IXD302 Proposal : Invoice Development

As part of my Proposal I must also submit an invoice. At the start of this project I didn’t really know much of anything about invoices aside from the fact you use them to show a client (or who ever) how much they owe you for your services. Due to my lack of knowledge it was integral to this project that I took the time to learn what an invoice actually is, how they work and how they should look.

What is an Invoice?

Ok so after consulting my good friend google on the subject, my current understanding is that an Invoice is a request for payment, listing the goods or services you’ve supplied to your customer/client and what they owe you. So essentially I did know what an invoice was already, good on me!

What do they include?

Here is what. goes on an invoice…

  • Your company name, address and the invoice number
  • your clients name and address
  • Details of the services you are providing and the costs
  • Instructions on how and when to pay.

How should they look?

Now that I understand what an invoice is and what to include, I need to know how they should look so that mine can look the part.

I made a Pinterest board with lots of different invoice design examples that you can find here.

Sketching and Planning

Once I felt I had a clear enough understanding of what an invoice is, what it consists of and how it should be presented, I was able to start doing a bit of sketching and planning for my own…

Because I’m looking for weekly instalments, I decided to divide my two services into the weeks of the estimated project timeline with brief descriptions of my tasks for each week based on what I. wrote in the project approach section of my proposal.

Illustrator

Once I had made a plan for my invoice I went into illustrator to develop it….

 

I kept in mind that I’m going to be adding this invoice to the end of my proposal document pdf so I designed it to fit theme of my proposal styling with subtle nods to my branding.

 

Final Thoughts

The concept of an invoice at first seemed very simple to complete but it took me a while to figure out how to present the pricing since I want my payment in instalments instead of one lump sum but I think I got there in the end. I think it was a good idea to lay out lay out my invoice the way I did as it allows the client to clearly see specifically what work they are paying to have completed week by week. One thing I forgot to include was tax which would probably put me in some legal trouble if this was a real invoice but overall I think I did a good job with what I have included and I always know for next time when I ever do a real one.

Overall I really enjoyed putting my proposal document and invoice together and I have learned some very valuable lessons and skills in the process that I can cary with me not my career especially if I end up working free lance.

You can find both my proposal document and invoice here.

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