When you are a Web designer, you know that it can be quite difficult sometimes to send invoices and get paid on time.
This is especially true when you have more design work and less time for paperwork. However, every business needs positive cash flow in order to survive. In order to get that positive cash flow, you’ll need to get paid on your invoices much more efficiently.
Therefore, although paperwork can be an unexciting task, it is of crucial to the well-being of your business. Today, we’ll look at some of the best invoicing tips to help Web designers get paid faster.
Get Organized and Be Systematic
One of the most important invoicing tips for Web designers is to get serious about financial organization. This means that Web designers need to be more careful with their invoicing system. Although getting a good system in place is possible, most Web designers would rather spend that time designing than creating a whole organization system from scratch.
An easier way would be to use online invoicing software. This has many great benefits. One of the biggest is that the software will take care of the organization for you. You won’t ever need to look for client details on your computer or anywhere else again. In fact, you can do your invoicing from wherever you are because the software is cloud-based.
Make Thorough Terms and Conditions
Before you even send off your first invoice, you should create clear and concise terms and conditions. This will help you to specify what you and your client’s expectations are.
Your terms and conditions should be able to foresee the major part of your work and try to cover everything. However, it should also allow for room for negotiations and growth.
For your terms and conditions, you’ll need to first of all set your payment due date. Although many freelancers set it at 30 days, this is a mistake. Instead, you should set a shorter date, such as 14 days.
Beyond that, you’ll need to decide whether there will be any fees and charges for late payment. It is also good to cover how you will get paid: before the job, after it, or part before and part after. And finally, you should set forth how many revisions will be allowed or each job. If you don’t set that, the number could potentially be infinite and you and your client could have real problems.
Invoice on Time
In order for you to get paid much more quickly, you’ll need to get much more proactive in sending out your invoices on time.
Not sending invoices out on time is a condition that affects many freelancers, especially those in the creative and design industries. This could be because, during the project, they are so focused that they spend a lot of their mental and emotional energy. By the time the project is finished, they are spent and need to take a break from the work. Unfortunately, that also includes a break from invoices.
Instead of doing that, you’ll need to create the invoice immediately after (or even before) finishing the project. This will ensure that you send the project off with the invoice and therefore get paid faster.
Beyond that, be sure to include all the pertinent information necessary for the invoice. This will include:
• your bank account details
• the payment terms and due date
• the tasks and hours completed
• all other specific job information
When you include all the necessary information, there will be no reason for challenges or delays in your client’s accounting department.
Follow Up
One of the most important invoicing tips for Web designers is to always follow up on late payers. The reason that some clients will be late on their payments is simple: they just forgot.
As most people do, your clients get busy, and they get swamped with other work. Unfortunately, this means they’ve already forgotten about the invoice that you sent. If you never follow up, how will they be reminded?
The best thing to do is to send a polite email reminder the day after your payment due date. If you’ve set the due date for 14 days, you should send out that email on the 15th. This will usually be enough to get paid or to receive a firm date on when payment will be made.
If that does not work, the second time you should make a polite call to your client and inquire about payment. Although in the modern age telephoning has fallen out of favor, it is a faster way to get your answer.
Chasing your payments can be a daunting task, but it’s what you’ll need to do to get paid much faster.
When you follow these simple and effective invoicing tips for Web designers, you’ll see how quick and easy it is to not just get paid, but to get paid faster.
Uwe Dreissigacker is CEO of InvoiceBerry, an online invoicing software for small businesses and freelancers. He’s been running online businesses since his teenage years and is passionate about technology, startups, small business, marketing and traveling. He also writes about these topics for the InvoiceBerry blog.
