So being a freelancer, in just about anything - at some point in time you'll most likely have to create an invoice. There are multiple ways to do this, some clients request a specific format, provide you with a form or expect you to come up with your own!
If you work through paypal, there's a handy little feature that allows you to create and email invoices, it even keeps a record of all the invoices you send. I seriously use this function at least once a week as a Voice Actress and have had a couple freelancing friends ask me how to create one.
So voila, I'm going to share the easy to follow step-by-step instructions I had written up for my friends.
1.) Login to your paypal account. Don't have one? Create one! It's super easy and free.
2.) At the top is a bunch of tabs. Next to the 'My Account' tab is the 'Send Money' tab, after that is the 'Request Money' tab. Click on 'Request Money'.
3.) Beneath the 'Request Money' tab is 'Manage Invoices', which it should automatically be set to. Next to that is Request Money, Create Invoice and Invoice Settings. You can edit your Invoice settings now or later. Let's assume you've already done this.
4.) Click on 'Create Invoice'.
5.) Your contact information should be listed, edit this as you see fit or as needed.
6.) Under the 'send to' space, copy and paste your client's email. They should notify you which email to send this to, if they haven't - for the love of everything ask them! Otherwise you might have to cancel this invoice and send it to a different email.
7.) Under Item Name, type in what it is for, Ex: Scripts, Recordings, Both, Fortune Telling, Other...etcetera!
8.) Under Description: type in again what it's for, like Scripts - Week 01 February, etc.
9.) In the unit price, type in your final invoice tally for that job/item/week. Keep no tax, unless you need to tax?
10.) In 'note to recipient' briefly summarize the contents of your full invoice. Include prices next to the invoice and possibly the dates if needed. You can be as extensive or vague with this as you want.
11.) Scroll down, beneath memo there is a send and preview button. Hit preview. Double check everything is correct and set. Then triple check. (Especially your final unit price!)
12.) Hit the orange send button.
Aaaand you're done! Once your invoice is paid you'll receive an email notification. You can also set the due date on the invoice, send reminders and all that good stuff. However, for the sake of simplicity, I did not include that info here. Honestly if you just click around you can figure out the rest pretty easily!
So there you go! I hope that's helped out somewhat and that you find this useful. Whether you're a freelance voice actor/actress, script writer, taxidermist, what-have-you! :)
