Getting paid in a timely manner is an essential part of running your own tutoring business. To do this, I recommend accepting as many forms of payment as possible such as cash, checks, credit cards, or even Bitcoin (if you’re into that)! When I first started tutoring, I created invoices manually using a free template for Google Docs. That method is great when you aren’t making much money but once your tutoring business starts to take off, invoicing is going to become a nightmare because it’s such a big time sink to do manually.
FreshBooks Tutoring Invoice Template
Now that I have a healthy cash flow with my business, I use FreshBooks to handle all of my invoicing. You can try it for free without entering your credit card to get a feel for the software and to play with their tutoring invoice templates. Their pricing starts at $10 per month for 5 clients, $20 per month for 25 clients, and then $30 per month for unlimited clients. There are some videos on their software at the end of the post, let’s talk about how to get paid first though!
How to Use Your Tutoring Invoice
Get paid upfront! I give my tutoring invoice to clients before we start working. This is something that you should talk about with your client (or his/her parents) during your first free tutoring lesson. Some people might try to pay you immediately after the sessions or later on in the week or month. I try to avoid those situations unless I trust that I will actually be paid by that person. When you’re talking about billing, you can remind your client that when they buy groceries, they pay before they leave the store and not after they have cooked their dinner! Getting paid upfront will save you countless headaches of tracking and chasing down payments – especially if you have a lot of clients.
Create your tutoring invoice ahead of time before your session and bill for the number of hours scheduled. You can print your invoices or email them. Make sure that you also send a receipt or payment confirmation when your client pays their tutoring invoice. If you choose to use FreshBooks, you can send your tutoring invoices and mark them as paid directly from their app. If you’re doing it manually, make sure to keep a note to yourself so that you stay organized. FreshBooks will keep track of your accounting for you too but if you’re not at that point yet, there is a free Google Docs template for that too!
Invoice Your Clients for Bulk Hours
I offer discounts to my clients if they purchase and schedule multiple sessions ahead of time. For example, if you normally bill $50 per hour and your client is willing to pay up front for a month’s worth of tutoring (let’s say this is 10 hours per month), then send them your tutoring invoice for the $500 but include a line that gives them a discount. You can pick whatever you want but my go-to is 10%. So my tutoring invoice for this hypothetical client would be for 10 hours at $50 per hour with a 10% discount bringing their price down to $450 if they pay for the month ahead of time. Using this method is a great way to keep your cash flow strong.
Using FreshBooks for Your Tutoring Invoices
A couple useful perks FreshBooks has for your tutoring business are recurring invoices and time tracking. If you run tutoring sessions where there isn’t a fixed start/end time, you can use the FreshBooks time tracking software to have the time you spent tutoring automatically populate your tutoring invoice. If you have clients who pay for their hours in bulk every week or month, you can use the recurring payments feature to have your tutoring invoices automatically go out when you want them to.