Advice

Writer’s Notes: How to Invoice

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The Blank Screen (UK edition, US edition) is all about keeping us writers creative but making us more productive. But if there is one thing we put off more than writing, it is invoicing.

Nobody tells you how to do this and we hate doing it.

So here’s how to write an invoice and if you take a squint down and think this is a long job, know this one thing:

1. It just took me 8 minutes to write my first invoice for a new company

2. It then took me 2’42” to write one for an existing client

I’ll tell you now, these were very small invoices but the amount doesn’t affect the time it takes. What you should take away from this is that for a pixel over 10 minutes work, I’d written and sent – notice that, also sent – invoices to the value of £120.00. I won’t pretend that either writing job took very long but without that 10 minutes invoicing at the end, I wouldn’t be being paid.

So it is a chore, yes, but it’s incredibly quick to do and without it you don’t get to eat.

This is when you do what:

1) When you get the commission
Know how much the fee is. If you don’t know, ask before you do the work. Your editor deals with this every day: when I’ve been a commissioning editor, I’ve known my freelancers’ fees better than my own.

Ask how the company needs to be invoiced: actually, just ask exactly this: “Do you need purchase order numbers?”

If they do, they’ll tell you the number and they’ll also tell you anything else. That new client had also assigned me a vendor number. You don’t care, I don’t care, if they give you purchase order numbers, vendor numbers, anything else numbers, you just keep a note of them and copy them out onto the invoice.

Ask specifically how you are to deliver the invoice: “Do you need invoices posted or can I email them – and what’s the best address?” Cross your fingers that they’ll say email is fine because it’s so much faster and more convenient for you.

Some firms will send you a tonne of forms to fill out with your bank details. Schlep through the lot and get it done.

2) When you’ve done the work and delivered it
Invoice. Don’t wait. The invoice has nothing to do with whether the editor will ask you to do some more work on it. Send the writing, send the invoice.

It does not help you sitting on a pile of invoices – and it doesn’t help them, either. A magazine issue will have a budget allotted to it and ready to spend. In theory you should always be paid whenever you get around to invoicing but in practice, good luck getting cash if you let it slide past the end of the financial year. Or perhaps, good luck getting commissioned by the firm again if you do.

So invoice promptly.

DRI149999 Example

 

(For a larger version, download the annotated example invoice PDF.)

And this is how you write that prompt invoice:

a) Your name or company name at the top
You could include a company logo if you like, but don’t try to make this pretty, work to make sure that it is clear.

Definitely include your bank BACS details so that they can pay in directly. You want this. You really want this because it’s a right pain getting cheques, losing time going to pay them in and then waiting for them to clear. Encourage companies to pay by bank transfer and do so by giving them your business account’s sort code and account number.

You do also have to give them the ability to send cheques. That means listing your postal address and stating specifically how cheques should be addressed. That’ll be your name, your company name or a combination of the two: “Bugs Bunny trading as Acme Writing”.

Many people argue that you should write a line like “Payment in 30 days” and as long as some of those many people work in accounts departments, you might as well listen to them. Strictly speaking the presumption is that payment is due within 30 days so I’ve never bothered to say it but it does give you something point at when you phone up on the 31st day.

b) “For attn. Accounts Department” and their address next

c) Today’s date. This is the date of the invoice, not the work

d) Number the invoice. It’ll help if you have a system so you just know that number 12 is next

e) Describe the work
Some clients will give you the text they need for this. They’ll call it the brief or they will specifically tell you to say this or that for the invoice. It will be very short. If you’re invoicing for several things at once, the description can include an explanation of the fee: “3 days writing workshops @ £450/day”. This is where you list any purchase order numbers, vendor numbers or the like. If the client gives you any of these, use them. If they don’t, shrug.

State the date of the work here. If you’re doing an event, say, then the date is the date of that event. For a written project, it’s the date you were commissioned. That’s sometimes hard to pin down, especially when you’re doing all this months later. Find an email and use the date of that.

State any date or other detail given you for when the work will be published. If it isn’t a specific date, then it’ll be something like “Acme Magazine October Issue” or “BBC week number 12”.

f) Who commissioned you
If there’s a problem, this is who the accounts department will go to first. Usually your editor’s name.

g) Number the job
This will certainly help when you’re invoicing for several things at once – “3 x 2-page tutorials” – because you or the client can then query a specific job if necessary. But just do it anyway. Do it always. Number every job as you get it.

It helps you when you’re doing the invoices because you can see and then state each job quickly. It also means you don’t miss one out by mistake and never get paid for it. But it also helps you psychologically as the number of jobs keeps on going up.

It’s up to you whether you write a separate invoice for each job but only do that if you know it will affect when you get paid. Maybe three jobs are for the March issue of a magazine but one is a Christmas special. If the company states that it will pay 45 days after publication, invoice the Christmas one separately or you could end up waiting until next February to get your money.

h) Money
Next to each separate job number, write down the fee.

i) Expenses
If you have expenses and it’s agreed that the client will pay, write those down too. If you are VAT registered then make sure your VAT number is listed somewhere on the invoice and specify how much money that VAT is.

j) Total.
That’s the complete total for everything including the fee, the expenses and the VAT if you have that.

k) Save as PDF and email to the accounts department

Once you’ve done this once, keep a copy of that first invoice and use it as a template.

One more thing
This is a chore and you are a writer, you do prefer writing. But you also like technology so use it. I have one monthly gig in Burton upon Trent and when I leave there, my iPhone knows I’ve gone and OmniFocus pops up a reminder to do the invoice. I might not do it then, but sometimes I have done it on the train on my way home.

I don’t actually do that gig for the money, I’d pay them to let me do it, but that doesn’t change that it is paid, I do need to invoice, so I should invoice promptly.

Regrets, I’ve had a few

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Such as if I told you about them, I’d have one more. But there is an argument that regret can be good for you. I can see that. There’s a thing I regret from a few years ago that I was forced to confront yesterday and it was such an easy confrontation, it left such a little mark compared to what it would’ve done at the time, that I think I’ve grown.

Or aged.

But Time writer Eric Barker says not only is regret good for you but you can get the benefits without all the feeling crap. I think that might be crap, but:

Why? Even though it’s very unpleasant, we see value in regret. We can learn from it.

But can’t we learn without the godawful nagging pain? That’s the real question. And the answer is we can.

But we need to understand how regret works before we can beat it. Let’s get some answers.

Read How to Overcome Regret and Seize the Day — Scientifically.

Is this safe? Using passwords as positive reinforcement

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I honestly thought that this was just me – and I thought I couldn’t tell you because writing it here would mean I was putting online a Very Big Clue to one of my key passwords. That last bit may yet be true and I may yet regret it if I’m not circumspect enough, but it isn’t just me and it is useful. Just be wary of this: take it as a thought experiment rather than a recommendation. But:

You can set a password that helps you mentally

My example. A couple of years ago now, I had an important project on and it was many things from exciting to fun but with a dollop of queasiness in the middle because it was so big. Literally big: not as in important, though it was, but physically heavy and prolonged lifting. The kind of thing that you think you’ll start tomorrow, it’ll be fine.

I changed one of the passwords I use every day to be approximately a word from this project. I wasn’t entirely daft, I didn’t use a single plain word, I dressed it up with 3s instead of Es, that kind of thing. But during the life of that project, I reckon I typed that password six or seven hundred times. And each time, every single each time, it kept the project in my head.

The project is long done now and I’ve changed the password, I don’t have anything on at the moment that particularly makes me want to do this password trick again. But friend-of-the-site Daniel Hardy just sent me a link to this article on Medium, How a Password Changed My Life. Its writer, Mauricio Estrella was going through a divorce and not going through it all that well, when he gets into work in a hurry and his computer won’t let him on until he’s changed his password.

I was furious that morning. Tuesday, 9:40 a.m. – It was so hot that my torso was already sweaty even though I just got to work. I was late. I was still wearing my helmet. I think I forgot breakfast. Something tastes like cigarette in my mouth. I need to get shit done before my 10 a.m. meeting and all I have in front of me is a huge waste of my time.

So there it was… This input field with a pulsating cursor, waiting for me to type a password that I’ll have to re-enter for the next 30 days. Many times during the day. Then, letting all the frustration go, I remembered a tip I heard from my former boss.

I’m gonna use a password to change my life.

It was obvious that I couldn’t focus on getting things done with my current lifestyle and mood. Of course, there were clear indicators of what I needed to do – or what I had to achieve – in order to regain control of my life, but we often don’t pay attention to these clues.

My password became the indicator. My password reminded me that I shouldn’t let myself be victim of my recent break up, and that I’m strong enough to do something about it.

My password became: “Forgive@h3r”

How a Password Changed My Life – Mauricio Estrella, Medium (15 May 2014)

Now, he doesn’t and I don’t want to get into the details of his divorce. It’s true what you’re thinking, there are two sides to this, but I think divorce is such an overwhelming thing that when you’re going through it, the sheer scale means you can only handle there being one side. Your side. So whether his ex would agree or not, for him “forgive her” was central to his coping and recovery.

In my mind, I wrote “Forgive her” everyday, for one month.

That simple action changed the way I looked at my ex wife. That constant reminder that I should forgive her, led me to accept the way things happened at the end of my marriage, and embrace a new way of dealing with the depression that I was drowning into.

He’s okay now and one hopes his ex is too. But having used this password as positive reinforcement, he now uses other passwords to do similar things. He used it to stop smoking (“I shit you not”) and to motivate himself into things.

Read the full piece over on Medium for exactly what he did and exactly what his passwords were for them.

 

It’s not enough to have all your work with you

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It has to really be with you and you need to know what it all is.

Follow. Earlier this week, I did a trio of writing workshops at a university and I think it went great: I had a tremendous time. (Quick aside? It was all for school kids who were being shown the university and I learnt afterwards that as well as the main schools I’d been told were coming, there was a small contingent from my own old one. I found out far too late to ask who was from there so it is a little bit freaky. I have this week taught Year 10 kids from my own school and I don’t know who they were.)

After all that was done, though, there was a presentation and if there had been enough time, each of us writers working there that day could’ve performed a piece of their work. I usually write books and scripts, things far too long to rattle off in a couple of minutes. But while Cat Weatherill told a story and Alan Kurly McGeachie recited a poem with verve and gusto, I searched my iPad.

I’d been asked during the presentation if I had something I could read and I did say yes.

But.

There was no internet reception in that hall.

So even though I could see some items in Evernote, I couldn’t open them. (You can choose to make a notebook and all its contents be permanently available on your device, but you have to be connected to the internet to say you want to do that.) Pages and iCloud did better but I couldn’t easily see what I’d got because documents are shown as big icons which is great because you see the shape of page 1 and can readily know what each one is. But it’s rubbish when you’re scrolling through, searching for something short.

I found the start of a novel in Pages. It’s a bit violent but I reckoned it worked. I found a short story called Elite Death Squirrels which fit a lot of the things I’d been talking about with the kids all day.

But both were pretty long, even the excerpt from the novel was just too long. So with time pressing, I didn’t get to perform.

I would’ve liked to. But what narks me is that I wasn’t able to provide what was asked of me. It wasn’t a big deal from their point of view and it came up unexpectedly, yet that is a big deal from my point of view and I imagine I’m always ready. When you’ve done a few workshops you end up having this little mental toolbox of things you can reach for. Mine wasn’t full enough.

What narks me even more, though, is that I did have something the perfect length and which would also have spoken to the points I was making during the day. It’s a two-hander script I wrote during a young writers’ session and I rather like it.

I know I wrote it, I remember the lines, I’m wondering if I even kept it. Because it wasn’t on my iPad and even now, sitting here with full internet, I can’t track it down. That is unusual and disturbing.

But the take away from all this is that you need to keep your work with you and make sure you can actually get to t. Plus, know what you’ve got before you just say ‘yes’ to anyone who asks.

 

 

The Zeigarnik effect

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Never heard of her. But Bluma Zeigarnik was very perceptive and also diligent: what she noticed and then tested in the 1920s is a human truth that applies today, will surely always apply, and which helps your productivity.

From  Alina Vrabie on the Sandglaz Blog:

Some accounts have it that Zeigarnik noticed this effect while she was watching waiters in a restaurant. The waiters seemed to remember complex orders that allowed them to deliver the right combination of food to the tables, yet the information vanished as the food was delivered. Zeigarnik observed that the uncompleted orders seemed to stick in the waiters’ minds until they were actually completed.

Zeigarnik didn’t leave it at that, though. Back in her laboratory, she conducted studies in which subjects were required to complete various puzzles. Some of the subjects were interrupted during the tasks. All the subjects were then asked to describe what tasks they had done. It turns out that adults remembered the interrupted tasks 90% better than the completed tasks, and that children were even more likely to recall the uncompleted tasks. In other words, uncompleted tasks will stay on your mind until you finish them!

If you look around you, you will start to notice the Zeigarnik effect pretty much everywhere. It is especially used in media and advertising. Have you ever wondered why cliffhangers work so well or why you just can’t get yourself to stop watching that series on Netflix (just one more episode)?

As writer Ernest Hemingway once said about writing a novel, “it is the wait until the next day that is hard to get through.” But the Zeigarnik effect can actually be used to positively impact your work productivity.

The Zeigarnik effect: the scientific key to better work – Alina Vrabie, Sandglaz Blog (5 November 2013)

Read how to apply it to your work and to exploit it in yourself – plus see a photo of Dr Zeigarnik herself – on Vrabie’s full article.

The Sudoku approach

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My wife Angela Gallagher taught me how to play Sudoku. She did it during one of our hospital visits when she was being treated for breast cancer. Not the happiest of times for either of us, really, yet there were moments. We would routinely spend five or six hours waiting, never knowing how long it would be, and she would play Sudoku on her iPhone. I can picture the seat I was in when she explained the rules and since that day I have played thousands upon thousands of games.

I still associate it with those times, even years later and when her treatment has been a success, but along the way I promise you that I have also learnt some productivity lessons. From a game. From a game Angela taught me in order to burn up some time waiting.

There is something to how you make decisions in this game where you don’t know where a certain number goes but you can make conclusions about it anyway. It’s got to be in one of these two spots, you’ll tell yourself, and that’s no use in that square but it does block out a line. Without knowing where it will go exactly, you do exactly know its impact on the rest of the game.

I think I’ve learnt from this that you don’t have to wait until you have a definite final answer, that sometimes you can draw enough of a conclusion that you can get on with something else.

But without doubt, this is the one thing I have really learned from playing Sudoku:

Walk away and come back later

I have struggled with a Sudoku puzzle, struggled and then when forced to go away to do something else, I’ve regularly come back and immediately seen the answer.

I have been of the school that says you work at something until it is done. But sometimes it’s better to stop, do something else, and then come back.

By the way, I’ve only ever played two Sudoku apps and the first one, the one Angela taught me on, is  no longer available in the App Store. But this one is for iPad, this one I’ve taken the screen grab from, that’s Sue Doku which is a just preposterously cheap 69p UK, 99c US. I’ve played this for hundreds of hours now, I can’t believe the pleasure and the productivity lessons I’ve got from a whole 69 pence.

Why you need and how to get energy

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The productivity blog Asian Efficiency – blog isn’t a big enough word, AE is a huge deal I should check on more often – argues that you should stuff productivity and instead focus on your energy. Because without energy, you can’t be productive. This feels like a theme of the week for me because writer Thang Pham begins with sleep:

Sleep is the first thing we tend to sacrifice when life gets busy, but it should be the last. When we don’t get enough sleep, our decision making skills, quality of focus and engagement drastically go down. Every book on neuroscience I’ve read verifies this.

The problem is that we tend to mask it with 3 cups of coffee a day but that doesn’t fix the root cause. Then when friends and family come to me for a solution, they look at me weird when I tell them to sleep more.

It sounds so counter-intuitive, but it’s that one thing that actually makes a huge difference.

Forget about time management. Focus on this instead – Thanh Pham, Asian Efficiency (undated)

I’m not sure it’s the best article Asian Efficiency has done. I’ve got a lot of OmniFocus advice from the site before and this one feels a bit lecturing. But the advice in the full piece is good, I think.

Make a quiet spot in your day

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I love newsrooms, I love production offices, I utterly adore popping in to schools where 100 bored kids and 3 stressed-out teachers expect me to perform in some useful way. I love being busy, busy, busy. But I do get more done when I am alone.

Actually, this is becoming a theme day. I write the most and I think I write my best when I get up at 5am in the morning – and today is the 250th day I’ve done that.  Plus I’ve mentioned before that there is a single quiet moment for me on Christmas Eve that I look forward to. And now I read this in Psychology Today:

Creating pockets of solitude is a powerful way to refuel and energize your life. Make it a priority. Build it in. You’ll feel better and more equipped to manage the challenges of your day.

5 Ways to Find Quiet in a Chaotic Day – Polly Campbell, Psychology Today (10 December 2013)

That’s an article in the site’s Imperfect Spirituality section and, just as an aside, isn’t the internet great? I’m not a spiritual person, I have no faith, I wouldn’t have looked in this section at all. Wouldn’t have occurred to me that I’d find anything there of interest. But a noodling Google search as I felt for this issue that’s been on my mind today, led to this. I like it.

…My ability to be well in this world is dependent on a certain amount of solitude. It’s where I find my balance.

It’s good for all of us: Solitude is the root of innovation and creativity. It is restorative. Quiet time eases stress and promotes relaxation and concentration. Often it fosters greater appreciation for others and enhances social relationships. It also delivers a dose of perspective and helps us become better problem solvers.

Campbell talks a little about the benefits but then acknowledges how hard it is to get this type of quiet time and gives plenty of advice about it. Examples:

There are only two (and-a-half) rules: Be alone. Be quiet. And here’s the half – be still at least part of the time. A quiet walk, gardening alone in the silence, cooking alone without music or the television are all powerful ways to access your alone time. But it’s also important to just stop doing, to be still and to notice what comes up.

Here are five other tips that can help you carve out a few moments of quiet in your day:

1. Plan for it. Ask for it. My husband is always willing to help me find time because he knows now that most times, an hour or two to myself each week (more if you can get it) keeps me from becoming a raging, crazy woman.

2. Make it a priority. Like brushing your teeth or taking a shower, 10 minutes of quiet time a day packs health benefits that will contribute to your peace and well-being. This is not a luxury. It is part of taking care of your body and cultivating your spirit and it’s just as important as eating vegetables and working out.

Read the full piece for much more.

Work while you sleep

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Sounds perfect: where do I sign up? Sleep is for tortoises, except at 5am in the morning when only the insane are up, alongside the nightshift, suffering parents and all farmers.

From The Muse:

…What if you didn’t have to say goodbye to sleep in order to be productive? What if you could utilize your sleeping hours to actually get chores and tasks done?

8 Ways to Get More Done While You Sleep – Catherine Jessen, The Muse (12 June 2014)

I’m listening. Go on.

We decided that you should be able to be productive while you sleep, so we’ve rounded up these eight awesome links that will inspire you to dive under those covers and catch come Z’s (while still getting stuff done).

O-kay… and an example? Give me one example of the 8.

1. Develop creative solutions by allowing the intrinsic part of your brain’s pattern recognition systems to assess what it saw during the day and spit out innovative answers in the morning.

2. Do you need to remember something important? Studies show that we can reinforce existing memories during deep sleep. Make sure you’ve already reviewed or learned the material you want to memorize at least once before conking out.

3. Make money while you sleep by siphoning off a portion of your paycheck into an account where it can grow thanks to compound interest.

That’s three, but thanks. The last one is specific and financial, the first is a psychology way of saying give it a rest and the second is the kind of optimistic thinking I employ the night before a deadline. But each one of these and the other five tips is really just a heading and then includes a link out to more detail and more research. Do give the full piece a read, then.