Pirate Crew Hub - business essentials for our crew

A few tips for organisation:

Have a template ready so that all your invoices look the same and so you don’t forget to put in certain details every time you create a new invoice.
Keep a spreadsheet (or some kind of record) of all the invoices you have sent, and when they have been paid.
Make sure you know the company name and address of who you are invoicing. Sometimes the person who booked you isn’t the person who is paying you.

When you have completed a job the first thing you should do is to write an invoice – keep that money coming in! With a lot of theatrical productions and events, it is common that the accountants from a show will want to close the books soon after it is finished so you must send your invoice straight after a job to ensure swift payment.

Below are some example invoices which you may want to look at to give you an idea of how to include all the relevant information and make it look professional. If you are emailing an invoice you should try to save it as a PDF or as a Protected File so that it cannot be tampered with. The more professional you look and the easier you are to communicate with admin-wise, the more likely you are to get paid quicker and be booked regularly (along with your technical skills of course!).

Tips to complete an invoice:

Put YOUR name, telephone number, email address and postal address at the top of the invoice. If you are VAT registered you should also include your VAT number. Include the date you are creating the invoice.
Write the word INVOICE at the top of the document – sounds silly but some account departments receive thousands of documents a week and when they all look different it may get mistakenly filed.
Include the name of the Company and Address of who you are invoicing. If they have provided you with a Purchase Order number, Reference Number, Show, Venue details, put them all on the invoice. The more information you provide, the more likely it is to be signed off.
Give your invoice a unique number. You may want to reference the Company by its initials followed by the number invoice (e.g. PC001), or a date of the job (e.g. PC01012012) – whatever works for you.
A separate section on the invoice should give specific details of the job you were employed for. Include the date of the job / rate of pay (per hr/day then total of hrs/days worked) / Job Description (Carpenter / Stage Crew) / Expenses – any travel, hotel costs etc. that have been agreed to be reimbursed – remember to include these receipts with your invoice as you may not be paid for them if you do not / Then make a Total Amount to be paid – if you are VAT registered then this can be broken down further.
At the bottom you should include your payment terms (usually 30 days)
As a self-employed person it is helpful to include your NI number and Unique Tax Reference number on your invoice too.