakdown which just has the overall price that they're agreeing on in the contract even though this is not an invoice and then a proposal breakdown which includes everything that they're getting in this branding project or whatever project it is and then along with that price what that also includes I used to have my phone number and a little bit more info for me on there but I don't think that that's necessary anymore I feel like for safety reasons it's not as necessary I I'm not doing really like personal phone calls with my clients mostly meeting like online doing like online meetings video calls or emails so the second page is really the breakdown of the contract if you are wanting to know here we go there is a fee schedule which just breaks that down one half is due at the beginning before any design work is done and I think that's so important as designers that you do get paid up front at least for what you're working on especially if things change throughout the project I also have listed that the fees are estimates and that there will be approval if this fee goes above 10 more than what is agreed on initially usually it does not change but this really depends on the project especially if you're working with a company it's just to protect you changes is about what is added and if it's outside of the scope of the project how much that'll be per hour if the client is wanting more work done and I'm actually changing this section to ninety dollars an hour 80 or 90 I'm deciding right now basically because 40 is just not going to cut it I'm an experienced designer and I've been doing this for a long time so it's a higher rate now ownership this is a huge part of contracts all of the rights will stay mine all of the project work and process work the final artwork will become theirs once the final payment is made and then they are free to do what they want with that style and design I also have a section here on suspension or cancer isolation of the project this is due to specific things that I have listed out here but you know it's really subjective but it's good to have in there in case something does go south I've had things with clients before and I've been able to you know mention this part of my contract as hey you signed this and this is something that is an issue and then I just have the signature section which is where I sign and the client signs and dates usually to get them to sign I know I get this question they can sign it digitally just like on Adobe PDF acrobat whatever they use and just even like the computer PDF you can still like type it out and just have your name typed printed it doesn't need to be like a formal signature that is still binding because they sent it back to you you have all that written down over email um but yeah and then they can also like print it out and send it back like hand signs that's totally fine too so yes only slight changes need to be made really um it's mostly about the design and the look but yeah like I said I've just changed a few things in there just to update it a bit so let's move on to the invoice way so the invoice is definitely about updating the look rather than the content I did again used to have my phone number on there I'm just not putting that in anywhere anymore um it's just not safe for me anymore but yeah I am going to be updating the logo and the look and some of the type choices in here so I do kind of have it laid out in a funky way but I really like it I use it for everything um not just my client work but also I guess clients I work with for my YouTube channel like Brands and companies I send a formal invoice um for the collaboration that we do and this is just a really really helpful document that I have and yeah it doesn't really need big updating because of what it is it's usually I just kind of modify um you know with some of these Brands we don't really have a due date for payment um that it's kind of up to them it's not really up to me I'm more of like the independent worker for them but yeah but with clients you definitely want to keep that due date and you know get the project description in there and the quantity of Design Services that's more specific for clients and yeah hopefully that helps you kind of lay it out if you're trying to lay out yours you don't have to have it in a very creative way you can have it very like easy and just easy to read laid out like very simple you don't have to have any color you don't have to have anything like this but this is mine this is what it looks like and this is how I've updated it so yeah also I made sure to change in my invoice that it is a two percent fee for late fees of the project amount where that's in my contract so it's not actually just like a one-off late fee I did change it because it really depends on the project like I said with brand deals and stuff but sometimes I don't even put that for Randalls because it's really up to them so like yeah I change a lot of different things per project and per person but for clients I would say definitely keep the same language from contract to invoice foreign too much because what I have been using for these past few years has worked so I'm gonna keep going with it and I just changed mostly the look and I thought it was a good time to you know refresh and show you what I use and hopefully that can help you out this is probably a better way to do it I probably rambled on way too long in my old videos so yeah this is the updated version for 2023 it's great so yeah let me know if you have something in your contract that you think I should add um and maybe can help other people in the comments um I hope I helped you okay everyone if you liked this video please give it a like really helps my channel my channel has been slow going but we are getting closer and closer to 100K and it's just making me so happy so yeah uh I will see you soon and I hope you enjoyed this video okay bye I am so warm right now y'all have no idea it's like 90 degrees outside living in that southern hemisphere it'll change your life