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Part of being a voice actor is being an entrepreneur. And like any business owner, you need to get paid in order to stay in business. In this video, Anne drops some quick tips to help make sure you always get paid.
Best practices to get paid on time.
Hey everyone. So today I want to talk to you about payments and billing.
So number one, when it comes to payments and billing, I want to make sure that as soon as you complete that voiceover job, you type out that invoice and send it off so that you can get paid. That's number one, very important.
Number two, you need to have a system where you can keep all of your accounts. And so for me, that software system is QuickBooks. It can be QuickBooks, fresh books. There are a lot of different solutions out there that you can use that will serve your purposes, but make sure that you enter the transactions as they occur. Because if you wait until the end of the month, Or you wait until gosh, tax time, that's going to be very difficult to kind of keep that accounting straight.
So for me, I use QuickBooks online and I actually also hire an accountant to help me to keep my books. Now my accountant doesn't send out my invoices, but she does reconcile my business accounts every single month. And so it is one of the best investments I've ever made. I really don't want to sit at my desk and do financial things all day long.
It is really worth an investment for me to pay an accountant because that's what they love to do. They love to work with numbers, make sure that you have some kind of a software system that you can enter in the invoices, and keep track of if they are paid. And so within that software, there's a lot of times they'll have functions so that you can send reminders for your clients to pay. I'm very fortunate in the 16 years that I have been doing voiceover, I have never not gotten paid. I'm very, very proud of that. I think that I attribute a lot of that to being organized invoicing immediately after the job is done and then being able to keep track of that through the software so that I can ensure that I get paid.
So remember the longer it takes you to send that invoice, the longer it takes to get paid. Now I will talk a little bit about customers who take more than, let's say, 30 days to pay. Some people pay immediately. A lot of people I'd say are around the 30-day mark, but I increasingly have had some customers, some clients, especially since the pandemic that takes 45 to maybe 60, to even 90 days now, depending on who the client is. I accept that a lot of people might say, oh my gosh, 90 days is ridiculous. Why would you wait so long? But here's the deal. I have a piece of software that tracks it. And usually, the company that is giving me the long wait time is usually a larger company that processes their payments every few months for their independent contractors. And so for me, I'm not necessarily worried about it. I've never had a problem with them, not paying me.
Make sure that you invoice right away so you can get paid right away. Make sure you keep track of your payments and your billing through software. And if possible, it's always great to have a second set of eyes on your books. So an accountant for me was just the ticket.
Thanks for reading!
Keep on rocking your business like a #VOBOSS
About Anne:
Anne Ganguzza is a professional voice actor and award-winning director and producer who works with students to develop their voiceover and business skills - including voice over Coaching and Genre-based Demo Production. She specializes in conversational Commercial & Narration styles, including Corporate, eLearning, Technology, and On-Hold Messaging. Located in Orange County, California, Anne offers private coaching and mentoring services to students via ipDTL and Zoom.