Invoice Koi

Invoicing for videographers

A film is quoted as a day and delivered over a month. The shoot is one line and the client thinks it is the whole job, while the treatment, the grade, the sound pass, the music license and two rounds of notes are the part that actually fills the calendar.

An illustration of a follow focus, a clapperboard with a blank slate, a coiled XLR cable, a lens and a folded call sheet of ruled lines, with a koi swimming among them.
01On the document

What videographers
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
Treatment and scriptingjob
Shoot day, crew of twodays
Camera and lighting rentaldays
Edit, first cutjob
Revision round, beyond the agreed twoeach
Color and soundjob
Music licenseeach

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
PRE-PRODUCTION
Treatment and scripting$450
Subtotal$450
SHOOT
Shoot day, crew of two$1,600
Camera and lighting rental$380
Subtotal$1,980
POST
Edit, first cut$900
Color and sound$350
Music license$90
Subtotal$1,340
Total$3,770
Grouped line items are free, on all nine templates.
A photograph of a videographer behind a camera on a tripod in a warehouse setting, a light stand and cases behind them.
Price book
Treatment and scriptingjob
Shoot day, crew of twodays
Camera and lighting rentaldays
One tap puts the line on the invoice.
This job, grouped
PRE-PRODUCTION$450
SHOOT$1,980
POST$1,340
Total$3,770
No signal needed. It is written here.
02Why videographers use it

Three things that
save the evening.

Three stages, three subtotals

Pre-production, the shoot and post each carry their own heading and their own figure, so a client deciding what to cut can see what each part of the film costs.

Kit and licences off their receipts

Photograph the hire invoice and the license and they are read into expenses with their tax. Re-bill them and they land at the figure you actually paid.

The estimate becomes the invoice

A film quoted in March converts with its lines, its client and your terms intact, so the document at delivery matches the one that was signed off.

03 · Questions

Asked by videographers.

How do I quote a film and bill it in stages?

Send it as an estimate with the stages grouped, then invoice the stages as they complete or all of them on one document at the end. The reports total them the same way.

Can I bill camera hire separately from my day?

Yes. It is its own line with its own unit, so a hire day and a shoot day are two figures rather than one blended rate.

How do I charge for extra rounds of notes?

Keep the extra round in the price book at its own price and add it when it is asked for. It reads as work that happened rather than as a price that changed.

Other trades