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Invoice format for freelancers for Product quality

hey so to answer the questions i've been getting about tracking client invoices i thought i'd show you the simple system i still use for invoicing the clients that i still work with i'll cover tracking income and expenses across multiple revenue streams in another video i don't want to give you too much info all at once now monday.com love it because it's so simple and so customizable um it's got a bunch of templates for a whole different things uh a whole bunch of different things and you can make your own uh like i did with this one for the uh invoice tracker it's really really simple but i don't like to over complicate things um particularly not when it comes to tracking finances because they're so important um with monday the free plan is enough for most people if you don't have many clients or many things to track um then yeah the free plan is enough you can even on the free plan i believe you can add clients as guests if you want to share a board for example um so that they can see the progress of items um or if you're running a team you can invite your freelancers and your clients into the same or separate boards and give them very limited permissions um to view only certain things so that your teams can't see your confidential client information and your clients can't see your conversations with freelancers that perhaps you don't want the client to see and they can't see other client stuff and certainly not your financials because that's nobody's business but yours [Music] if you do decide to sign up for their free plan or their free trial which i think is 14 days at the moment you can use my affiliate link below in the video description to get started for free okay so here is what my monday board looks like for client invoice tracking as i said it's super simple i have one entry for each separate client in each separate billing period and i put those into the in progress invoices group i'm going to meet your item using the same client code and date that i use for my invoice numbers i'll get to that in a little bit i make a fresh copy of my master invoice template here and the link to make your own copy of that is down below in the description as well once i've made a copy i add that link to the invoice link column here that way you can easily find the right invoice and fill it in at the end of each assignment or day or whatever i like to do this daily or every time i finish an assignment so i tend to keep this my version of this tracker open in one of my many many browser tabs and then each time i complete an assignment or if i'm working on a flat fee project or an hourly project at the end of each period that i finished working for that client usually a day or half day or whatever i hop in to this board open the invoice and update it that way i never ever forget to build for anything because it's so easy right if you're working for three or four clients during any given day or across a week and you don't feel their invoices in as you complete each item or each day or whatever it's really really easy to miss something and you don't want to give clients extra free work to try and get in the habit of doing this daily [Music] it also makes sending the invoices to the clients far less dramatic and time consuming now once i finalize an invoice for the period i drop it into the outstanding invoices group down here um but you can also set an automation which is how i generally set my boards up um because although it involves a bit of work to front load it all once it's done it's done forever and it'll just keep moving okay so automations are super useful they save you a few seconds and a few clicks um and generally help make sure everything's in the right place at the right time so to add an automation you go to automate you can do a custom automation which we'll do in a minute because they won't have what we need but this one is fairly straightforward and they should have it so we start searching for when status changes to something move item to group here now you just need to fill these little grayed out bits in so in our case status is the actual status column and you want to set this one for when status changes to outstanding then move item to outstanding invoices create the automation and then when you change this column to outstanding it drops down into the appropriate place now we can do the same thing again for when you change this status to paid so again we go back to automate which goes through the same process again when status changes to something move item to group and then we fill these out again so status this time we want to select paid and then move item to paid group create automation okay so now [Applause] your items will flow just with the touch of a button maybe there you go uh you can also move these in bulk when you have multiple items you can select them there and then change the status even if you have 15 if they've all been paid on the same day lucky you you can change the status here on all of them just by selecting one and it will move to the appropriate place you can also click and drag things and you can also change where they go here as well okay now the last automation i set is to let me know if a client doesn't pay on time it may not be the client's fault their payments could be held up in the financial networking ether who knows or sometimes clients just forget they actually owe you some money um so to stop you having to constantly watch uh to see when they're gonna be late particularly if you're dealing with quite a few invoices i like to just set an automation that tells me if a submitted invoice in the outstand so in the outstanding invoices group reaches its payment date surpass or passes its payment date then i get a notification to let me know that i need to follow up with the client and again it is super easy to set this up as an automation just saves me having to constantly check and watch so we add automation this time you'll need a custom automation because it will not have exactly what we need so when this happens so a date has passed you come over here hit this little plus and only if status is something then notify someone so then we need to fill out all the grade bits again so date payment due has passed and and only if the status column is outstanding then notify me now you'll need to type a little message in this bit to keep the system happy it can just be as simple as item name because that's your client code which you'll get to know and payment due date you can leave yourself a little note late invoice follow up with client um it doesn't need to be fancy because it is just a note for yourself you can use a similar template um to if you're working with i don't know freelancers for example who are late with their assignments or who have only 24 hours left uh to turn their item around or 48 hours or whatever arbitrary date you you set this for um you can set an automation to not only notify you but to notify the freelancer to tell them they've only got 24 hours left and to let you know if they need an extension or tell them that their due date is passed and they've got i don't know 24 hours left to submit their item um and then all they need to contact you or whatever that is so again it just it means that you if you're working with you know if you're working on multiple revenue streams or multiple sites you've got lots of people doing lots of different things you don't want to have to keep on top of them all the time so this just lets you semi-automate that process but and so in that case you you'd maybe want to send a slightly nicer email than this late assignment get in um is perhaps not the most friendly although we sometimes feel that way um so then once you're done with that just hit create automation and then anything in this column with a past due date it will email you it will notify you that you need to follow up with the client but once the item has been paid that automation won't run even though the due date has passed if you don't include the only if the status is outstanding um line on the automation it will also send you notifications um for anything in this column even if and it will do it every day even if the items are like three years old which would be a nightmare so make sure you follow that automation carefully if you want to set it up and that's essentially it for this portion of the tracker now the master invoice template again is super super simple um it covers all of your needs for whether you're billing by your bank by wise or paypal or um whatever else now not every client will need every single thing on this filled in um if you're paying by paper or if you're being paid by paypal obviously you won't need a lot of this stuff um and not every client will want your company and physical address um so i've created this template so that you can customize it however you need and if you're like me i've frequently worked with clients with different payment methods and different invoicing requirements so this template just lets me when i first start working with a client or first start using this template lets me customize it specifically to that client and then i can just rename my copy as master invoice template for xyz client now one of the most critical things on your invoice is your invoice number um i leave you through this before uh when i was talking about naming the lines in your tracker now i use uh my client code is i mean it's not rocket science it's it's like in this example if i was my own client and obviously this my site is called how to build your freedom so i would abbreviate that to byf and then i would do the year and then the month um this is awesome for uh tax time and it also ensures if you get in the habit of every time you set one of these up for each client you put this in um obviously each time you set up a new invoice for the same client you'll just be changing this number and then once a year you'll be changing this number um it just ensures that at tax time you have unique invoice identifiers and also i've encountered clients that won't pay duplicate invoice numbers uh within their own systems so this is super custom to you um and is something that you should get in the habit of applying to all of your invoices whether you use this template or not obviously the date you send the invoice and the date you require payment that needs to change every month or every billing period i don't know how often you bill um so now this the description the line items if you're working at a flat fee or a retainer or hourly i would at the end of each day or at the end of each period depending on exactly how you work probably per day to be fair or per project depends how you've got things set up with your client so you fill in the broader description and then you break it down here so i don't know say i'd done a day's worth of content management down here i would give more detail i mean you don't need to go into the nitty gritty you know you sent five emails and you looked at 1500 keywords but you need to do like you you need to put a bit of a break down here for the client um it just it lets the clients feel more confident yeah that you are giving them value they can see exactly what you're doing without having to go back and forth and asking you for more information and and all of that stuff so just do it up front then it you're less likely to get any comeback and you're more likely to be paid on time so i would do i don't know um four article outlines um two hours of content strategy maybe that's what i did that day but but you get the idea so then pop your rate down in here how many hours you spent on that particular day or period and then the total dollar value for that service now if that's all you did because you you know you only got 10 hours a month and you you did all of the work and it's all listed in this one then you just copy this total into the this box here and that's it but if you worked on multiple days or multiple projects or you have you work by the assignment then you can have 100 of these lines and then you put the total of all of them into this box when you're finished i actually do this as i go along so if i'm working on a per if i was working on a per article assignment for example or per word uh for each article i complete i would fill in this whole thing um and then i would add this total to this total so i don't have to do 100 lines at the end of the month now i use google docs because it's so easy to access from anywhere and once i'm done with the billing period i can easily turn the dock into a pdf to email to the client and i can upload the file to the monday board so i have all the pdfs in one place ready for tax time or if any queries or issues pop up at any point during the year i've also met any number of clients that will not accept an invoice unless it's in pdf form so once you're done with your invoice please please check it because it's easy to forget if you don't do it right at the start when you open the invoice if you don't change this it's really easy to forget so just give everything a once over make sure you've got everything the client needs in there lots of accounting and departments are super strict about what they want to see on their invoices and any mistakes will result in a delay in your payment so let's avoid that and get the money in your cat your account when it's due so you have a look at this you've added up this [Music] column again just to make sure that you haven't forgotten to add an entry to this because again you don't want to be working for free you don't want to be under billing um so then once you are happy that this is exactly what the client needs you just go to file download pdf once that's downloaded come over here and attach the file in this invoice pdf column as well as emailing it to the client do it at the same time if you put it off and do it later you'll end up with trying to sort out like 100 invoices come tax time so it's just much easier just to dump it straight in here um i generally name the invoice with the client code a month unless the client has a specific file naming format some of some of them do and i make sure that this just for ease is the same as the invoice number for each billing period so [Music] and then i tag on the month just so it's easier for my eyes and then hopefully your and then obviously from this point you would switch it to outstanding and then hopefully the client pays in a timely fashion and you can mark it as paid and that's really it um the one thing i would say is get in the habit of filling in your invoices every day and then schedule some time at the like the day after each billing period ends schedule some time in your calendar even if it's just an hour to send out all of your invoices to your clients for that billing period get it done it's not really fair on you or the client to to wait for three months and then send them a whacking great invoice when they were actually expecting a much smaller invoice each month so make sure you do that and plus it's it's difficult to keep track of your own finances properly if you're not sending out invoices on schedule um you don't want to sour your relationship with a client you want to keep those clients most of us want to keep those clients for for you know years if we can even while we're building our own passive revenue streams so make sure you just schedule it in your calendar it's an hour or maybe two hours um and if you've been keeping up with this system throughout the month then it takes minimal time it's no headache it's no fuss check out our facebook group sign up to our list all the links are in the descriptions below and thanks for watching [Music]