Make Your Own Invoice for Customer Service Easily and Efficiently

Make your own invoice for Customer Service

disclaimer this video is not sponsored and there are no affiliate links to any of the mentioned softwares the recommendations that i'm giving in this video come from my own personal experience and also from what my other business friends have done in their freelancing or creative business okay let's get into it so when i first started my calligraphy business in 2018 and let's say i got a custom commission request to do like a calligraphy quote and let's say it cost fifty dollars now how do i invoice my client for me i am a big fan of wave stripe and paypal i think generally across the board those are great invoicing softwares to start off with because there is no subscription fee but there is a 2.9 plus a 30 cent per transaction fee and that is standard across the board like if you collect payment with credit card then invoicing softwares will charge you like 2.9 plus the 30 cents per transaction fee and this is something that shouldn't discourage you from offering credit cards as a payment option because this is like across the board a very standard fee and a very standard cost of doing business that you should incorporate into your prices just bump up your prices by a little bit so it covers the fee so for simple invoicing i would look into wave stripe and paypal personally i started off using stripe because i just have a friend who recommended it to me but actually now for my clients when i recommend which invoicing software to use for the people that i coach i usually recommend wave because wave also has a place where you can do your own bookkeeping so you can like take pictures of your receipts and you can kind of like categorize your expenses so wave is great for invoicing but there is also like a bookkeeping option which is free so it's really good for people who are just starting out i just use stripe because that's what somebody told me to do and i still think stripe is very good and paypal is another great option and it's familiar to people so you can also use that as well now if you have a business and you've already subscribed to accounting software so for example freshbooks or quickbooks then you can use those ones to invoice your clients it's probably more convenient for you to do that if you've already paid for accounting software like a monthly subscription or an annual subscription and because those softwares can just kind of like automatically put your invoice into the the section where it needs to be i'm not an accountant so i can't explain like the exact sections um but you know what i mean if you're already subscribed to it then why not just use the invoicing part of those softwares now let's talk about instances where you might need to send a contract for people to read and sign so if you need to send a contract what you can start off using is hello sign so i think they let you send out like three things to sign every single month but this is how i started sending out contracts when i started my coaching business and i was offering one-on-one coaching to individual people so i would have my contract i would put it through hello sign i would sign it myself send it to my client and then i would send a separate invoice using stripe or you could use wav or paypal or like quickbooks and freshbooks so there's two things i did if i had to have a contract that needs to be signed so i sent the contract and i sent the invoice separately now of course you could just send a contract through email like a pdf and then like the client could sign it digitally or they could print it out sign it and then like scan it and send it back to you but it's a little bit more troublesome for the client to do that so if you do need to send a contract then i would suggest looking into some contract signing software like hello sign but i'm sure there are other ones as well there's probably a lot out there i just the only one i use is hello sign now if you have a business where you're gonna be sending out a lot of contracts and invoices then i would consider looking into platforms that have both those options integrated and so you can just send one thing to the client where there's a contract they read it and then they can pay the invoice so some examples are honeybook and i think also dubsado has something like that as well so these are more like client manage crm so these are more like client relationship management software or crm systems however most of these kinds of software's where you can send the contract and the invoice they will have some kind of like monthly or annual subscription that you need to pay for now if you have a business where sometimes you can send an online invoice but sometimes you want to collect the credit card payment from your customer like in person you can look into a platform called square so that's the one where sometimes you'll see like a square thing connected to somebody's phone and then you just like you can swipe the credit card so that is square i'm not too sure how it works because i haven't used it before but if you do need to collect payment physically from people let's say for example you're a creative or an artist and you're selling at like a flea market or some kind of market where people need to pay with credit card then you can look into that as well and the other thing i'll mention which is not really related to invoicing clients but something else i have used to collect payment is teachable so platforms like teachable or thinkific or kajabi work well if you are creating a course or some kind of program that like you want the person to sign up for it's like the same price for each person and then they get access to a bunch of resources so i mainly use teachable to collect payment for my group coaching program for calligraphers now hey if you're just starting out with your business and you're a creative or a calligrapher or an artist then make sure you download my business plan template which is in the link in the description box so you can start planning out your business and making money and then hopefully soon you'll be using one of these invoicing softwares i mentioned to collect payments from your clients if you found this video useful take a screenshot of this video add me on instagram dinacalligraphy and take me i always love connecting with my subscribers and my followers and so if you tag me i will shout you out back and help you get a couple more followers if you are running a small business and let me know in the comments do you use any of these softwares yourself in your business or are you just starting out in your business do you have any questions about invoicing or billing clients let me know in the comments so we can connect and lastly if you're thinking about starting a business but you don't know where to start make sure you check out this video and then also this video to get started and that is all for today and i'll see you in the next video bye [Music]