Getting paid on time starts with how you invoice clients. When you sell your time or expertise, you’re also the person who sends the bill, and how you bill decides how you get paid: how quickly the money arrives, how reliably it keeps arriving, and how much of your week goes to asking about money you’ve already earned. This guide covers the whole job: what goes on an invoice, how to choose payment terms, how to bill a deposit, a payment plan or a monthly retainer, where reminders and late fees fit, and how to decide ahead of time what a missed payment changes.
Most of what makes invoicing hard happens before the invoice exists. When your terms are clear and the client agreed to them at the start, the invoice simply carries them out. When they’re vague, every late payment becomes a conversation you have to start with someone you like working with. Jump straight to the walkthrough video, where Coach Ashley from AttractWell creates an invoice for a client from a template she saved and sees when it’s opened.
Everything here can be set up in your own account for $1 for your first month of AttractWell. And if you’d like a second pair of eyes on your own billing setup, bring it to Office Hours, a free live call every Thursday at 2pm ET, where anyone can bring whatever they’re working on and get help with it.
What to Put on an Invoice So Clients Pay It Quickly
An invoice has one job: make paying the obvious next step. A client who has to email you to ask what a charge is for, or how to pay it, is a client who pays later. So every invoice you send should answer the questions a client (or their bookkeeper) would otherwise ask.
Who it’s from and who it’s for. Your business name and contact details, the client’s name, and their company if an organization is paying. If a company pays you, ask up front whether they need a purchase order number on the invoice, because many accounts payable teams won’t process a bill without one.
A number and a date. Invoice numbers let you and your client talk about the same bill without confusion, and they make your own records easy to search at tax time.
What they’re paying for, line by line. Each line names the work, the quantity and the rate: three coaching sessions at your session price, a monthly retainer, a workshop seat. A short description under the line (“Ongoing 1:1 support for the month”) answers the “what was this again?” question before it’s asked.
When it’s due, and how to pay. The due date is the single most important line on the page, and the payment link is the second. A client who can pay from the email in a minute usually does.
A note and your terms. A one-line thank-you goes a long way, and your terms and conditions (what a late payment means, your refund policy) belong on the invoice where the client sees them every time.
In AttractWell, an invoice carries all of this: line items with a description, quantity and rate, tax and discounts, a note to the customer, your terms and conditions, and a private note that only you can see. Your client opens a clean page with a Pay now button and a PDF they can download for their records. On AttractWell’s website, the invoicing features page sums up how clients pay: “Clients pay by card, Google Pay, Klarna, Afterpay/Clearpay or Affirm, through Stripe.”
Payment Terms: The Line That Decides When You Get Paid
Payment terms tell the client how long they have. The common ones are due on receipt (pay now), and net terms like Net 15 or Net 30 (pay within that many days of the invoice date). Each has its place, and choosing on purpose is what keeps you from guessing every time.
Due on receipt suits most solo work sold to individuals: a session, a VIP day, the first month of a program. The client already said yes, and paying is how they start.
Net 15 or Net 30 suits organizations. A company that brings you in for a workshop or buys seats in your program usually pays on a cycle, and asking for due on receipt only means your invoice sits until their next payment run anyway. Agree on the terms when they say yes, and put them on the invoice.
The invoice date and the due date are two separate choices. The invoice date is when the bill goes to your client; the due date is when the money is due. With terms like Net 15 or Net 30, the invoice goes out first and the money is due later, which gives the client time to plan for the payment. In AttractWell, each invoice has its own invoice date and its own payment terms (due on receipt, Net 15, Net 30, Net 45, Net 60 or a custom date), and an invoice dated in the future is scheduled to go out on that date, so you set both on every invoice you send.
Whatever you choose, write it down before the work starts. Put your terms in the agreement your client says yes to, then put the same terms on every invoice. A client who agreed to Net 15 at the start doesn’t feel chased on day sixteen. They knew.
Deposits, Payment Plans and Monthly Retainers, Billed the Way You Sell
Most service businesses don’t sell everything as a single invoice. You might take a deposit and spread the balance over a program, bill the same amount every month for ongoing work, or quote a project before the client commits. Each of these has a clean way to bill it.
A deposit plus monthly payments. For a coaching program, a mastermind seat or a consulting engagement, the cleanest setup is to write all the payments at the start as a set of invoices: the deposit due on receipt, then each payment dated for its month. In AttractWell this set of invoices is called a package (a billing term here, separate from any coaching package you sell): every invoice in it is written up front, and each one goes out on the day its payment is due. The package page shows how much you’ve invoiced, how much has been paid and what’s outstanding, so one look tells you where that client stands.
If you sell the same program to client after client, save your usual split as a package template. A 40/30/30 plan, for example, becomes a deposit of 40% when they start and two payments of 30% a month apart, dated from whatever start date the next client has.
A monthly retainer. For ongoing work at the same price each month, a recurring series issues a fresh invoice every cycle, each with its own payment link. Nothing is charged automatically and no card is stored, so your client pays each month from the link, the same way they paid the first time. You choose whether each invoice goes out on its own or waits as a draft for you to look over first.
A quote that turns into an invoice. For a project with a set price, send an estimate. When the client approves it, it becomes an invoice they can pay right away, so the yes and the payment happen in the same sitting.
A template for the way you bill. If you bill the same offer over and over, save it as an invoice template with its line items, terms and notes already filled in. Billing the next client is then a matter of choosing them and sending.
Payment Reminders and Late Fees, Chosen Before Anything Is Late
The awkward part of getting paid is the follow-up. You like your clients, you don’t want to sound like a collections agency, and so the reminder email sits in your drafts while the invoice ages.
Set a reminder schedule for the business, then change it on any single invoice when you need to. For an invoice that goes out ahead of its due date, a common setup is a reminder a week before the due date, another the day before, and a few after it’s due, spaced out so they stay polite. In AttractWell you set this for the business and every invoice follows it, unless you choose otherwise on a single invoice: it can use a schedule of its own, or skip reminders entirely for the client you’d rather call yourself.
Late fees are a choice, and a policy. If you charge one, say so in your agreement and set it on the invoice. In AttractWell a late fee is a percentage added once if the invoice goes overdue, so it’s predictable for you and for the client.
Partial payments are a choice too. Some clients would rather pay part now and the rest later, and in AttractWell you can allow that on an invoice with a minimum amount due. When a client pays you by check, cash or bank transfer instead, you record that payment against the invoice in AttractWell, so your records stay complete.
Tie Your Client’s Access to What They’ve Paid
Here’s where invoicing from AttractWell, where your client’s program and emails can live too, earns its keep. When a client pays, they usually get something: access to the program, their calls, the welcome emails. When a payment is missed, something usually needs to change. Done by hand, both are a second job you do after checking who paid.
What paying opens. On each invoice you choose what happens when it’s paid in full. Paying can give the client access to your program, give them the sessions they bought to book with you, add a tag (a label you sort contacts by), start a campaign of emails, start or stop a Follow-Up Plan (a checklist of to-dos for you), or run an automation (a set of steps you’ve already built). A client who pays for a 12-week program walks straight into it, and you aren’t the bottleneck between their payment and their start.
What a missed payment changes. On the same invoice, you choose what happens if it isn’t paid, and how many days after the due date that happens. You might take back their access to the program, stop the emails they’re getting, or start a Follow-Up Plan that adds a call with that client to your AttractWell to-do list. Some businesses want a firm pause; others want a personal check-in first. Both are reasonable, and choosing in advance means each client gets the treatment you decided on, without a fresh decision every time a payment is late.
For a payment plan, you set this on each invoice in the package, so a missed third payment can carry a different consequence than a missed deposit. An invoicing app on its own doesn’t hold your program, so taking back access or starting a follow-up stays a separate job you do somewhere else. In AttractWell the invoice and the program belong to the same client, so the invoice itself can carry out what you decided.
Why Invoicing From the Same Place as Your Program Means One Less System
The usual way to bill clients as a solo business is a stack: an invoicing app, a payment processor, a separate place for the program, an email tool for everything you send clients, and you in the middle copying names between them. Each piece works. The gaps between them are where invoices get forgotten and access stays open for clients who stopped paying.
Every invoice you send from AttractWell sits on the client’s record, the same one that holds their program, their calls and their emails. That record shows what’s open, what’s overdue and what’s been paid, and your dashboard lists every open invoice in one place. When an invoice goes out, its activity shows when it was sent and when it was opened, so you know whether a client who hasn’t replied has seen the bill. Clients pay through Stripe, and on fees the invoicing features page on AttractWell’s website is direct: “No transaction fees from AttractWell — just Stripe’s standard processing fees.”
If you’re weighing other ways to take payment, such as checkout pages, installment options on a sales page, or booking with payment, this guide to getting paid as a coach walks through which fits which offer.
The Walkthrough: Invoicing a Client From a Saved Template
Coach Ashley opens a saved invoice template in the video, creates an invoice from it for a client, sends it by email with a note, and sees when it’s opened. Along the way, the video shows where you choose what happens after a client pays, what happens a set number of days after a missed due date, and how each invoice handles payment reminders. Pause it at the template and sketch your own: the line items you bill, your payment terms, and what paying gives your client.
Office Hours is a live group Q&A and hands-on help session every Thursday at 2pm ET. Bring your questions and whatever you’re working on. Sign up for Office Hours.
Your Next Step for Getting Paid, Wherever You Are
Curious what AttractWell builds before you decide anything? Watch the demo of Project Studio, the part of AttractWell that builds your website, pages and offers from what you describe, and read what other coaches say about running their business here.
To talk it through with people who bill clients too, join the AttractWell community on Facebook, or bring your questions live to Office Hours, every Thursday at 2pm ET.
If you don’t use AttractWell yet and want a guided look first, join a live group demo and see the whole platform with a real person walking you through it.
Ready to set up your own billing? Start with $1 for your first month. That month is a full AttractWell account, so your invoices, your programs and your website all live in it, and the account comes with the 30-Day Launch Guarantee for your website: “Use Project Studio, and if your website isn’t live within 30 days, we’ll build it for you and give you a free month.”
Prefer to hand off building your business? Our Concierge team offers set-price packages to build your first paid offer, a funnel or a homepage for you, and quotes anything beyond those.
For your next question, how to take payment for the offers you sell from a page, read our separate post on payments and checkout for coaches.
