Making Sense Of Your Archives & Invoice Numbering by James Lightbown
When I was starting out I picked up a really simple tip for numbering your invoices. It made such a difference to my invoices that I have adopted as my way of organising all my shoot archives too and I swear by it!
It’s based around reversing the date so that everything becomes listed in chronological order.
So for invoices I use the relevant year and month, add a sequential numbering system and finally add a keyword to the end…
So if I was writing my first invoice of the year, today, on the 2nd February 2010 for Acme Limited I would take the following.
10 - the year
02 – the month
001 – your first numbered invoice
_acme – the keyword for the client name
giving you an invoice number of 1002001_acme
I run the 001 numbers straight through the year so if I billed for 7 things in Feb and the eighth in March you’d have 1002007_example and 1003008_example2
This means that every invoice will always be ordered chronologically and with a defining name giving you a second point of reference making it very, very easy to find invoices that you bill, even from years back.
EDIT - Fri 5th Feb
Since writing the article, Robert Poll has dropped me a line to advise about a small issue with the invoice numbering.
Although there is no right or wrong way, Robert points out that as of Oct 2007 the UK VAT regulations stipulate that if you are VAT registered then you must have a “unique and sequential” number.
Now it’s likely that this won’t affect you in the first few years of trading and if you are VAT registered it may be something you’ve come across, however both Robert and I agree that if you’re going to adopt a system then you might as well get it right from the start, especially when you’re dealing with the VAT man!!
So, though the principles of the above method stand true, Robert suggests the following formatting.
- Year (displayed as a full year)
- Month
- Key Word
- Sequential Number
Giving you the following as examples:
2010-01_example_001
2010-01_example_002
2010-02_example_003
This would satisfy both my OCD tendencies of having everything make sense but also the VAT man’s stipulation of being obviously sequential.
(Click here to see the relevant page on the Customs & Revenue website)
The following about Photoshoot archiving would stay the same.
For photoshoots I simply have master folders in my archives organised by year and then sub shoot folders where I reverse the date and add a keyword, so a shoot done today for Acme Limited would be named 100202_acme
(see below for an image of what these would end up looking like)
I know that if you’re using the preview software such as lightroom or aperture they’ll rename your files etc but I’ve found that this is a very good way of dealing with archiving. It makes it incredibly easy to find shoots that you did four or five years ago when you need to grab a couple of files for one reason or another.
Hope this helps!
