Invoice Koi

Invoicing for consultants

A consulting month is rarely one thing. There is a retainer that runs whether or not anybody calls, days on site that have to be counted honestly, a workshop that was its own agreement, and travel somebody promised to cover. Reconstructing that at the end of the month is how a day quietly stops being billed.

An illustration of a notebook of ruled lines, a fountain pen, a pair of glasses, a train ticket and a folded chart with no numbers on it, with a koi swimming among them.
01On the document

What consultants
put on an invoice.

These go in your price book once, with your own prices against them. After that a line is one tap: the item, the description, the unit and the price fill themselves, and the totals resolve underneath.

LineUnit
Consulting daydays
Half dayeach
Advisory hourshrs
Monthly retainermonth
Workshop or facilitationeach
Report and written recommendationseach
Travel and lodgingjob

Prices are yours. Invoice Koi ships a handful of round placeholder lines to start from and never fills your book with figures you did not set.

A job, grouped Subtotals per section
RETAINER
Monthly retainer$1,500
Subtotal$1,500
ON SITE
Consulting days, 3$2,700
Workshop, one day$1,200
Subtotal$3,900
EXPENSES
Travel and lodging$340
Subtotal$340
Total$5,740
Grouped line items are free, on all nine templates.
A photograph of an independent consultant in a client conference room going through printed papers spread across the table.
Price book
Consulting daydays
Half dayeach
Advisory hourshrs
One tap puts the line on the invoice.
This job, grouped
RETAINER$1,500
ON SITE$3,900
EXPENSES$340
Total$5,740
No signal needed. It is written here.
02Why consultants use it

Three things that
save the evening.

The retainer, invoiced without being remembered

Set it once on a monthly cadence and the draft is there on the day, carrying the client, the line and your terms. A quiet month is still a billed month.

Days counted as they happen

Track the time against the client while it is happening and turn it into a line. A day reconstructed three weeks later is a day rounded down.

Travel at what it cost

Photograph the ticket and the hotel bill and they are read into expenses with their tax. Re-bill them onto the invoice and the figure is the one on the receipt.

03 · Questions

Asked by consultants.

How do I invoice a retainer and extra days on the same document?

The retainer is one group and the days are another, each with its own subtotal, so what is included and what is on top are visible as separate figures.

Can I bill a half day at a different rate?

Yes. It is its own price-book line at its own price rather than a calculation off the day rate, so what the client sees is the rate you meant.

Can I show expenses without marking them up?

Yes. An expense re-billed onto an invoice carries the amount from the receipt, and it sits under its own heading so nobody has to ask whether it was marked up.

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