Photographer invoice template

Shooting time and editing time are different lines. Clients consistently underestimate the second, and an invoice that shows six hours of shooting and twelve of editing explains a figure that otherwise looks like an hourly rate gone wrong.

Licensing is not a bonus, it is a product. Say what the images may be used for and for how long, on the invoice, every time. It is what stops a one-day commercial shoot appearing on a billboard next year.

Expenses — travel, assistants, hire — belong itemised. They are the lines a client can control, and letting them see that is what gets the booking rather than the argument.

A deposit holds the date and should say so. “Booking fee — 14 June, non-refundable” is a line that has already answered the question it will be asked.

Say how long you keep the files and in what form. Clients assume a photographer is an archive and will ask for a shoot back in four years; an invoice that states ’files retained 12 months’ sets the expectation at the only moment they are reading carefully.

Say what the deliverable actually is. ’Forty edited images’ and ’the full take’ are wildly different things, and a client who assumed the second is a client who feels short-changed by the first. The invoice is where the number is agreed, at the moment they are reading carefully.