Streamline Your Billing with a Virtual Assistant Invoice Template for Purchasing

Virtual assistant invoice template for Purchasing

hello and welcome back my name is Cecilia Peralta I am a virtual assistant and in this channel we share with you tips tutorials and Industry insights to help virtual assistant to have a successful business and this week I received a really good question in regards of how virtual assistants get paid and it's a little bit of a broad question because it depends on many different factors however the good news is that we're going to review in this video the most common method of payment so you're going to be um leaving with a good idea on what can you offer to your clients but before we start with the list of all the method of payment that you could potentially offer to your clients I wanted to make sure that I mentioned that as a virtual assistant freelancer first and foremost you are a business owner and as a business owner you're going to be billing your client you're going to be issuing an invoice and I'm going to come back to that because I want to make sure that I give you more information on how you can streamline the invoicing process and become more efficient so let's discuss the platforms if you offer services through a platform like Fiverr or appwork then there is not much to worry about in regards of payments the platform is going to do the heavy lifting for you once that you finish the task then the client is going to pay through the platform the platform is going to Discount the fees and whatever remain in Balance you will be able to transfer directly to your own bank account so that is super easy but I thought that I mentioned and now that it's out of the way let's discuss what happened when you are working directly with the client without the middleman and when you are responsible for collecting those fees the first one that I wanted to mention is direct deposit super easy and convenient especially for us now in that case obviously you will have to provide your bank information like the bank account and the roting number to your client so the client can set up the direct deposit and you can get paid let's say every month now keep in mind that sometimes clients really don't want to go through the hustle of setting up the direct deposit and even though in my opinion is more convenient because they eliminate checks which can be time consuming and it can be an expense as well but you know not every client will agree to do so but it's worth trying so what happen if direct deposit is not an option then what I will try is to collect payments through zel or cash app now keep in mind that zel and cash app are not available in every part of the world but you know for the virtual assistants um having bank accounts here in the United States that is a very normal type of um met of payment so sell um in regards to sell when the uh client and the virtual assistants are both connected through the cell app both are using that particular app then the client can transfer through sale directly to your bank account in seconds immediately so it's super super convenient especially for you something that I really like about sale is that you don't have to send you know a user ID uh for them to find you and you know or maybe your phone number if you registered with a phone number if you're registered with your email and that could cause confusion it's great that you can generate your own um QR code and just share that with your client your client going to scan it with uh their phone and that's it they have your information there all they need to do is to put the amount and send the money super easy and convenient and again the best part is that you get your funds immediately now another option will be cash app it works kind of similar um however the difference is that with cash app you don't receive the funds directly to your bank account you receive it to a cash app account and from there you're able to transfer that to your bank account however keep in mind that if you need the funds immediately they're going to charge you for a convenience fee so let's discuss credit cards now can you accept credit cards absolutely you can definitely do so you will have to register either with a stripe or a square and start offering credit cards to your clients however you need to know that is not a free option there is a fee ball and um you will have to evaluate if the convenience of offering credit cards to your client is worth the almost 3% that they charge per transaction again it's something that you will have to evaluate because as a virtual assistant most likely you are going to be responsible for covering those charges not your client so let's discuss checks the oldfashioned way I personally get paid a lot by check I am a transaction coordinator and normally at the closing table the title company is going to disperse the funds to all the parties involved like the sellers the uh Brokers uh real estate agents and transaction coordinators so normally they just cut a check and send it by mail now some tile companies are going to overnight you the check which is amazing because you receive it the next day however in some other cases theya send it to you through regular mail with an stamp no tracking information whatsoever and sometimes not always but sometimes there is a risk that that check gets lost in the mail and when that happen is a huge inconvenience first of all you're going to have to make sure that the check is not delay okay so you will have to wait for the maximum amount of days um in order to make sure you're not going to receive it and then inform the title company about you not receiving the check at that point the title company is going to put an stop payment on the check with their bank and that could take a couple of days and after that process is complete they are going to reissue you a new check now they're going to once that is done put it again on the mail hopefully this time you're going to get it so as you can see there is a little bit of a risk to you know get paid by the check and really the risk is the amount of days that you have to wait if something goes wrong okay but in my experience I've been you know getting paid by checks for you know many years and it's not that I have an issue every single day so it hasn't been horrible for me another option is wire transfer however it's not very common for a virtual assistant to be receiving payment through wire so why do I mention that let me explain you as I mentioned before when you're a transaction coordinator you get paid at the closing table and the title company who disperses the funds may offer you to catch you a check or send you the funds through wire which is awesome you can receive them within the hour now in my personally experience I prefer not to receive wire because my bank charges me a high fee every time that I receive the funds in my account I think that I need to change Banks but regardless if you are in need of receiving the funds right away or if your bank doesn't charge you that high fee then wire will be an option especially if you're a transaction coordinator now if you are not a transaction coordinator keep in mind that regular clients might not agree to pay those High fees in order for you to receive a wir transfer now what happen if you are an international virtual assistant doing business or servicing a client based in the US in this case you have a couple of options uh you can use PayPal you can use wise you can use remitly and I'm sure that there are many other you know ways to receive payments that I am not familiar with and this is why I'm not mentioning them in this video um I paid virtual assistants abroad uh using PayPal and wise and the fitback that I have received from them is that when I issue the payment through PayPal the these are high and the conversion rate is not as convenient as when I use wise so if you are the virtual assistant receiving payment make sure that you consider those fees and conversion rate when you decide what type of method are you going to accept and make sure that you have that in clear before you meet with your client before you offer your service services that way you can explain how you want to get paid another very important thing that I wanted to discuss with you is upfront payments you don't need to necessarily wait until you finish your project in order to invoice your client in most cases it's very very advisable to receive an up from payment could be a 50% for example it is very common when you do bookkeeping services for example to receive 50% up front and the rest upon the completion of the job so evaluate that make sure that if you are going to charge 50% you obviously inform your client prior and not just that have everything in writing it is absolutely necessary that you have an agreement in place a signed agreement that way you are cover and you know that in the case of a dispute everything is line up in the contract and both parties can go back review it and answer any type of questions they may have now another thing related to payment are invoices and at the beginning of this video I told you that I'm going to come back to that because I think that is absolutely important to discuss that topic now once that you move forward a little bit with your business you start getting more clients you start getting profitable I absolutely recommend that you start investing in some type of software that is going to help you with invoicing my preference is QuickBooks however there are many different options that you can go with and the the idea here is to streamline the invoicing process that way you can get more efficient spend less time and the system can work for you so let me give you a couple of examples if you work with flat fees for example or with packages where you include certain amount of hours per month or certain amount of task that you are going to do for that particular class Cent then let's say that that client pays you the same amount of money every single month if you have a software that help you with invoicing you can create a recurring invoice and you don't have to send the invoice manually every single month you just create it once and the system will do the task for you another cool thing about having like an invoicing system is that you are going to be able to follow up with your clients you can set reminders so an email can be sent let's say every couple of days if if you don't uh receive the payment on time and not just that it's super super important that you are matching your invoices with the payments that you receive that way it helps you to have everything in clear for yourself for your own records and keep a set of clean books so those are all all the tips that I have for you in regards of payments and invoicing and I'm going to list all the resources that I mention in this video down below in the description make sure that you let us know in the comments if you find this helpful and what is your experience do you have any other method of payment that I maybe didn't mention here and is working great for you let us know also if you like this video don't forget to like And subscribe and I will see you on the next one