This is really geared toward the beginning freelancer and more-so the “I intend to leave my job and be a freelancer soon” reader.

If you’re using some type of accounting program for your business that allows you to create invoices, it will likely create an invoice number for each one.

But I’ve known a lot of beginners who make up a homemade invoice for each project. That’s fine, just be sure to include an individual invoice number on each one.

I was just looking over some check stubs from clients. Each one includes the invoice number that was created when I made their invoice.

On my end, I use a very simple system for the first invoice of each year. For example, this year it was 2009-01. I use QuickBooks and each time I create a new invoice, it automatically increases that invoice number by one… 2009-02, 2009-03, etc.

If you’re doing a number of projects for a client throughout the year, it makes things easier to discuss payment issues if they have your invoice number in their system. As I mentioned, my clients include my invoice number on their check stubs which means that number is in their payment system. In fact, you’ll find most businesses have that kind of setup.

It seems so basic that it’s almost not worth mentioning. Yet as I said, I have known freelancers who don’t think this out. Eventually, they get caught having a conversation with a client over payment. Since there was no individual code from one project to the next, the two sides are left trying to get on the same page without having a common system to clearly identify what they’re talking about.

The two sides will eventually get in sync, but you’ll likely have wasted time and highlighted that you’re not operating your business as professionaly as you could be.