Discover a Sample of an Invoice for Payment for Teams

Sample of an invoice for payment for teams

Hello fellow online entrepreneurs and fans of the Better Biz Academy. This week's video is all about invoicing and setting up clear payment systems when you're working with a digital team. I've had the opportunity to work with digital teams as small as one virtual assistant that you're outsourcing to, all the way up to 30 individuals who are participating on different projects and chiming in at various times of the day or the week. That can be total chaos if you don't have a clear invoicing procedure in place and I learned that the hard way when I was managing a team of freelancers creating lesson plans and then a separate team of freelancers who were writing blogs for a client that had a very high demand for hundreds of blogs every single month and I had to change my invoicing procedures multiple times over that period in order to make it really clear for everybody and also to hold people accountable and to make it as easy as possible .I was spending an entire workday every single week just sorting through invoices, making sure they were accurate, making sure they were getting paid and so these are kind of my best lessons from that entire experience when you're managing a digital team. So first of all clarify with anyone that you're hiring what your invoicing procedures are. As the client, the freelancer or contractor should comply with your procedures that can be anything from how the invoice comes, when it comes, when it will be paid, the steps they need to take when submitting an invoice in order to get paid etc. So here are some examples that I put into place with my writing team, they were responsible for submitting invoices by Monday at 5 p.m. Eastern time for all work completed up to that point, and then those invoices would be paid on Friday. I also had rules that if the work was turned in late or if their work was not accepted by the client, if they submitted the invoice late and missed that 5 p.m. deadline - then their payment would be pushed by a further seven days. Now if you only have a digital team of one or two people, this probably isn't a big deal but if you have a lot of contractors or if you're working as a project manager and have multiple digital team members, it's really important to have a clear invoicing procedure because otherwise that administrative work will become the bane of your existence because people will not follow directions and you're going to have to hold firm on your rule. So determine what's going to work for you and then hold people responsible for living up to their end of the deal. So it was hard when somebody submitted their invoice two hours after the deadline to not pay them that Friday and to make them wait a whole other week but part of that process was saying "Hey this is how you need to submit invoices for my own clarity and to keep everything really clear so I can forward it to the bookkeeper and we can double check on that all the work was submitted and then it's correct and also that encourage people to submit their work in general on time so they wouldn't miss the deadline as well. So it's hard to be in that position especially when someone just misses it by a day or so but as a business owner, you have many different responsibilities and one of them should not be spending two to three days every single week dealing with invoices. So determine first of all whether it makes sense to invoice weekly. I recommend that if people are doing a lot of work and want to have the peace of mind that you're going to be paid on a weekly basis, I do recommend having some lead time between when they complete the work and when they get paid - at least a couple of days - so you have time to look it over, to verify it was what you're looking for, that you aren't being overcharged etc and then set aside a time when you're going to go in and pay all invoices, pay them all at once record it in your bookkeeping software, that's the way to batch things appropriately but do have a set of guidelines and have your virtual assistants or team members verify that they have seen the guidelines and that they sign off on it because you will be amazed at how many people will never look at that. They'll submit their invoice late, way out of sight of the guidelines you set up, and then want to be paid within the next two hours and you're responsible as the client for setting up the terms under which invoices need to be submitted to you and paid. You need to clarify it with your virtual assistants whether they need to include details about what they've done so if you hire someone hourly they may need to break down exactly how many hours they spent doing what. If you have somebody on retainer, you might ask them to list all the activities they did for that week or for that month and then keep these really clear guidelines and try to stick to them as best you can barring being out of town, unexplainable things that you can't really control ... really try to stick to it. It's an effort to show good faith to your freelancers. Things do happen. Let them know if there's a problem so that they understand what to expect but if you're going to hold them to those same you know standards and guidelines that you've set up, kind of expect that they're going to want that in return as well. I recommend putting together a document with all the invoicing procedures - what email address they need to send the invoice to, when the invoice needs to be sent, when it will be paid, what are the consequences if they have missteps like submitting the invoice late or not turning work in on time or something like that. Having that all written and kept in your central command system like a project management board on Trello will help keep everyone accountable because it keeps everyone to the same standards and is seen as much more fair. But before you start hiring any virtual assistants, come up with an invoicing system that's going to work for you. Obviously much easier if you only have one person but as your team grows, you need to clarify these invoicing expectations and come up with a streamlined payment system so that it's not all falling on you because you'll be amazed how many people will not follow the directions and then will want you to fix it anyways. So make sure that it's posted somewhere that's semi public like that Trello board that helps people understand the steps they need to take in order to get paid and when they can expect to be paid and then hold them accountable to that. If they do break the rules you know, follow up with the consequences you said you would. If it's delaying payment by another payment period and one of those other things I encourage you to watch out for especially if you have a large team of freelancers- train them away from sending you multiple emails about the same issue. If they were told to send an invoice to a certain email address and that's it - they do not need to send five follow-up emails and let them know that that will only lead to delays in the payment because you do not have time to read and respond to all of those and that it's super important they follow the directions. You can also make your life easier by hiring a team member who is responsible specifically for bookkeeping and making sure the invoices are processed to be paid. I paid somebody to go through and double check everybody's work, that it was submitted on time etc. and then come up with a spreadsheet every single week of who I needed to pay, their paypal email address and the amount that was due so i could go in and do it all one after the other. So those are great tools to help keep your sanity and if you set up a system, it will work for you it may be something that you have to tweak over time but it's really important to have something that works for you as the business owner.