Influencer invoicing

Even if you're just getting started as an influencer, every paid collaboration is a business transaction.

Using proper influencer invoicing formalizes your work, ensuring you're paid the correct amount, payment expectations are met and you have a paper trail of all your work.

If you don't treat being an influencer as a proper business and slack off with invoices, then it'll have spiraling effects on your future earnings. Payments get missed when you're busy, especially when working with brands that collaborate with dozens of creators at the same time.

You could be leaving money on the table in an industry that's already worth $25 billion and is projected to reach $98 billion in the run-up to 2030.

So if you're one of the 40% of influencers who say chasing down missing payments is a big challenge, then establishing a proper process will fix this problem.

In this article, we'll go through how invoicing establishes you as a professional business, what needs to be included, how to create a professional invoice and pricing strategies to include, along with tools that automate the whole process for you.

What to include on an influencer invoice

Ensuring you've got the correct information on your invoice serves multiple purposes.

Sending invoices missing the essential components doesn't just make you look unprofessional; it will hold up payments as details get confused and payments are delayed.

Here's what you should include on your influencer marketing invoice:

1. Your information

Your full name, business name, email, phone number, address and tax ID should be clearly displayed. And make sure if you're invoicing as an individual that the name you're using matches your bank account.

Brands need all this information to set you up in their payment system and ensure payments arrive without rejections.

2. Client information

Clearly list the company's name, address, tax details and email of the person responsible for the payment (often the accounts team).

It's essential to make sure your invoice reaches the right person in the company, not always the person who booked you. For example, a marketing manager won't make the payments. It'll likely be someone in the finance department. So make sure to ask for billing contact details before invoicing.

3. Invoice number and date

From the start, use an invoicing number system. It's common practice to use a month, year, invoice number format such as 1125-03.

This helps everyone involved match payments to invoices. So if you need to query a payment in your system or with the brand, you can reference the exact invoice number.

4. Scope of work

You'll probably be working on a particular campaign, so you should clearly state this at the top of the invoice.

Try to be as specific as possible. Rather than "social media content," you could put "Black Friday Instagram Reels, November 2025."

This reduces payment queries and approval times by connecting invoices to work completed. Make it easy for companies to reconcile.

5. Pricing and totals

Rather than just a single total, it's advisable to break down pricing into line item costs. Even one social media post could be broken down into different deliverables, such as:

• Research

• Shooting time

• Editing

• Client communication

• Any taxes required

This will give clarity to the client on the pricing and help increase the value of what they've received.

6. Payment terms and due date

Don't slack on adding a clear payment due date and the payment terms. Many influencers just put the date the invoice was delivered and are left at the mercy of when a brand decides to pay.

The payment due date or payment terms, like "Net 30," set out when you expect to get paid. So as the payment deadline approaches, you can effortlessly chase an invoice and even invoke late fees or early payment discounts.

7. Payment instructions

Of course, you need somewhere to be paid, don't you? So include precise bank details, PayPal links, SWIFT and IBAN codes for international payments.

Don't assume your client just knows the best way to pay you. And make sure that for international payments, the currency and method are agreed upon before engaging in the work. Tools like Acctual can help with their flexible invoicing and payment software.

Pricing strategies for influencers

As mentioned above, you need to outline on your invoice what you're charging for. And to do that, you need a clear pricing strategy.

If you just try to make it up as you go along, you'll end up undercharging, losing sales and turning brands off with unclear pricing.

So what are the best ways influencers should price their work?

1. Follower based pricing

A simple method is to charge based on your audience. That way, everything's clear and transparent.

This is commonplace for influencers and offers a baseline for your negotiations. While it's a rule of thumb for pricing, it does vary from industry to industry.

For example, the financial B2B niche is going to have more value per follower than children's entertainment. Plus, if you have significant engagement, you can even charge premium rates.

Here's an example of what you might charge based on your following:

2. CPM-based pricing (cost per mille)

If you've ever used any paid advertising, you know they charge per impression or view. You can do the same as an influencer.

CPM means how much you charge per 1,000 impressions. You could do this on the average impressions for your campaigns or bill for the outcome of a campaign.

So if you have a $10 CPM, you would earn $10 for every thousand views your campaign generates.

Similarly, you could do this for engagement (CPE) and charge for likes, comments, shares and saves in a similar fashion.

3. Package based pricing

Package-based pricing is a strong way to command premium rates and increase revenue. While CPM and follower-based pricing are tied to specific performance on the platform, putting together an enticing bundle for brands to buy can increase deal size.

For example, you could run a Reel, three Stories, one feed post and an email, all bundled together.

So instead of just doing a Reel for $200, you package all those things up for $1,200 and then even offer a 20% discount to make it an enticing package.

Invoicing tools and systems

While you can use manual options like spreadsheets and PDFs to create invoices, investing in the right tools ensures you get paid on time more often. It’ll make your life 10x easier. Professional invoicing and payment tools allow you to create perfect invoices in seconds. You can import regular services, clients and invoice numbers automatically. 

Instead of relying on a template where you have to manually alter spreadsheets, tools like Acctual remove all of these boring jobs while integrating with your accounting system.

It means you can spend more time creating and less time managing accounts. These tools even track payment history and flag slow-paying clients in advance! That’s all before you get to automating your tax filings. 

Influencer invoice templates and examples

Below, you'll find an influencer invoice template. This shows what you can create using Acctual's free invoice generator. Its flexibility allows you to invoice clients in any currency, whether that’s fiat or stablecoins.

You can invoice in your local currency and the brand can pay in their preferred currency. These payment options mean invoices get settled faster. 

Here's your influencer invoice example template:

[Image of invoice template here]

As you can see above, the influencer invoice template has a clean design with both your business information and the client's. Actual even automatically fetches company logos and addresses from an email address.

It takes a couple of clicks to input the campaign details and itemized services, along with dates and totals. Clean, simple and not over-designed, so your client never misses a key detail, no matter if you’re using it as a social media invoice template or a blogger invoice template. All of this, integrated with a choice of payment methods for your client, whether they want to pay in their local fiat currency or even use crypto.

Payment terms and following up

As you work on bigger projects, you might start thinking about payment terms and strategies.

As the value of your audience and clients grows, you might not be so comfortable with invoicing for all the work at the end. That's not a problem. There are a number of ways in which influencers can improve cash flow and the speed of payment.

It's common to take a deposit before starting work. This could be 25% of the total quote to ensure that you get paid from day one.

This also ties the client into the commitment and enables you to cover any upfront costs.

Often, you'll be working on multiple pieces of content and campaigns that can span weeks or months. Rather than payment on completion of the project, you could invoice at every stage of the project or at more regular intervals.

This might improve cash flow for you, but it can get fiddly for the client to keep paying smaller invoices.

The more power you command as an influencer, the more you will be able to dictate how you want to get paid. If you're confident in what you deliver and you're in demand, then you might demand brands to pay you for their campaigns in full up front.

That removes any risk from your end and stops brands from flaking on you after initially agreeing to a deal.

Payment terms

It can't be overstated that the importance of having a due date on your invoice is that it unlocks more payment terms. Clear payment terms mean you'll either get paid on time or issue penalties for slow payers.

There are two common options to include:

• Net 30 means payment is due within 30 calendar days of an invoice date, which is pretty standard for brand partnerships

• Due upon receipt means as soon as the invoice is received and dated, payment is due (this is the fastest timeline, but it is rarely accepted by large brands)

When you have specific deadline dates in place for payments, you can then have specific triggers. You can issue warnings, include late payment fees or even add a rush fee if a brand needs an extra fast turnaround on a campaign.

Create professional influencer invoices with Acctual

If you're fed up with dealing with invoicing when you could be spending time growing your following, then try Acctual.

The invoice generator is built to make life easy for influencers. In a few easy clicks, you can add key business details, insert your itemized campaign descriptions and include prices and payment terms.

Where Acctual really makes a difference is its flexible payment options. Especially if you're working with international brands, you can send an invoice that lets your client pay in US dollars but receive the funds in USDC stablecoin into your crypto wallet or vice versa.

It's completely flexible whether you want to go from fiat to crypto, international money transfers or crypto to fiat. There's no need to bother with multicurrency accounts and exchange rates on your invoices.

Plus, everything integrates with your accounting system. Whether you use QuickBooks or Xero, each payment is entered into your records so you can know how much you're earning and file taxes quickly.

With Acctual's professional influencer invoice template tool, you can build trust instantly with brands, presenting a professional image and making it easy to get paid.

If that sounds useful, get started today with a free Acctual account.