Last editedDec 2021 2 min read
Just like with any business venture, it’s important for videographers to receive payment on time. Whether you’re creating advertisements, working on a promotional video making social media content, you should know how to create an invoice for video production. Good invoicing practices help you to avoid late payments and encourage a good customer relationship.
If you’re still creating your videography invoices manually, then you might want to consider using software to make life easier for yourself. GoCardless is an excellent invoicing solution that can save you time and money, meaning that you can focus on creating great videos instead of worrying about finances. Keep reading to find out more about making an invoice for video production.
Videography invoice breakdown
Before getting into software solutions that can streamline the process for you, it’s a good idea to give a videography invoice breakdown so that you know exactly what is required. A videography invoice is no different from invoices for other services or products, so you should follow standard invoicing practices. This means that you should include the following information:
A unique invoice number that both you and the client can use to identify the invoice. This is especially useful if you run into any problems down the line as you will be able to easily reference invoices.
Your name, the name of your business and contact details, along with those of the client.
The total price for the project, with a breakdown of any individual costs as necessary. For example, you could separate this into filming time and editing time.
The payment methods that you can accept, such as bank transfer, credit and debit cards or checks.
The due date for payment. It’s also a good idea to include some terms for this date. For example, if they make a late payment, will this incur any extra charges?
With this video production invoice breakdown, you have all the necessary information to create a great invoice. You can even download a free videography invoice template and customize this to suit your individual needs. It’s a good idea to create a list of your common services and the charges for these so that you can simply copy and paste them into your free videography invoice template as needed.
Invoicing with GoCardless
You can create and send invoices for video production easily with GoCardless. By automating payment collection, you can save yourself a lot of time and energy, freeing you up to focus more on your creative work. The process is easy to understand and intuitive, and you can get up and running in no time. The stages involved are as follows:
Once you’ve created your invoice, you can send it over to the client using the GoCardless software.
There is a one-time customer setup, meaning that the first time a client is charged they will have to enter their payment details and provide authorization for you to collect payment. After this, payments can be collected automatically, which is convenient when you ’re dealing with repeat customers.
Depending on the nature of the project, you can then schedule future payments from the client. These can be one-off payments or recurring ones if you’re working for the client over a longer period. You can link GoCardless to other invoicing software, such as Xero, and enable GoCardless to automatically pull payments on invoice due dates.
From this point on, there’s nothing you need to do! GoCardless will automatically collect payments when they are due, so you have more time to work on other areas of your video production business. What’s more, GoCardless generates real-time analytics based on your transactions, providing valuable insights for data analysis that can help to guide your future business strategy.
There’s no monthly fee to use GoCardless, just a fee per transaction. You can see more details about the pricing here.
We can help
GoCardless helps you automate payment collection, cutting down on the amount of admin your team needs to deal with when chasing invoices. Find out how GoCardless can help you with ad hoc payments or recurring payments.