You deliver on a Tuesday, invoice in a currency you do not bank in, and the money lands two months later minus a conversion nobody discussed. Start with the free rate check, which needs no account.
The project manager writes at nine in the evening. Eleven thousand words, legal, delivery Friday, and the rate is in the email before the file is. You know that rate. It is the one you were offered in 2019, and the job now carries a glossary and two rounds of revision. You say yes, because the alternative is an empty week. That is not a software problem. It is a pricing and terms problem.
Tick anything that sounds like your working year. Two or more and the problem is who sets your price and your dates.
That is the freelance translation squeeze: the work is skilled, and the price and the calendar belong to somebody else. Start with the rate check to see what your current rate actually pays you per hour.
Three things make translation harder to bill than most freelance work. The buyer sets the unit, so you quote inside somebody else's spreadsheet. The unit hides the effort, because a thousand words of a brochure and a thousand words of a patent are the same number. And the terms arrive as a policy, so nobody discusses them. That last one is the part you can change this afternoon.
The first two bars are measured, 15.9 vs 47.2 days. The third is drawn open because we have no reliable figure for it.
The terms line is the one number in the whole arrangement you wrote yourself, and 78% of small businesses in our records never change it.
These are not translation industry figures. They come from our own aggregated invoice records, across small businesses that bill for their own time.
Source: Billbooks invoice data, 8,483 invoices from 112 small businesses, September 2024 to September 2026 (aggregate only, figures shown only where 25+ businesses contribute). See the study
Every one of these works with the tools you already have open. Four changes fix most of the squeeze.
Take the last three jobs. Count the hours honestly, including the glossary, the queries and the revision nobody quoted for, then divide the fee by those hours. The billable hours calculator and the rate check do that arithmetic free and without an account.
Price the translation per word if the agency insists, then put revision, terminology work, certification and formatting on their own lines at their own rates. A second revision round is harder to ask for as a favour once it has a price.
Shorter terms bring the money in sooner even when the share paid on time barely moves, so due on receipt or seven days is worth writing as your default. The due date calculator gives the exact date, which reads better in an email than a number of days.
Add up a year of conversion and transfer fees and compare it with what one rate rise would have been worth. Agree the currency in writing before the first job. More on the multi currency and multilingual invoicing pages.
Do not open with a late fee. A late fee was set on zero of the invoices in our payment study, so the clause is almost always written and almost never used, and threatening one you will not apply costs more credibility than the interest was worth.
Work it in this order. Re-send the invoice with the purchase order number and the delivery confirmation attached, because accounts departments reject far more invoices on a missing reference than on a disputed price (the translator invoice guide lists every line they look for). Write to accounts payable rather than the project manager, who cannot pay you and usually knows it. Ask for a payment date rather than for payment, because a date is something a person short of money can agree to. Then stop taking new work until the oldest invoice clears. The late payment cost calculator shows what the delay has cost you so far.
If one agency carries your year, the late invoice is the smaller half of the problem. The one client risk check shows how exposed you are if the biggest one goes quiet.
One rate card, written down
Translation, revision, certification, rush and minimum charge, saved once, so the price is a document rather than a late night decision.
Invoice the day you deliver
The payment clock starts when the invoice goes out, not when the file does. Send them together and stop lending the agency days.
The client currency, your terms
Bill in the currency you agreed, and carry your own due date instead of inheriting theirs.
Reminders that run themselves
Set the schedule once. The polite chase then goes out on day seven and day twenty one without you.
That is the job Billbooks does: quotes, multi currency invoices, reminders and expenses in one place, on a flat price. If a spreadsheet and a template are enough for the number of clients you have, keep them. The free tools above work on their own and always will.
Per word suits predictable prose where you know the effort. Charge per hour for revision, proofreading, terminology work and anything with an unclear scope, and per project for certified documents and interpreting assignments. Whichever you quote, work out the hourly rate it produces first, because that is the number that tells you whether the job pays.
Put your own default on the invoice rather than inheriting the agency one, and name the exact due date rather than a number of days. Shorter terms genuinely bring money in sooner: invoices due on receipt are paid in 15.9 days on average against 47.2 days for Net 30. If a client insists on longer, price it in.
A short sample of two or three hundred words from a real agency with a real project is a normal part of onboarding. Anything longer, anything split into sections, or anything from a client who will not name the end project is usually free work. Offer a paid short job instead and see who agrees.
Ask for the purchase order number, the vendor number and the accounts payable email before you start, and put all three on the invoice. Agree the currency, say who carries the transfer fee, and add the reverse charge wording across a VAT border. Missing references hold up more cross border invoices than disputed prices.
The one you agreed before the first job rather than after it. Billing in your own currency moves the conversion risk to the client, which larger agencies often accept and smaller ones will not. If you bill in theirs, put the cost into your rate.
By the hour, quoted separately from the translation. These have no reliable relationship to word count, because a badly written thousand words can take longer than a clean three thousand. Ask to see the file first, and set a minimum charge.
A stated percentage on top of the normal rate, written on your rate card before anyone asks, so it is a policy rather than a negotiation at ten at night. Published in advance it holds; invented on the spot it reads as opportunism.
Give notice rather than ask permission. Write once, name the new rate and the date it starts, give a reason tied to the work rather than to your rent, and keep it to four sentences. Send it in a busy week.
No. The rate check, the billable hours calculator and the due date calculator are free, need no signup, and you can email yourself the result. A Billbooks account is only needed to send the quote or invoice as a branded document.
Each one opens with sample lines for the trade already filled in. Edit them, add your logo and download a PDF. Free, no account needed.
A little kit of calculators and generators, on the house.
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Start a free trialFree for this trade: the rate check, the billable hours calculator, the due date calculator and a translation invoice template. Read next: what to put on a freelance translator invoice, invoicing in more than one currency, what the payment data says about terms, and the pricing problems behind all of this.
This trade reads its email between one deadline and the next. Send an invoice, quote or proforma straight from Billbooks in one tap. It shares the same secure link the client would get by email, so they can view it and pay from the message, and you still see when it was opened.