Courier Invoice Template

You’ll use your invoice to get paid for your delivery work. 

Your clients can clearly see the services you provide, when they should pay for them, and any late fees, if applicable. A well-designed invoice makes it easier to avoid questions about how much money is owed or due by which date.

Accepting multiple forms of payment is easier now than ever before. Select which payment methods you accept on your invoice and invite your customers to choose the payment method that’s best for them. 

You can use your Courier invoice to bill clients for many services, such as:

• Parking Costs
• Travel expenses
• Mileage reimbursement
• Fuel costs
• Insurance surcharges
• Special delivery fees

Whatever services you are billing your clients for, using a single form of billing will make life simpler. Connecting your invoices to a payment system and bank account will help you keep track of paid and unpaid bills easily.

You can bill your clients by sending them an invoice. There are a few things to get right with your billing. Here’s a short list:

• You can bill by the hour, mile, or project. 
• Hourly billing is really common and you can use Indy’s Time Tracker to track your hours easily. You can even add your time tracks to your invoices as line items.
• Billing by the mile is simple as well. Track your mileage in real time with a service like Google Maps and add each delivery to an invoice. Indy’s simple editing makes adding new lines to an invoice very easy.
• Billing by the delivery is also possible. Agree the delivery charge with your client, add it to your contract, and then send them an invoice with the delivery charge once the job is done.
• Many freelancers take a deposit at the beginning of the project. This protects you from shady clients and sets you up for cash flow success. Deposits up to 50% are normal.
• You should set out your billing and payment terms in your contract. If you don’t have a contract, use Indy’s Contracts tool to create one before you start work.
• Once you finish the work or pass the milestone, send the client an invoice. If you don’t have an invoice, you can use Indy’s invoice generator to create a professional invoice in just a few moments.

That’s it! Those are the basics of how to bill someone for your work. 

Courier charges vary widely by location, but here are the things you should keep in mind to set your rates:

·    Charge by the hour or by the mile according to the job. Local deliveries usually charge by the hour, while long-haul jobs charge by the mile.

·    You can include a surcharge for out of hours deliveries or special expedited jobs.

·    Consider a heavy items fee for handling really large, bulky, or heavy packages.

·    You might want to have a plan for a waiting fee if you find customers are making you wait for packages that aren’t ready to go when you are.

Knowing how much to charge for your work is a complicated area. We want to help freelancers, so we’re going to give you some general tips here about settling on the best amount to charge clients for your services.

Let’s think about this from a few different perspectives:

First, how much do you want/need to earn? You should create your rates to reflect what you need to earn. Keep in mind that you won’t get paid for some of the things you must do, such as preparing your taxes, looking for more customers, and weekly admin work. So, your hourly or project rate needs to be a little higher to make up for the unpaid work that is part of every freelancer’s life.

Second, how much do others charge for similar services at your level of expertise and experience? This question can be a little difficult to answer, but you can just ask. Join a Facebook group and ask. Call a local competitor and ask. Once you know what they charge, you can go under that if you’re new to the market or over it if you’re the boss.

Another massive item you should plan for is taxes. You’ll be paying your own taxes as a freelancer, so your rates should incorporate the taxes you’ll eventually have to pay. The average tax amount paid by Americans, for all taxes, is about 29%. This means you’ll end up paying $3 in taxes out of every $10 you earn. Price your work to pay your taxes and be left with the income you want.

Your best rates will be different because everyone’s market is different. What works on the West Coast might not be successful in Texas. Try a few different price points until you find the rate clients accept and you can live on.

This part is easy! Here’s a step-by-step guide to getting your invoice done:

1. Open one of Indy’s Courier Invoice Templates.
2. Add your business branding and information.
3. Insert your client’s contact information.
4. Number your invoice in a useful way.
5. Fill in the lines with your work completed and the cost per task/hour.
6. Check the invoice total and details.

Once you’ve finished these six steps, you are ready to send your invoice to your client. Send it straight from Indy or download it as a PDF and use your own email client to send it. 

Indy offers an all-in-one platform for freelancers to manage all their admin work. When you sign up with Indy, your invoicing gets better because the other tools work together. For example, you can use Indy’s Time Tracker to note the time spent on a project. When you’re ready, the Invoice tool can automatically pull your unbilled hours for the project onto your invoice to make it ready to use. This makes your billing more accurate and saves time as well. When you set up your customers and projects with Indy, your entire workflow becomes smoother.