Proper Invoicing.

Nuts and bolts of invoicing from Greg Hoy on Cognition.

A better looking invoice is just one way to make it easy for your clients to pay you. We also send that first invoice when we sign the contract, so the client has it in hand. We automatically provide the tax information they’ll inevitably ask for, like an IRS W-9 form. We list our wire/EFT information on all invoices and contracts for easy reference, and if they prefer to send payments via FedEx, we offer to cover the FedEx expense using our own FedEx account number.

As a business, your first, second, and third priorities are getting paid, else you’re a charity, not a business. ((For what it’s worth, you can customize your Quickbooks invoices to your heart’s content. We have ours all branded-up. I was hoping to see similar comments on the post, at which point I was going to write, “Don’t miss the useful discussion of standard invoicing practices in the comments,” but, alas, there is no discussion, just a bunch of noise.))