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To answer the #1 most-asked question about my invoicing process as a freelancer: No, I don’t use Xero. I also don’t subscribe to the old “payment by the 20th of the following month” model. I invoice at the end of each week or the end of the project, as needed, with a default 14-day payment window. It’s that simple. How else am I supposed to keep anything like a predictable income moving through my financial train stations?
I use Hnry. They’re my invoicing and expensing people and also my official tax agent. The process is simple:
Note: I’m getting better at predicting net income, but there are always small variations. At this point, I also go into that client’s budget and tweak the amount to reflect the actual figure that I was paid.
At my last salaried job, I was once handed a task to do “whenever you can get to it” which, when I pressed for more information, turned out to be “by the end of today, which is in two hours.” Cue side-eye. I’ve brought that lesson into self-employment. Up-front communication is one of the most critical elements of freelance invoicing. This doesn’t just encompass my hourly or project rate, but also payment terms, hard or soft deadlines, and clarifying those tricky situations like “Is this job for a nonprofit organization paid* or voluntary?”
Negotiation is part of this, too. Maybe a client has a small budget, so they want a project cap of five hours. Maybe they can only run payments once a month, so they’d prefer a single invoice at the end of the project. Whatever it is, it helps to be a little flexible.
*and I don’t mean paid in branded pens, a baseball cap, or “exposure.”
Here’s the great part about offering a deadline: It’s proactive and it sets an expectation. Packed month? No problem, you gave yourself breathing room. Slow month? Delivering ahead of schedule means the client will love you.
This often has a direct financial benefit, too! More than once, I’ve had clients pay me the same day I’ve invoiced them, because “you did such a speedy job on this, it’s only fair we repay the favor.”
Don’t promise more than you can deliver; if you do, communicate that sooner rather than later. Heck, communicate anyway! And don’t let those Speedy Gonzales jobs become the norm. If I deliver a 48-hour turnaround, I always make it clear it’s an outlier and shouldn’t be the expectation going forward.
If someone wants two-day turnarounds on a regular basis, that’s when you charge them that extra 30% rush fee — or you start evaluating whether they really bring joy to your client list.
Look, life happens, right? We’ve all been there. I’ve had to apologize for late deliverables, the same as a client had to apologize for completely missing an invoice in their crowded inbox. I have a weekly client (a rare thing in freelancing!) who regularly runs weeks overdue on his invoices and then pays several at once. It’s give and take! Sending that reminder note might seem scary, but I promise you it’s not. Nobody will be offended that you’re asking to be fairly and promptly compensated for your work.
And if they are offended? Read the next sentence.
So your client hasn’t paid you in three months. Or they’re on the phone twelve times in one day with their demands, then the next day they’re incommunicado when you urgently need sign-off. Or they’re flat-out abusive. Pro tip: You’re the boss. You can say no.
I’ve done it myself. I can only keep so many people on my client list, and I’d rather they were people I enjoy working with. But again: Communicate. It’s polite to give enough lead time to wrap up any projects before you send that final invoice with a beaming grin.
Rachel E. Wilson is an author and freelance writer based in New Zealand. She has been, variously, administrator at an ESOL non-profit, transcriber for a historian, and technical document controller at a french fry factory. She has a keen interest in financial literacy and design, and a growing collection of houseplants (pun intended).
