A clean, clear invoice is important for any successful graphic designer.
Unfortunately, many graphic designers either hate sitting down to do their invoicing or create over- designed invoice documents. The truth of the matter is: a well- structured invoice will help reduce payment delays and improve your cash flow.
So instead of chasing late payments, you can spend more time in Adobe Illustrator.
With a high- quality graphic design invoice template, you can remove challenges such as itemizing creative processes, defining project scope, communicating revisions and frustrating scope creep.
Your invoice can be both a first and last touch point with a client, so it's an essential extension of your brand.
On this page, you'll find all the essential components you should be including in your graphic design invoices, along with billing structures and high- performing, easy- to- use graphic design invoice examples and a free invoice generator tool.
Essential components of a graphic design invoice
Every graphic design invoice should have precise information on it. This is to ensure they are legally compliant and that they facilitate easy payment by your client.
Your invoice for graphic design work should include:
1. Designer and client business information
At the top of the page, you should have both businesses' legal names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses to ensure full documentation arrives in the right place and any responsible people can easily be contacted.
Adding to this, consider including professional logos for both yourself and your client's company to help maintain brand consistency, plus tax identification numbers should be clearly stated.
2. Invoice numbers
For tracking purposes, all invoices should have a unique tracking number. It's best practice to create a sequential code, often with date information and sequential numbering. This allows both parties to easily track and refer to an invoice during the payment process and any reconciliation.
3. Key dates
You should clearly state the date you issue an invoice and the payment due date. This gives a client the understanding of how long they have to pay, such as net 30 and the deadline for their payment.
Without a deadline, it can lead to 60% higher late payment rates for the simple reason that the client doesn't have a deadline to pay.
4. Project description
Clearly state the project the invoice is for and a description of the work so that your client understands what the payment is in reference to. Don't leave any ambiguity.
5. Itemized design services
To reduce the feeling of sticker shock on large invoices, it's important to break down your services into itemized lists with values attached to each. This could be research, client calls or illustrations.
Having everything itemized gives clear value to each stage of the design process.
6. Pricing structure
You also need to include how you've charged for the work. Is each item running on an hourly rate? Is there a fixed project fee? Is that clearly labeled? Or are there unit quantity prices per logo or design?
This transparent pricing structure will help reduce any client questions that lead to payment delays.
7. Payment terms
Finally, make sure you clearly state how you'd like the client to pay. This could include bank transfer details, links to credit card payments, crypto wallet addresses or any other payment method.
In the payment terms, you could also include late payment penalties to encourage timely payments or even offer early payment incentives to help improve your cash flow.
By offering multiple payment options, you can increase payment speed by up to 30% in many cases.
Types of graphic design services to include
Graphic design covers a wide selection of services, so it's essential to have clarity on the service you are offering and how you're itemizing it. This makes it easy to bill for yourself and allows you to demonstrate the clear value of your services to your clients.
Here’s a step by step graphic design invoice breakdown:
1. Logo design and branding
This is what most people think of when they think of a graphic designer. Someone who creates logos and builds whole brands. If this is the service you're offering, then you could even break it down into smaller subsections on your invoices, such as:
Research phases
Client communications
Discovery calls
Each design route offered
Revisions
2. Print design
If you're offering corporate business design work such as business cards, brochures or leaflets, it might be easiest to charge per product with set fees. For example, a set fee for your business card design, brochure design or leaflet design.
You could even consider including working with the printers to give a full service to the client, so you might need to include other expenses, such as printing costs, to bill back to the client.
3. Digital design
If you're doing regular social media graphics, banners or YouTube thumbnails, then there are several ways you could charge for your services. For social media and its ongoing nature, a monthly retainer for a certain number of posts could work nicely.
For channel branding like banners and thumbnails, you could offer a set package for people to choose from.
4. Website design
Website design can range from hundreds of dollars to tens of thousands of dollars, so there are various pricing structures available.
For small business websites, you might be able to offer a set fee if you're working from templates. For more customized projects, you could create custom quotes with milestone payments along the way as each section of the website is delivered, whether that's research, wireframing or final Figma files.
5. Packaging design
Packaging design can be a drawn- out process as you'll need to work with both the visual design and the type of packaging that the client wants to use. So you might need to build plenty of time for client communication as well as research into viable options for their packaging.
In these scenarios, it might be difficult to deliver a set fee from the outset of the project. You might simply quote using an hourly rate with an indication of costs and bill for milestones along the way.
6. Illustration
Illustration is a similar process to other designs, like logos and digital design. You can choose to bill in various methods, whether it's time- based, such as half days or daily rates or for several individual illustrations, you could charge per design.
7. Animation or motion graphics
Animation or motion graphic invoicing can be flexible. Often, freelance animators are hired on a daily rate, making it easy to agree with the client on the time you'll spend on a project.
Of course, there's always the option to charge per animation or create a project price as a whole, depending on the required scope.
Other things to think about
Within your invoicing terms, you should also specify the deliverable formats and copyright of your work. For example:
How will you deliver animation work?
What file types will be delivered?
How will you transfer them?
The copyright or terms of use of the design should also be explicitly stated. Does the client retain all copyright to use it however they want? Are there specific stipulations that an illustration could be used for? For example, private versus commercial use, digital versus print use.
Graphic design invoice template example
Now you understand what you need to include in your graphic design invoices. Below, we'll show you an example of a high quality graphic designer invoice template and explain the key reasons why it makes a great.
Take a look at this freelance graphic design invoice example:
Above, you can see a graphic design invoice example that can be generated using Acctual's free invoice generator.
It's not overly designed but creates a clear, professional document with custom branding. You can easily include your logo and your client's logo along with company details by simply inputting an email address. The tool then automatically goes and finds the relevant information or allows you to enter it manually.
Service items and prices, including taxes, are clearly stated, along with payment terms and important dates that are easy to identify.
Importantly, as an invoice for graphic design work, it's not over - designed or too cluttered. It's simple, with plenty of white space and easy for an administrative team to use.
Graphic design invoice payment terms
When sending invoices, carefully consider your payment terms. That means how and when you get paid.
With graphic design covering so many different industries, it's important to be clear with the client. The project size is also important, as it translates to the amount of risk you're taking on as a freelancer.
So, in the best scenario, good payment terms will improve your cash flow and reduce your risk. Here are some standard payment terms to think about for graphic design work:
1. Prepayment or deposit
Before starting any work, particularly on a large project, consider requesting a partial payment or deposit. This is beneficial for a number of reasons:
It ensures client buy- in and proves their commitment to the project
It helps you get cash flow upfront and cover any expenses
It ensures you get paid at least some part of the project, reducing the risk of leaving payment to the end of a job
2. Milestone payments
If you've a long project that could take weeks or months, which is common for branding and web design, then milestone payments are a handy option.
You can break down each part of the project into manageable chunks. Every time you reach a specific milestone, you can invoice and receive payment. This helps reduce risk and builds trust between both sides.
As a designer, you can enjoy cash flow along the way and spot any non- paying clients early in the process.
3. On completion payments
For smaller projects, you may be happy being paid upon completion. You deliver the project and designs as agreed, then invoice and get paid.
Although this presents the most risk to a designer as you've done all the work upfront and have no guarantee that the client will make payment. This could cause problems if cash flow is tight and you need to start chasing non- paying clients through legal methods.
4. Late payment policies
Having an explicit due date on your invoices allows you to encourage payment through late payment fees. If a client misses their due date, it's not uncommon to see many industries add a percentage or set fee, like $25 added to invoices for slow- paying clients.
Invoice for design work with Acctual
If you want to concentrate on WOWing your clients rather than picking through invoices, then try Acctual.
You can start sending invoices in minutes with the free invoice generator. The platform works quickly with you to fill in client business information and add professional branding for both yourself and your clients.
Quickly add project descriptions and break down your invoice into itemized services, including taxes and total amounts.
For complete flexibility, you can offer multiple payment options to your clients, allowing them to pay in their preferred method while you receive payment in your chosen method.
It even removes the headache of international payments. You could allow your client to pay in US dollars and receive it as USDT cryptocurrency stablecoin. Or they could pay in euros and you receive funds as US dollars.
It's complete flexibility for both sides and Acctual takes care of everything. When your client has a choice of payment methods, invoices are settled quickly. You can use fiat- to- crypto integration, fiat- to- fiat and everything in between.
No matter how you invoice, everything is integrated with your accounting system, like QuickBooks or Xero, for complete record keeping of all your income and expenses.
Acctual is ready to help you create professional graphic design invoices right now. You can get started in two minutes with a free account.
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