Many bloggers can blog for weeks, months and years without needing an invoice, while others get sponsored posts and find out that little finance document is required by the company.

A lot of bloggers tend to freak out because, simply, they don’t know how to create an invoice.

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Their questions normally revolve around:

• What are the normal parts of an invoice?
• What do I need to include?
• How do I format my invoice?
• What if my invoice is wrong—does it mean I’ll get paid late?

They are unsure of these answers and they end up stressing out a lot about being asked to create their own invoices.

Understandably, a lot of this is the fault of the sponsoring brands—normally they just pay through PayPal or send them their own invoice templates that need just filling in.

However, there’s good news: there’s no need to stress. An invoice for sponsored posts will be very similar to an invoice for other services you may have provided.

And, if you’ve never created an invoice at all, you’re in luck. Not only are we looking at all the parts you need to create an invoice for sponsored posts, but we went ahead and created the invoice just for you.

That way, you’ll only need to fill in your details and that’s it. Voila!

You can download the invoice template for Word, PDF or InDesign.

Wait—why do I need an invoice for sponsored posts?

As I said above, normally your sponsoring brands will simply send payment to your PayPal without much fuss.

If there’s an invoice involved, they will probably just send you their own invoice formatted the way they like it, and you’ll just need to fill in the blanks.

Easy peasy.

However, sometimes you’ll need to do all the work yourself. You see, the important point here is that your invoice is actually a legal requirement to make sure you (and your business) keep accurate records of your income and expenses.

It also serves as a receipt for the sponsoring brand for your services. That way, they can have their own internal records of the sponsored posts you did for them.

Those records are important for their particular marketing department to log their expenses and provide evidence of services paid for.

Therefore, if you don’t send them an invoice, you simply won’t get paid. They need that document first to validate the payment.

What are the important parts of my sponsored posts invoice?

Now let’s get to the nitty-gritty.

Let’s quickly look at the parts you need on your invoice, and then look at them in-depth with the help of our own custom-made sponsored posts invoice.

Your invoice will need:

• your contact information
• the brand’s contact information
• the invoice number and date of issue
• the service description
• the subtotal
• any applicable taxes and/or discounts
• the total due
• the payment terms
• make checks payable to/your bank account information

Let’s look at each in turn.

#1 Your and your client’s contact information

Here you’ll need to enter your own information. This includes your blog’s name, your name, address, blog URL, email and phone number.

It would also be great—and professional—to include your blog logo in the upper right hand corner.

For your client, you need to include your contact’s name (or appropriate department to address), the company name, and address.

#2 The invoice number and date of issue

This one is pretty self-explanatory. Nonetheless, for each invoice that you issue, the invoice number must be unique.

You cannot have duplicates.

Furthermore, you need to include the date that the invoice is being submitted by you. This is important for Net 30 invoice terms, where the invoice has to be paid within 30 days of it being issued.

#3 The service description

In this section, you need to describe concisely but adequately what service you’ve done for your client.

This includes stating the service name (such as ‘sponsored post’ or ‘blog post’) and description, quantity, unit price and total.

#4 The subtotal, applicable taxes, discounts and total

Now you’ll simply need to add up all the subtotals (or just one if it’s a single item), applicable taxes and total.

The part about taxes is always complicated, as it’s so different for so many different locations. That’s why it’s always best to ask a certified accountant what your tax obligations are concerning sponsored posts.

#5 The payment terms and extra information

Lastly, you’ll need to quickly note down any payment terms you and your client may have agreed to.

These payment terms normally come in two varieties:

• “payment upon receipt,” which means that the client will pay as soon as they receive the invoice
• “Net 30,” as discussed earlier, where the client has 30 days to pay from the time the invoice is issued

Other information you may look at is to state whom the check should be made payable to, or to include your bank information for the client to transfer funds directly.

Automate it

Of course, there is another option besides having to use invoice templates. You can automate the whole process, which makes it much, much easier for you to store your invoices.

Pretty much, it boils down to whether you feel safer having the invoices on your computer (where viruses and accidents do happen), or on the cloud where you can access them at any time (as long as you have an internet connection).

Many people prefer the second option, which is why they tend to go with invoicing software. Also, with that software, you can fill in your invoices in under 2 minutes and email it directly so that you don’t have to fidget with anything else.

Easy enough.

Whatever method you use, you should be confident that your invoices will look professional and include the appropriate information.

You can download the invoice template for Word, PDF or InDesign.

Let us know in our comments below what you think and how you handle invoices for sponsored posts.

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