How to write a musician invoice

What goes on a musician invoice

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

1. Bill the performance as one line. The set is the product. It goes on as a single figure at the agreed fee rather than as an hourly rate.
2. Name what the fee covers. How long you play, how many sets, and the finish time. A fee with no finish time is an open invitation to play another hour for free.
3. Put equipment rental on its own line. PA, lighting, extra speakers and anything you sub-rent is a cost that moves independently of your fee.
4. Charge travel and accommodation separately. Mileage, parking, congestion charges and a room if the venue is far. Folded into the fee, a distant gig quietly pays less than a local one.
5. Take a deposit to hold the date. Until it clears, the date is not booked. Invoice it with a payment link at the point of agreement.
6. State the overtime rate in advance. What another thirty minutes costs, printed before anyone asks for it at midnight.

The lines a musician invoice usually carries

These are the lines the generator opens with when you pick Musician / DJ. The figures are a starting point to type over rather than a going rate: this site runs no pricing survey, and the number on your invoice should be the one you charge.

Add, rename, reorder or delete any line, and set tax per line where it applies. Priced as they open, that comes to $1,350 before tax.

A worked musician invoice, filled in

This is the same job as the table above, written out the way it would leave your phone. Every figure on it is a starting point rather than a going rate, and the tax line is shown at ten per cent purely so the arithmetic is visible: set your own rate, or none, per line.

Subtotal $1,350, tax $135, total $1,485. The parts worth copying are the structure rather than the numbers: the job reference next to the client, every line separately priced with its count showing, the tax on its own line, and terms that name a number of days instead of saying on receipt.

The deposit is what makes the booking real

A date agreed by message is a date you will lose to a better offer, on either side. The deposit is what converts it into a booking.

Invoice it at the point of agreement, with a payment link so it can be settled from a phone at the kitchen table where these decisions get made. State what it covers and whether it is refundable, and state what happens if the event moves rather than cancels, because in live work the event moving is the common case.

Then invoice the balance before or on the night with the same reference, so nobody is trying to remember what was already paid while loading a van.

Overtime, and the hour nobody agreed to pay for

At half past eleven somebody will ask you to play for another half hour. If your overtime rate is not on the invoice, you are negotiating it in a loud room with someone who has been drinking.

Put the rate on the original document as a line with a zero quantity: additional performance time, per 30 minutes, at a stated price. It costs nothing when it is not used and settles the entire question when it is.

Bill it afterwards as its own line with the time. A named line reading "additional 30 minutes, 23:30 to 00:00" is a fact; a bigger total is a dispute.

Getting paid by a venue, an agency or a wedding couple

These are three different payers with three different habits and one invoice shape will not suit all of them.

A couple pays personally and usually promptly, but wants everything settled before the day. A venue pays on terms and needs an invoice that matches their booking reference. An agency deducts commission, so agree whether you invoice the gross fee and they deduct, or the net, and put it in writing before the gig rather than after.

Whichever it is, name the event and the date on the invoice. A finance office paying forty acts a month cannot match "performance fee" to anything.

Hourly, fixed price or per unit: how musicians and DJs price the work

Live work is priced per performance and everything else is negotiable around it: the length of the set, the travel, the equipment and how long you are on site before you play. The fee people quote is usually the fee for the playing and the cost is for the day.

Take a deposit that holds the date and make the cancellation terms match how the diary works. A date booked is a date refused to somebody else, and in a business where the product is one specific evening, that is the whole commercial risk.

Working out what to charge

This guide is about what goes on the document, not what the number should be, and nobody should hand you a rate for your own market. What the site can do is the arithmetic: the freelance rate calculator works back from what you need to earn, the service price calculator prices a service against your costs, and the profit margin calculator checks what is left once the job is done.

Writing it on your phone, in five steps

Most musicians and DJs write the invoice standing next to the work rather than at a desk a week later, and the week later version is the one that gets details wrong. The generator is built for the first case.

1. Open it with your trade already chosen. The musician / dj invoice loads with performance (up to 3 hours) and the rest of the lines already on the page.
2. Put the client and the job reference in first. It is the part you will not remember accurately in three days, and on agent, landlord or contractor work it is the reason the invoice gets paid at all.
3. Edit the lines rather than starting from empty. Change the quantities and the rates, delete what you did not do, add what you did. Keeping the descriptions means the wording stays consistent from one job to the next.
4. Set the terms to 7 days and add a payment link. A due date that is an actual date gets chased. A link and a QR code means it can be settled before you have packed up.
5. Send it before you leave. The clock on your terms starts when the invoice arrives, not when the work finished, so every day it sits unsent is a day added to getting paid.

Getting paid once it is sent

Put a due date and your terms on the document, because an invoice without them is hard to chase. Add a payment link and a QR so settling up is a tap rather than a transfer somebody has to set up. When part of it lands, the receipt maker records it as a part payment and prints the balance still due. If the due date passes, the late fee calculator works out what your own terms allow and writes the chasing letter to go with it.

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

Mistakes that cost musicians and DJs money

• No finish time in the fee. Then the last hour is free and everyone assumes it always was.
• No overtime rate on the original invoice. You end up negotiating it at midnight in a loud room.
• Travel folded into the fee. A gig two hours away quietly pays less than one down the road.
• Holding a date without a deposit. It is not a booking, whatever the messages say.
• Not agreeing gross or net with an agency. Commission gets deducted from a number you thought was yours.

Musician / DJ invoice questions

Free musician invoice template

The free musician invoice template opens with the lines above already priced, in any of 200 designs, and exports a print-ready PDF with no signup and nothing saved to a server. If you would rather edit a file offline, there are 72 Word templates, 72 Excel templates with the totals already calculating, and 72 fillable PDFs.

Invoicing guides for related trades

The same billing questions come up next door. These four guides cover the trades closest to musicians and DJs, and each one sits alongside its own free template.

Every trade has one: see all 46 invoicing guides, or go straight to the 46 free invoice templates they describe.

Everything on this site, set up for musicians and DJs

The whole toolkit, with the reason each one matters to musicians and DJs rather than in general. The five marked links open with musician / dj already selected.

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