Congratulations, you got your first book deal! Now you’re probably wondering, “What royalties will I…
What Should Go on an Illustration Invoice
Who doesn’t love getting paid? It allows you to do all the things you enjoy like eating, wearing clothes, and not dying in the streets. So it’s a huge bummer when your payment is slowed down because you forgot some vital information on your invoice. You can solve that by making sure to include the following information on every illustration invoice you send out:
- Your name. Clients need to know who did the work.
- Your contact info. So clients know where to send those sweet, sweet payments and contact you if there are any problems.
- An invoice number. Something you and your clients can reference.
- The client’s PO number (only if applicable). Some clients will give you purchase order numbers. For ones that do, you should include them on your invoices.
- An invoice date. So your clients and you know when the invoices were submitted and when they need to be paid.
- The client’s information. Who the clients are and who commissioned the work.
- A description of the work done. So your clients know what they’re actually being billed for.
- A tax ID number. For government purposes. Because you don’t want every client you work with to have your social security number (invoices go through a lot of hands), I’d recommend getting an EIN number which can be used instead.
- The total fee due. So your clients know how much to write on your checks.
- Payment terms. So your clients know when payment is expected to be received by and what happens if those payments are late. Standard is 30 days upon receipt.
Invoices don’t have to be anything fancy. They can simply be a Word doc with all the appropriate information. However, if you want to design yours and have them look nice or use some kind of bookkeeping software to generate them, I’m sure your clients would be even happier (and it may be beneficial to you for tracking purposes). Whatever way you decide to present them, if you include all this information on your invoices, your clients should have no excuse for holding up your payments.
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Can you upload one of your invoices as an example?
This is a good template for an invoice. It’s really basic, but it has the info that’s necessary in an easy-to-read document.
Invoice template
Hello! Chiming in a few years after this post was posted, but I’m hoping the comment will still be seen – there doesn’t seem to be too much info available about this kinda thing in general, and this article has been very helpful for me starting out in illustration and invoicing my first clients.
One more question: what would be the best way to format an invoice for a royalty agreement, e.g. a payment that will be repeated, where the actual amount paid might not yet be clear at the time of the invoice’s creation? Or would that simply be invoiced later, if the client fails to pay the royalties based on the royalties agreement? Or is whole process accomplished with a completely different type of documentation?
Thanks very much!
Good question. This is very different and is usually covered in the contract. Royalty statements are sent out usually twice a year and, if any money is due, paid then.