Self Employed Invoice Template

For freelancers across industries, there are a number of advantages to using a self-employed invoice for billing vendors or clients.

As a self-employed business owner, you expect to be paid for each hour you work as a freelancer, as you strive to provide the highest quality products and services to your clients as possible. As such, an accurate self-employed invoice will allow you to better visualize and communicate every aspect of your job to clients through a formal invoice that carefully and thoroughly tracks all billable hours associated with your transaction.

A self-employed invoice is ideal for a variety of freelance invoicing applications, and they are absolutely essential for freelancing businesses that rely on payment for services rendered. Without an effective and accurate self-employed invoice, freelancers will be unable to charge clients appropriately based on costs that best represent the quality of and the time associated with the work you produce or perform.  

Because a well-designed self-employed invoice develops and maintains the credibility of your company, it is essential to understand exactly how this tool can help streamline your payment process. A self-employed invoice may be the ideal payment processing solution for your freelance business if you operate on a services-based business strategy or model. 

A self-employed invoice serves to inform your client of the total cost of the freelancing project, including important information such as the amount of hours spent on each billable activity and the subtotals associated with each of the billable activities listed in the document.

With a standard self-employed invoice, there are a number of components that all standard products- or services-based invoices should have (for hourly invoices, the time associated with each billable task should also be included). For most typical invoicing scenarios, self-employed freelancers should include the following elements on their translation invoice: all products or services supplied; product or service rates; thorough and accurate descriptions of the products or services; and all pertinent payment information, such as accepted payment options, deadlines, and associated fees.

By using a clear, effective, and accurate self-employed invoice, freelancers will be able to better convey the time and resources associated with their products and services, and they will in turn be able to provide their clients with further information to support their prices or rates.

Payments are completed more promptly and the risk of late or missed payments is considerably decreased when clients interact with user-friendly services and tools, especially when it comes to completing payments for items or—in the case of translation professionals—services rendered. Remember that the user experience is everything to a customer, which is why self-employed invoices should be as clear and complete as possible before being submitted to the client for payment.

At Indy, we understand the work that freelancers do to provide high quality products and services to their clients—regardless of the model of your freelancing business, the time and resources you dedicate to your company warrant prompt, on-time payment. As such, your self-employed invoices should accurately and effectively demonstrate that hard work while maintaining a great user experience for your clients throughout the payment process.

Depending on the structure of your freelancing operation and whether your company provides products or services (or some combination of both), your self-employed invoice may take on a slightly different form.

If your freelancing operation is currently operating on a products-based business model, your invoicing process should be relatively simple. To create your self-employed invoice, simply choose a document development platform that works for you, such as a word processor like Google Docs or Microsoft Word, or spreadsheet software, such as Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel. From there, you should incorporate all details relevant to your transaction. Before you begin billing clients, you can use the customization tools supported by each of these platforms to modify your self-employed invoice to reflect your brand.

If you’re operating on a services-based business model, however, the process of gathering the payment details necessary to inform your self-employed invoices will be slightly different. By choosing to work with professional invoicing software by Indy, however, freelancers can utilize powerful function-specific invoicing tools to streamline the payment process—both internally and for clients. Using Indy software, freelancers can send their self-employed invoices directly to clients for payment.

As you work to establish your hourly rate for your self-employed invoice, remember to consider important elements regarding the effort required to provide your products or perform services. To do this, take into account elements such as the amount of time and resources that are associated with your business operations.

To bill for hourly work, first identify an hourly pay rate per task for your services, and also be sure to create thorough and accurate descriptions for your services. By using Indy invoicing software, freelancers can track their hours directly in-platform, ensuring accurate billing hours are conveyed to the client for the entire duration of the project.

From there, ensure all other relevant transaction details have been included on the document, such as contact information and payment terms. 

As a freelancer, you have identified a skill that allows you to operate under self-employment—it’s an incredible amount of responsibility, and the payment process can feel overwhelming for even the most seasoned freelancers.

When it comes to maintaining the best possible invoicing and payment processes for clients, an accurate and clear self-employed invoice is absolutely essential to continuing on with your self-employment professional style of operation. And as the leader of your freelancing operation, you really don’t have the time afforded to spend on the more granular aspects of business operations, such as perfecting your invoicing documents.

With professional invoicing software by Indy, however, self-employed invoices are easy to generate. With Indy, freelancers gain access to powerful tools capable of streamlining the invoicing process through payment integration, invoice creation, and hour tracking.

As you begin creating your self-employed invoice for your freelancing operation, it’s important to know which details to include on the final document—without them, you risk late or missed payments as a result of a poorly designed invoicing workflow and failure to maintain a convenient payment process for clients. 

Below are the core elements that should be included on any invoice used by freelancers and self-employed professionals: 

• Business and contact information, including the name of your freelancing operation, your phone number, mailing address, and email address
• Client information, including the names and contact information
• Brand elements, including your logo and components such as your company color palette and font families
• Unique invoice elements, such as invoice ID numbers, invoice dates, and payment due dates
• An itemized list of products or services
• Thorough descriptions of the supplied products or rendered services
• Payment totals and subtotals, if applicable
• Payment options and terms, including associated fees and deadlines

By including these elements in your self-employed invoice, you’ll be able to strengthen your overall payment process and customer experience for your clients moving forward. 

If you’re a beginner freelancer who has yet to establish their hourly rate, the task of placing value on the work that you do as a self-employed individual can seem difficult. However, it’s a necessary component of any self-employed invoice—and absolutely essential to ensuring you get paid for your services. 

When establishing your hourly rate for your self-employed business, there are a number of important factors to consider, all of them intricately connected to your freelance business operations plan, your payment process, and the type of work that you do under your self employment. As you think about how much your time and services are worth billing for, consider some of the following elements:

• your competition within the job market
• your bottom-line, or the figure you get after calculating how many resources (both time and money) you spend when fulfilling a project with a client before you make a profit
• your credibility as a freelancer and business partner

When it comes to your competition within the job market, you need to consider how much your competition is charging for similar products or services. Do your research to avoid over- or undercharging your clients, and make adjustments depending on your unique business model and offerings. Price yourself according to the market to position yourself as economically and professionally competitive within the market.

As you work to establish your hourly rate, it’s essential to keep your bottom-line and return-on-investment in mind at all times. To get this figure, calculate both the time and money you spend in order to fulfil a given project with a client. These figures should take into account the amount of money you spend on materials and the time spent performing project-specific activities, such as traveling or building.

From there, you can establish a base-line figure for determining your hourly rate that ensures you make a profit from each transaction. 

You may also determine your hourly rate by targeting an annual salary. To do this, identify a target salary that is realistic to the capacities of your freelancing operation. Don’t overcharge your clients—instead, use this method to calculate an hourly rate that reflects the competition of your industry market, and then adapt according to the resources of your freelancing operation. After calculating an estimate for your total annual expenses, set an hourly rate that reflects your target annual salary.

By the end of this exercise, your profit margins may not be as you expected, but these calculations will provide you with important insights for establishing your initial rates and, ultimately, reevaluating your payment workflows as your freelancing business continues to grow. 

With a typical 9-to-5 job, billable hours are standard across the board: eight hours a day, 52 days a week for 52 weeks a year. As a freelancer who is self-employed, you enjoy the freedom of flexibility scheduling and, as such, added flexibility in the payment process. Strive to capture an accurate representation of the amount of time dedicated to each of your provided services to come up with an hourly rate that truly represents the value of the work you provide clients.