How to Write an Illustration Invoice
Photo By: Glenn Carstens-Peters
We started this little document introduction by understanding legal terminology, then focused on using that terminology to create your contracts. We’ve also talked about how to write a quote for a potential client. Now there's one more document you need to know how to do, which comes right at the end of a job—the Invoice. Now invoices aren't just a request to be paid they are also important documents you must keep for tax purposes.
Invoices help you track what you’ve been paid and how much you taxed the client. Don't forget that you can’t charge someone taxes unless you are a registered business. You are required by law to register as a business if you are making more than a thousand pounds a year in the UK. Be sure to research how registering a business works in your country. This can be done with a simple Google search, government websites usually have a page telling you more about this. Once you are registered as a business the government can audit you. If this happens they want to see all documents about your business income and receipts for business supplies over the last 7 years. If you have documents missing the government could flag you and audit you again in the next year or worse think you're hiding money from them. You do not want to mess with the government. You want to keep your invoices and expenses organized by month, be sure everything has dates on them and keep them in a safe place where they won't be damaged. Once the documents have passed the 7-year mark only then are you allowed to shred them. (Don’t forget to check if your country has a different time frame you have to keep these documents).
The Format
Alright, now we know why invoices are so important let's talk about how to format your own. Right at the top of your page, we’re going to title the document “Invoice”. Now tell me if you’ve heard this one before, we then put in our contact info. We want our name, email, phone number and address. Then it's the client's turn. The client's name, title, company, email, phone number, address. Then it’s the date that the job was completed. Can you guess what's next? That’s right, the description of the job. What are you drawing, how many illustrations, if they’re in colour, and how are the images going to be used? Don’t forget the usage, how many copies, how long they have the rights, where they can sell the illustrations etc. Unlike the other documents, you don’t have to have a schedule for the project in this section. The project should be done by now so a schedule is pointless. We finish this section once again with the total cost of the project.
Here's where things are a bit different. Instead of listing all the clauses, we need to list the ones about payment. Usually, this is the one where we talk about late fees. Then we are going to number the invoice. When you first start invoicing I suggest not starting from 1. Whether this is your first job or not it looks a bit better to have a few jobs under your belt. Don’t go crazy and start at a thousand and something if you're starting your business. That’s pretty obvious it's not your 1000th paid project. Pick a believable number like 35 or 50. I’ll leave it to you how you format the licence number but each invoice after this one will continue to count up from the number you pick. So if I start my invoices at 42, the next client invoice will be 43, then 44 etc. Lastly, you need to put the tax number the government gives you when you become a registered business. If you aren’t registered you don’t have to worry about putting the number.
With this, we have covered the three most important documents you need to know to run your illustration business. As with the other articles, I’ll put a visual example of the format below.
