How to write a consultant invoice

What goes on a consultant invoice

Six things, in the order they belong on the page. The invoice generator opens a consultant document with the lines already in place, so most of this is checking rather than typing.

1. Name the engagement and the phase. Which piece of work, and which stage of it. A finance team paying three invoices from you needs to tell them apart without asking.
2. Show the days and the rate. Four days at your rate reads as four days. A single project figure with no unit is the one that gets queried.
3. Name the deliverable on the line. What was produced: the report, the workshop, the model. It is what a finance team needs before releasing payment.
4. Keep expenses separate and evidenced. Travel, accommodation and third-party costs on their own lines, at cost unless you agreed a handling fee. Folded into the day rate they look like a rate rise.
5. Reference the purchase order. Corporate clients pay against a PO. An invoice without the number does not get queried, it just waits.
6. Set terms in days, not on receipt. Net 30 enters a payment run. On receipt enters the same run with less information.

The lines a consultant invoice usually carries

The generator opens with these lines when you pick Consultant. The figures are placeholders to type over, not a going rate.

Add, rename, reorder or delete any line, and set tax per line where it applies. Priced as they open, that comes to $6,350 before tax.

How to write a consulting invoice, step by step

1. Get the PO number before you invoice. Ask the client contact for the purchase order and the name of the person who approves invoices. Without them, a correct invoice can sit unopened for a month.
2. Put the engagement and phase in the reference. Open the consultant invoice and write the engagement name and phase where an accounts clerk looks first, such as Phase 1, discovery. It is what they match against.
3. Enter the days from your timesheet. Four days at your day rate reads as four days. Round to half days if your proposal did, and do not change unit between the proposal and the invoice.
4. Name each deliverable. The strategy session, the research and the report each get a line with what the client received, because the person approving the invoice was not in the workshops.
5. Add expenses at cost, then send. Travel and accommodation go on their own line with receipts attached. Set 30 days, or what the contract says, and send it to the accounts address as well as your contact.

Consulting invoice example, filled in

Phase 1 of a distribution review, invoiced when the report went in. The purchase order and the phase sit at the top, because the first person to open it is an accounts clerk who has never heard of you.

Subtotal $6,350, tax $635, total $6,985. The PO number and the phase name do more to get this paid than any of the figures. The four consulting days are shown as days, the unit the proposal used, and each deliverable is named so the approver can tick it off.

Day rate, project fee or retainer, and when each one gets you paid

These are three different commercial relationships and they invoice differently. A day rate bills what happened, a project fee bills what was agreed, and a retainer bills access whether or not it is used.

The day rate is easiest to defend and hardest to scale, because every extra day is a fresh conversation. A project fee is cleaner to approve but only if the scope is written down, or you absorb the drift. A retainer is the most predictable and the most likely to be questioned at renewal, which is why the invoice should name what it covers rather than reading as a standing charge.

Whichever it is, invoice in the same unit you quoted in. A client who agreed days and receives a project figure cannot check it, so they hold it while they ask.

Phased engagements and getting paid before the end

A three-month engagement invoiced once at the end is three months of exposure to a client whose priorities may change halfway through.

Break it into phases with a payment attached to each: discovery, analysis, recommendations. Each invoice references something the client has actually received, which is what makes it easy to approve and hard to defer.

Put the phase on the invoice line itself rather than only in your own notes. The cost estimator is for costing those phases before you quote them, and the same lines then carry into the invoice rather than being retyped.

Expenses, and the mark-up nobody agreed to

Expenses are where trust is quietly lost. A client who sees a round number for travel assumes there is margin in it, whether or not there is.

Bill them at cost on their own lines, with the detail that makes them checkable: the route, the nights, the third-party invoice. If you charge a handling fee on disbursements, name it as a percentage line rather than hiding it inside the cost.

Agree the expense policy before the first trip. Clients with a corporate travel policy will apply it to you retrospectively if you did not ask, and that is a discussion had after you have already paid for the hotel.

Hourly, fixed price or per unit: how consultants price the work

Consulting is priced by the day, by the project or by value, and the direction of travel through a career is away from the first one. A day rate caps what expertise can earn at the number of days in a year, which is the one number you cannot increase.

Bill against phases rather than months where you can. A phase has a deliverable a finance team can approve, where a month has only elapsed time, and the difference shows up in how quickly the invoice clears.

Working out what to charge

Consulting fees depend on the problem, the client and what you would earn elsewhere, so a day rate from a web page means nothing. The billable hours calculator shows how many days you can actually sell, and the freelance rate calculator works back to a day rate from the income you need.

Getting paid once it is sent

Larger companies pay on a cycle, so find out the payment run date and send the invoice a few days before it; on a long engagement, invoice at the end of each phase rather than once at the end. If the due date passes, the late fee calculator works out what your terms allow and the due date calculator sets the new date.

Five dates decide whether a consultant gets paid on time, and four of them are set before the work starts.

Mistakes that cost consultants money

• Invoicing in a unit you did not quote in. The client cannot reconcile it, so it waits while they ask.
• No deliverable named. A finance team cannot approve a fee for something the line does not describe.
• No PO number. It will not be queried. It will just sit unpaid.
• Expenses rounded. A round number for travel reads as a margin, even when it is not.
• One invoice at the end. Three months of work resting on one approval from a client whose priorities may have moved.

Consultant invoice questions

Free consultant invoice template

The free consultant invoice template opens with the lines above already priced, in any of 30 designs made for the trade, and exports a print-ready PDF with nothing saved to a server. Opening a design needs a free account.

Invoicing guides for related trades

Everything on this site, set up for consultants

The whole toolkit, with the reason each one matters to consultants rather than in general. The four marked links open with consultant already selected.