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Translation invoice template for Marketing

How do you create an invoice as a freelancer? Coming up. Hello and welcome back to the Freelanceverse. And I hope you are doing well. Thank you so much for coming back to the channel. This week I would like to talk you about the sweet joy of invoicing. Well I said sweet joy, I actually don't like it at all to do invoicing. It's quite of a tedious task. But in the end it's still very cool because it's how we get paid. It's our salary, right? So it's very important that you do it regularly. To how I'm gonna structure this video I'm gonna first tell you about invoicing in general. A few things about taxes, a few things about regularity. When to do it, etc, what's the benefit. And then I think the best it's just a practical example. So I'm gonna switch to this screen and then show you how I actually do my invoices and show you a final product of a performed invoice that I can show you. And I will also link in the description below a template to this, so if you want to use what I'm using, feel free to do so. So as I said in the beginning regularity is really important when it comes to invoicing. You want to have a fixed date or a fixed date in the week kind off when you do your invoices. Some people do it at the end of the week for example, some people do it once a month. Some maybe once a quarter even, which is too late for my opinion. How I do it is once a month, every first monday of every month. And if by any change like tomorrow actually will be the first Monday in April but it's Easter's Monday. So I'm not gonna work, I'm just gonna do it on Tuesday. And if you have this kind of system it's best to just stick with it and do it whatever happens. I know it can be hard sometimes because uhh, the more clients you have, the more different clients you have. Every one will have some kind of different system. So it takes a lot of time to do invoicing. And when I do invoicing it takes maybe, between 1 and 2 hours. And of course that a big chunk out of a working day, right? In the beginning I used to do it in the weekend because I didn't wanted to do unpaid work during the week. But then I realized it's just part of it, right? Just have to calculate it into your price in the beginning. Now I try to do it every first Monday and it works quite well. Now, why regularity is really important is because if you really stick to it, you do invoices always in the same day then you will also get paid always in the same rhythm, right? At least if you have really well-paying clients, which I really hope you do because that's a hussle no one wants to deal with. Ehhh, anyway, luckily enough my clients pays always on time and always regularly. So, as long as I do my invoices in the same day I have regular income, right? It's always in the same days I get paid and it feels like a salary, which I really like. Because if you work and you always think: "Ohh, when it's this big job payment coming in?", you know, "when it's this and this coming in?" I don't really want to live like this, I want to have a steady income once a month. Different clients pays at different times, so it's like almost getting couple of different salaries throughout the month which is kinda cool. Now the invoicing system can be really strictly regulated. It's so important that you check your own country laws, right? So, wherever you live just check in Google "freelancer invoicing Belgium", "freelancer invoicing Germany" whatever. It will most likely to be an English site nowadays because people do freelancing from all over the world. And if there isn't an English site just Google it in your native language. And check the rules that comes with it, right? The taxes may be different, the VAT may be different in your country. What I'm showing is a generalized approach. It works from the Netherlands, it works from Switzerland and it also works from Belgium. So I'm using the invoicing tool from Proz, it's really kind of an overall European approach to invoicing. And I think most of you can also take on. You are legally obliged to do invoicing, right? You can't just tell... write your client an email and tell him "Hey, pls, pay me this" that's not official. As soon as you registried as a freelancer you are legally obliged to do invoices. Make sure you have a back-up somewhere because if you get audited by tax authorities, which it's rather unlikely as a freelancer, but you never know. I heard people who got hit with an audit. You need to be able to provide all your tax statements, all your sales invoices, as well as all your receipts that you deducted in the taxes, right? But this video is not about taxes that's another video that's coming up. Just to make sure that you understand why you have to do invoicing. I know if you have different clients they will have different systems, right? Every client that I have has a different invoicing system. Which can be quite tedious, it can be quite complicated. But in the end, yep, just have to cater to them I guess. The easiest ones are just the small agencies or the small direct clients. I just do an invoice and sent it by email and that's it, right? But the bigger corporations they have their own implemented system where you have to upload you invoice, check all the boxes, etcetera. What's really important is that I have a client that I really don't have to do an invoice. I just... there is a system and I just click "generate invoice" and that's it, right? What's really important there is that I still do my own invoice even if I don't send it to the client. You still have to have one of your own, with your, with your ongoing series of invoicing number, your VAT, etc that you put into your files, that's called the pro-forma invoice, right? You don't send this out to the client because they have their own system that they will pay you. You still need one just for your filing, and me for my accountant. Because I have an accountant, I have to send him all my invoices. And I can't just have fifteen of my own and then one of... that looks different in style, right? Just a quick side note that also fit kind of into this topic: very large project, especially if you don't know the client yet, it makes sense to charge and invoice with something upfront. You can also do that, right? So imagine you, you found a new direct client and it's the very first time you work with them and the project is like, I dunno, six, seven thousand euros. May be it takes you a month of something, and after all this work you just send an invoice an then you never know if they will pay, because you never worked with them before, right? What I do in these situations, at least when it's over a thousand euros, I ask 20%, 50%, as much as you like, as much as you can negotiate as well. And then you just write a pro-forma invoice for the first chunk and then in the end it completes an overall project invoice for the whole thing. Also make sure you keep kind of a system, for me is an excel file where I keep my orders. And there I will also check the due dates of my invoices and if they are paid or not, right? Because there is nothing worse that just sending out invoices on time and then not checking if they are not paid because you, you forget. It's impossible to keep track of all this. Like, if they pay you after a month, if they pay after 15 days, 45 days, you know. Different companies have different payment practices which I don't really like, I think it should be fair. I decide my payment terms... you know? For most of my clients that's the case, but some big corporations they just say: "We pay at this time for all of our vendors" You can't really do anything about it, so make sure to keep track whenever something comes in. May be have an alert in your phone whenever you get a payment. And sometimes I go back like two months and see if there is nothing open, and then I quickly send an email. "Hey, this hasn't been paid yet, what's up with that?" Okay, I think that's all the theoretical info I have, let's make this actually practical, right? I'm gonna switch angle to this screen and show you how I make an invoice. Okay, I hope you guys can see me like this. I'm balancing you in a bunch of board games here. So, as you can see on the screen I'm in Proz.com, it's where I do my invoices. So I think it's, it's best to do it here. I think if you are a translator watching this and you, you have a Proz membership it's... For me it's the best way to do it. It's very simple, and it has kind of... it caters to the translator needs. Uhh, so if you go to tools up here and then you click "invoices". This is the overall mask of the invoices tool. And here in the top-right you have different tabs. One is called "invoices" and one is called "clients". These are the ones that are relevant. First, before you can make an invoice for a specific client you need to create this client in your system. So let's do this for a test client. We click on "clients" up here. And, yeah, I'm gonna blur all my clients here. I don't want to show that. And then on the top left you can add a new client Then up here you have "client name", so I'm just gonna write "test". Uh, "TestClient", let's do that, and then also address line "Testroad" in, uhh, "Testington". Tax ID, that's where you put the VAT number of your client. You can either ask it out from the client or on the website, it's usually there as well. What you also need is a mandatory, umm... field that needs to be filled. This, the... contact name. So you just write something "Test", "Test", and then the email address. Okay, and then you can go all the way down. These are just templates but I'm not using them for like, email... I just use my own email. You could actually use Proz that directly sends the email. But, I'm just using my own email so I click on "save" on here. Yes, okay, client saved. Now I have made a client named "TestClient". Now I go on the top-right, I go to "invoices". Now I want to invoice this test client an actual invoice. Again I'm gonna blur stuff here. And in the top left I click "create a new invoice", right? So this is a template of an invoice that I can just fill in, you know. It's very simple and easy, just for small invoices like freelancers invoices this is perfect. So in the top left I click on on the drop down menu for clients and I choose the... my thing that I just made called "TestClient". Invoicing date is probably the date of, yeah, today always. I never have to change that because that's when you make the invoice, right? and the terms during receipt you can choose what you want NET 15, NET 30, NET 45, NET 60.   Now, usually all my invoices are NET 30. Just for... except for two clients. One pays in 45 and one pays in 15.  And then due date you don't have to add anything because NET 30 it will just choose the... If you make it on the 4th of April which is choose the 4th of... 4th of may for NET 30. Purchase order is very important. You have to add here the PO of your client. So the invoice... not the invoice. The... The order number of your client, right? It's like a reference for them and it's really important that something is in here. And even if they don't give you a PO number, either ask them quickly via email or write something that's very, um, indicative of this specific job. So if you do a translation for a skiing company for example maybe write here "ski" or something, you know.   Just... But it's best to just have a purchase order. Then this is your invoice number. Now you have to start a system for your invoicing numbers. Now for me, I start with 11 and then the year. So 112021 is the first invoice of this year, and then I go up and up and up. So my last used, as you can see was 202021. This is quite, quite useful. This "last used" because now I would just use the 212021.  Basically this is my invoice number for this invoice, right. It's important that you have this something that's always adding up. Yeah, just for your tax reasons it's good to have a system that's growing. Currency for me is euro. Template is english. Then here description: It's important that you write, uh, quite descriptive what you're doing, right? So for me, it will for example be... "French to German translation ski project." And then I would write, maybe, "24th of march 2021." Tells you what it is, what the service it is, what's the project, and when I did it, right? And then it depends of course if you charge it by the word, if you charge it by the hour, if it's a flat rate, etc. This you can do by unit. The standard default is a word rate. So for example if this project was... let's say 2300 words, right? My word rate is like 14 cents let's say for the purpose of this example. And then it immediately calculates, so if it was 2300 words for 14 cents then you get paid 322 euros. If they, uh, just pay you a flat rate so then you have one flat rate. They paid you 200 euros for example. Then it also adds up if you have an hourly rate.  You say you've worked on this job for... let's say four and a half hours and they pay you 60 euros per hour, you get 270 euros, you know. Just, yeah, depends on on your unit price of course. Uh, there you can give any discounts if you want. I've never used this before. I don't give discounts I guess. And then the taxes is also important, um, make sure you really know about the taxes, right? In Europe there is a thing called, in English it's VAT shifted. If you send someone an invoice that's working within the European... what is it? European Economic Area, right? Yeah, European Economic Area. So it's more than the EU because Switzerland and Norway and Iceland for example are also within the EEA. So if you charge someone an invoice within the EEA you don't have to put VAT on your invoice. What you then have to do is...   Uh, you, when you click here on taxes I have a thing called VAT shifted. So I have to click on this because the client then has to deal with VAT on their own, on their own side. If i were to send this invoice to someone in Belgium or within your own country then you have to charge VAT. And then you have to claim it back at the end of the year. So make sure you know about VAT. Let's say it's a client from Switzerland so it's VAT shifted. So it doesn't add here the 21% that's usually for Belgium. Invoicing notes, uh, is usually where I add my, my account. So I will write "Payable account." And then I would just add my banking info, be something like my ebank, of course it's not my really bank don't try. And my name and the name of my bank, you can also write your Paypal here if that's something you are using. Basically that's it, yeah. Let's, let's write my name here then that's already everything I think. Yes. So I will click on save, and it creates my invoice. As you can see on top here it created 212021. Here you can click "Export to PDF." So let's do that now and go through the invoice together. So we have here our invoice in the PDF format. As always everything blurred that you shouldn't see. As you see it's very simple. It's not something fancy, right? If you want you can add a logo maybe on top here. But in the end, like, your invoices don't need to be fancy, right? But of course it looks not very appealing but in the end, yeah, they just need to pay you. That doesn't matter. As on top right you have your invoice, your address as I said. Top left you have your client invoice that I just created, this test client. And here invoicing number. Very important that it's on it. Also my VAT number has to be in the address. You can't see it now but make sure that it's on your VAT number as well as the client VAT number are on it. And NET 30 days. My excel sheet, it would have the fourth of May as a due date and it turns red once the 4th of May is passed. So once it turns red in my excel and it's not paid yet I reach out to the client. The PO number of the client is here, also important. So they can actually, yeah, use it as a reference. And then my description of the translation.  Four and a half hours at 60 euros. So it gets 270 euros. That's paid to me. And my account down here. So yeah that's all that's to it. And now this invoice I would I would name it something that's, um, very clear very descriptive so I would say invoice, then the invoice number, and then my name. And then I will prepare an email with a subject line that says something like "Invoice Services March 2021." Are the improps as the subject so people really know what it is. I put the importance to high, so it gives a little exclamation mark next to it. And that's it. That's... I sent this out to all my clients except for the ones that have, uh, online systems where I have to upload the invoice etc. There it's a bit different. But I can't really show you this process because it's individual to any client. So yeah, I hope this helps you out. Let me know in the comments if you already wrote your first invoice. Good luck if you haven't. It's gonna happen, I know it. Uh, I'm gonna link a template of this down below so if you want to use this, feel free to do so. Or feel free to use the Proz.com invoicing tool. Thanks for watching, make sure to subscribe and like the video and I see you next Monday with another video. Bye bye.