You should have an invoice template for your Professional Legal Nurse Consultant business. Most businesses have an invoice that contains the essential information. Here’s what you need for your PLNC business. That way, you don’t have to recreate an invoice format for every case you work on. You’ll just add the relevant information to your existing invoice template.
Your Professional Legal Nurse Consultant Invoice Template
Centered at the top of the page: Your name, company name (if you have one), address, email, and phone. You should consider adding a logo that easily identifies your invoice from all the others the attorney receives.
Name of the attorney, address, and email: This information should be flush left. If you’re sending your invoice by email it should say: “Via email”. Next, is the attorney’s name and designation. Here, for example, you can either say: “Elizabeth Rudolph, Esq.” or “Ms. Elizabeth Rudolph”, but do not use both “Esq.” and “Ms.”. Insert the full name of the law firm, city, state, and zip code.
Date of the invoice: Believe it or not, the date is important because you may be sending more than one invoice and you’ll need to know what you put on each invoice so you don’t double bill.
An indented section that starts with “Re:”: so you can insert the case name and case number. Attorneys generally have lots of cases, so be sure you clearly identify the case you’re working on. Use their case name and case number!
Three columns: Left column entitled “Date”. Middle column entitled “Description”, and right column entitled “Hours”. Underline each item: Date, Description, and Time. Then, you’ll be ready to insert the corresponding information.
Total number of hours: Attorneys want to know how long you worked on their assignments. Plus, it could be that a third party, like an insurance company, is going to ultimately pay your bill. Regardless, they want to know what they’re getting for their money.
Total amount due: This is critical. Make it easy for the attorney, and their bookkeeper, to know the amount of bill. Don’t expect them to sum up the amounts of each line item. Do it for them.
At the time you were hired to perform the PLNC service, you would have already agreed upon an hourly rate. You might have even agreed upon a maximum number of hours to perform the services, which is less likely. At a minimum though, be sure your invoice has these essential items.
I’ve been asked about including a sentence about “due date” or when you expect payment. There are differing thoughts on this. You could include something to the effect that payment is due in thirty days. The alternative is to leave this sentence off and just resend the invoice if you have been paid within thirty days. Most attorneys are timely in their payments, but there may be a occasional one who, for whatever reason, does not pay within thirty days of receipt of your invoice.
Be super careful about providing your social security number or tax identification number, if you are a company. Regardless, for privacy reasons, most invoices do not contain this identifying information.
Once you create your invoice template, you’ll find there’s really no need to update it. If it works, don’t fix it. But, remember to send out your invoices timely because you want to get paid quickly.
P.S. Do you have a logo for your PLNC invoices? Let’s see it in the comments section.
