Invoicing for consultants

Invoice Koi is an invoice app for consultants, with a retainer that drafts itself each month and the days, the workshop and the travel counted separately.

Make an invoice free

The iPhone app is coming to the App Store.

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.

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.

01On the document

What consultants
put on an invoice.

Save these items with your own rates. Tap to add them to an invoice, with the unit, price and totals filled in.

Line	Unit
Consulting day	days
Half day	each
Advisory hours	hrs
Monthly retainer	month
Workshop or facilitation	each
Report and written recommendations	each
Travel and lodging	job

Set your own prices. The app's starter rates are placeholders. To bill one job today with nothing installed, the free consultant invoice template opens in your browser with these lines on it.

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 work on all nine templates.

A photograph of an independent consultant in a client conference room going through printed papers spread across the table.

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.

Weighing up apps? Invoice Koi vs Invoice2go and Invoice Koi vs Billdu set the features side by side, including where they win. Or see all 12 comparisons.