How to Invoice Post-Production Work

Video Transcript

"TRAVIS JOHNS: Hi. I'm Travis Johns for Expert Village, and I'm going to talk to you about invoicing. Invoicing is obviously very important because without it, you will not get paid for your work. Standard invoices are available on the internet, they're also available in Microsoft Word, Excel. You can get standard templates for this if you don't know how to do it and just do a little research. Use examples from what you've seen and basically, you can change elements from it to suit your needs. Invoices are always itemized so make sure that whatever you're charging the client for, you have it on the list in its own separate section. Obviously, you don't want to hand in something that looks unprofessional. Scrolling something on a piece of paper isn't really going to fly. You want to make sure that the presentation of this invoice, while being accurate as far as numbers are concerned, is professional and lets the client know that they're in good hands so that when they get it, they're going to respect it and pay you in a timely fashion. A practice that I have started to employ is having two separate folders for your invoices, paid and unpaid. A lot of times you'll be working with a client where you agree beforehand that you are on a "net 30," meaning they owe you the money 30 days from the invoice. Some clients work on "net 60." Other clients, it's a little bit harder to track your money down and you want to make sure that you have detailed and accurate records. Having two separate folders, one for the invoices that they've already paid you for and one for invoices that are still outstanding, is very important so that you don't mix up the two. It's very simple and easy to look at one folder and say these invoices have not been paid so that when you have to go collecting your money, you know exactly what you're looking for."