Biz
Billings
Billings
A photo business, like any other, can only exist if money comes in. As a photographer, how do you get money in? By getting paid. How do you get paid? By invoicing your customers. Do I hear Duh? There are a few studies floating around claiming that:
- 20% of small business owners "forget" to invoice.
- 50% of small business owners do not have a system for invoicing and tracking of the invoices.
- 66% of small business owners write invoices "by hand" with Microsoft Word/Excel.
How can you expect to stay in business if you don't invoice or collect on your invoices?
- Every day, at the end of the day, I write down the work done in an Excel spreadsheet.
- Regular customers are invoiced on the 1st of the next month.
- Casual/occasional customers are invoiced at the end of the job.
- From my spreadsheets, I know how much is not invoiced to the nearest dollar.
- From my spreadsheets, I know what my receivables are and how old they are to the nearest dollar.
I use my spreadsheet as a "one-write system"1. There are many ways of dealing with it. The simplest is to use some accounting software such as Quicken, Peachtree, or Simply Accounting... There are many others.
Billing is the life blood of any business:
- It's very important that you have a "proper/working" invoicing system, or you won't be paid.
- You customers won't chase you to pay you.
- You customers will think of you as unreliable, meaning don't do business with him/her and don't use him as a photographer.
- If you can't look after your own business, how will you look after their photos?
1 One write accounting example ↑
A photo business, like any other, can only exist if money comes in. As a photographer, how do you get money in? By getting paid. How do you get paid? By invoicing your customers. Do I hear Duh? There are a few studies floating around claiming that:
- 20% of small business owners "forget" to invoice.
- 50% of small business owners do not have a system for invoicing and tracking of the invoices.
- 66% of small business owners write invoices "by hand" with Microsoft Word/Excel.
How can you expect to stay in business if you don't invoice or collect on your invoices?
- Every day, at the end of the day, I write down the work done in an Excel spreadsheet.
- Regular customers are invoiced on the 1st of the next month.
- Casual/occasional customers are invoiced at the end of the job.
- From my spreadsheets, I know how much is not invoiced to the nearest dollar.
- From my spreadsheets, I know what my receivables are and how old they are to the nearest dollar.
I use my spreadsheet as a "one-write system"1. There are many ways of dealing with it. The simplest is to use some accounting software such as Quicken, Peachtree, or Simply Accounting... There are many others.
Billing is the life blood of any business:
- It's very important that you have a "proper/working" invoicing system, or you won't be paid.
- You customers won't chase you to pay you.
- You customers will think of you as unreliable, meaning don't do business with him/her and don't use him as a photographer.
- If you can't look after your own business, how will you look after their photos?
1 One write accounting example ↑
