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Photographer invoice template for Customer Support

one of the most common questions that i receive when it comes to photography is how do you actually create a contract and how do you actually take payment so in today's video we're gonna dive into my photography contract talk about how i created it how i send it to clients the important things that you should include to protect yourself and some additional things to include we're also going to be going over the invoice process how i create my invoice how i build the client and how do i receive payment before we can create and send contracts and invoices we need to pick a platform that we can do this from there are many platforms out there that you can use to run your photography business but here's the three most common ones honeybook freshbooks and square honeybook is an all-in-one client managing software where you can manage your clients automate the process of communicating back and forth with your client honeybook is a great platform and i actually used it for a little while before moving over to square out of all these three honeybook is probably the best one because you can basically run your entire business for 39 a month freshbooks is also a really popular one it's an accounting software that allows businesses to send invoices and contracts as well as take payment and manage clients freshbooks is also cheaper than honeybook coming in at 18 for their premium plan and five dollars for their cheapest plan lastly square and square is probably the one that you've heard of and it's probably the most popular one not actually relating to photography but because they also make pos systems card readers etc it doesn't have nearly the amount of features honeybook has and you can't really automate the communication process between you and your client and that's because square is mostly made for sending invoices and contracts and processing payments but it's still really good one of the main reasons why i switch to square is because i'm able to use the scheduling feature to schedule photography consultations through it but also because of price square is completely free with no monthly fees to send contracts and invoices they only charge you the processing fee which is i think 2.5 plus 10 cents per invoice transaction which isn't all that much considering it's the same thing that you're paying for a honey book except honeybook you're also paying the monthly fee with that out of the way and you figured out a platform that you want to use let's dive into my photography contract sit back and relax because this is going to be a lot of information let me just pop it open here go over what's important and why also if you want to save time creating this contract and creating your invoice i'll leave a link down below where you can download my contract and my invoice that i currently use for my photography business so don't forget to check it out in the description down below and let's get right into it so this is a signed contract that i sent to a client from a shoot i did and just know that if you see anything that's blurred out those are things that should be private like the client's email and the client's name phone number stuff like that that should remain private so right off the bat you have my information the client's information and then kind of like a little description of why the contract is needed and basically it says the client wishes to hire the photographer to provide services whatever underneath that you have the payment schedule this is automatic on square and i'll show you exactly how you do that and right underneath that you have our terms this is everything that the client is receiving or getting out of the service this is where you the photographer should explain or outline exactly what the shoot entails for example i put the duration of the shoot the amount of deliverables this is where you should also add in anything else that they will be receiving like for example in this case high-end skin retouching this is something extra that they paid for this section is super important because you want to make yourself clear and ensure the client knows exactly what they're getting out of the shoot underneath that is the location date and time section this will indicate where the location of our service is taking place so if it's outdoors and we're just walking around downtown i may put downtown toronto or if it's in a studio as in this case i will put the name of the studio like i did here underneath that we have our cost fees and payments section which is one of the most important sections of our entire contract this is where we will outline the payment schedule the exact dates the payments are due and what the payments are for you want to outline exactly when these are due for example i require my deposit upfront this is so i can actually schedule the client in then i take the remainder immediately after the shoot is over before i begin editing i want to make sure i outline this exactly so the client knows the process this way they don't get upset when they get that little reminder that tells them that the rest of the invoice is due before i even began editing this is also where you want to add in if the deposit is refundable or not mine says that the deposit is not refundable and that the deposit is to compensate me the photographer for scheduling them in on my busy schedule and potentially turning down potential projects or clients because of this if we keep scrolling we now get into the most important section of the contract and that's the intellectual property clause or in other words who owns the images this is also where i can outline what the client is allowed to use the photos for and what they can't do to them for example in my contract it basically says that the photos or works created from this photo shoot are solely owned by me the photographer and depending on which country you're from and what the copyright laws are this might be different but here in canada and under the copyright law the photographer is always a copyright owner of the images and the client simply holds the license to use the photos obviously unless otherwise stated in this contract so as you can see it says photographer grants to client a non-exclusive license for personal use only which in this case is social media prints scrapbooks etc then there's also a not permitted section this is where i outline what the client can't do with the photos or with their license to use the photos that's applying any filters or altering any colors and this is because the photos are a direct representation of the photographer's work and if the client edits the photos horribly i don't want to be associated or people to know that's what my work looks like i also like to add in something that says that i'm allowed to use the photos for my website and social media and to market my photography business with that being said this intellectual property or copyright clause will actually change sometimes depending on the type of shoot if i'm working with a brand and they hire me to take photos for an ad campaign then i'm going to change this to say that they're allowed to use it for commercial use instead of personal use again this section is definitely the most important section of the entire contract and you want to make sure you're clear so the client knows what they can expect before signing the contract or working with you next is this artistic release clause and this is basically there to ensure that the client understands that you have the artistic judgment to do what you feel looks best for the photos and for the client also to ensure that the client has spent time reviewing your work and is hiring you based off your portfolio and your previous work and so they can expect a similar style this is important because i don't want to spend hours editing photos just to deliver them to the client and for them to come back and say that they actually want the photos edited like this and shows me photos taken by some other photographer that has a completely different style than mine this is also in place for other reasons like let's say the client says i want you to photoshop my body to be smaller and you know that the photo will just look horrible if you do that the artistic release is so you have the final say of how that photo should look as the artist next is this limit of liability clause let's say i lose my sd card or my camera breaks mid-shoot what happens does the client get their money back this is important to have in your contract to protect the client in the case that this does happen you can't just lose your sd card and then say well sucks for you i still got your money you need to make sure something like this is in there because remember a contract is in place to protect both you and the client you want to also make sure that you have a clause for cancellations rescheduling and no shows what happens if a client wants to cancel their shoot a day before or maybe they just forgot to show up or maybe there's a tornado the day of the shoot what happens to the client's money you can put whatever you want in here but this is what i have in mind basically the client should tell me as soon as possible if they want to cancel or if they don't think they'll be able to show up i'm not obligated to reschedule or pay back their deposit this is because i still made all the reasonable efforts i can to provide my services in the case of bad weather or things that the client nor i can control then anyone can be excused and refunded or will make all reasonable efforts to reschedule for another time again this is another super important clause everyone should have in their contract and lastly to finalize this contract or to finalize any contract you need two different spaces where both you and the client can sign and there you have it that's my contract and like i said at the beginning of the video if you want to save yourself the time of creating one you can download this contract link down in the description now let's move on to invoices and don't worry this is gonna be way faster than contracts your invoice should include your client's information as well as your business information you want to have the invoice date as well as the date of the service or the date that the service is going to commence just like the terms clause of your contract you want to make sure you outline exactly what the client is receiving and what they're paying for so in this case social media package and high-end skin retouching you want to also make sure that the payment schedule is correct are you receiving a deposit first and the remainder later when are each of those payments due by and how much are each of these payments now let's get to the fun part and i'll show you how i go about sending a contract and an invoice at the exact same time let's say i was gonna go send a contract and bill a client the first thing i'm gonna do is go into my square dashboard and head over to contracts once i'm in contracts i'm gonna head up to new contract and then i'm gonna click on my template which is client service agreement first things first we're going to add in our recipient's email address in this case i'm just going to make an email up which is called testcontract gmail.com test contract we'll just name this test test contract because i think i already made one i'm going to click on save once we have test test contract this is our client that we're sending this contract out to because i already have my client service agreement template made i don't have to change this this is already inputted in here now i'm also going to add in my payment information so i'm going to click on add payment information and let's say i want to do a two payment method so i want to request an initial deposit and then get paid the remainder later on and click on request initial deposit and change the total amount to let's say 400 is the total amount for the photo shoot i'm going to click on here description and i'm just going to name this social this is my social media package then i'm going to put the deposit amount to 200 or half the amount of the 400 and then the deposit due date i'm going to set this for tomorrow and my balance is going to be set to i want the final balance to be paid off the date of the shoot which is let's say the 19th now i'm gonna click save and there we have it we have now our payment information on our contract we're gonna go ahead and we're just going to skip where it says attach an invoice or estimate because we're gonna create our invoice later on i'm gonna go ahead and click on next now this is where we get to add in all of our clauses this is already here because i changed and i edited all my clauses and so i don't really have to do anything other than input my terms so these are some of my different packages and i have these separated because every time i do a photo shoot for a different package i could just easily add this one or you know add my social media package which is this one here i'm gonna go ahead and drag this to the very top of my contract just right underneath invoices and then this is where i go ahead and change up some of these clauses depending on the photo shoot i'm going to go down to cost fees and payment and i'm going to change this to the due dates that i selected before which were um august 10th and then this one here august 19th and i'm going to add the total price which is 200 for this one and then 200 for this one and just click save and you can see that this is now updated and you know if this photo shoot was for commercial use instead of personal use i would go into this intellectual property clause and change up some of these words where it says personal use to commercial use change some of these different use cases everything else like the artistic release the limit of liability cancellation rescheduling and no shows impossibility general provisions all this stuff stays the exact same for the most part and i'll just go into the general provisions and change this to the client's email which in this case was test contract gmail.com i believe it was you want to make sure you have all of this correct and then we can go ahead and look at the contract you can see that my payment schedule is here the deliverables are here and once this contract gets sent to the client and they sign it you will see their name right here and their signature and the date that they sign all right here and now what i do is i don't actually share the contract by itself i will go ahead and click save draft and we're gonna go ahead and create our invoice so i'm gonna go up here click on invoices click on send an invoice and then we're gonna create our invoice when we click on customer you can see that our test test contract customer comes up we're going to click on that right there invoice title we don't need to add uh if you want to change the invoice id you want to add any messages anything else the date of service is in 19th of august that's what we're going to change it to frequency this is just a one-time invoice it's not going to be reoccurring uh we're going to send it immediately and the due date is actually on the 19th under line items we're actually going to add in our social media package you can create these library items so you can just choose from them at any time we're going to add in our price which is 400. and we're going to add our payment schedule here to request initial deposit and we're just going to do 50 percent deposit and then we can go into when these payments are due and change the due date for tomorrow for our deposit and our balance due the day of the shoot and as you can see if we go under our line items here this is what the customer is paying for our social media package our price four hundred dollars uh underneath here it shows that our total is four hundred dollars but our deposit is two hundred dollars due tomorrow and our balance is two hundred dollars due in ten days which is the date of our shoot then we're gonna scroll down to our payment method and we're gonna make sure that credit or debit card is checked because this is how we're gonna actually receive the payment as you can see square charges you 2.9 percent plus 30 cents per transaction this price actually went up then you have other things like tipping or save payment method things like that i usually leave these unchecked all the time and we're gonna share this to test contract or our client via email so we're gonna make sure email is selected then i'm gonna go ahead and click on save as draft for the invoice now i'm going to go back to our contracts click on our test contract click on edit scroll to the bottom click on attach an invoice and click on our test test contract attached selected now our invoice is attached to our contract we're going to click on next now you can see if we scroll down to the bottom of our contract related documents our invoice is now attached to our contract then we're just gonna go ahead and click on share and it's gonna send this contract to the client and there you have it how to create a contract how to create an invoice how to send your invoice and contract the important things you should include in your contract and how to receive payment if you found this video useful make sure you hit that like button because it truly does help the channel grow make sure to hit that subscribe button if you want to see more photography content like this and hit that bell to be notified when i post a new video and i'll see you in the next one also if you have any questions all you have to do is drop them down in the comments and i'll do my best to reply back to everyone peace [Music] you