Client records for agencies, companies and individuals
An agency, a direct company and a private individual are three different businesses to invoice, and one record shape that pretends otherwise is why the details end up back in your inbox.
Three kinds of client, three sets of facts
Translation agencies, direct companies and private individuals do not need the same paperwork. An agency wants its purchase order number on the face of every invoice and pays on terms it decided years before it met you. A company wants a tax or VAT registration printed, frequently in its own language, and will negotiate the terms. An individual pays on delivery, has no purchase order, and often has no tax number at all. A record shape that averages the three is a record shape that sends you back to searching your mail.
Everything the invoice needs, on the record instead of in your head
One record carries the client type, the contact and postal address, the tax identifier and the VAT number, the payment terms, the currency this client is billed in, the language the document should be written in, a status and free notes. The payment terms are not decoration: the due date on a new invoice is computed from them, so a net-sixty agency and a net-fifteen company stop being two things you have to hold in mind at the exact moment you are least likely to.
Who actually pays, expressed as a number
Alongside what a client is worth in revenue sits the share of the invoices raised for them that have reached paid, and the balance still outstanding banded by how far past due it has drifted. That pairing changes decisions. A steady client at a slightly lower word rate who settles inside a fortnight can be worth more across a year than a better-paying one who takes ninety days and needs chasing twice, and until those two numbers sit next to each other it stays a suspicion rather than something you can raise at renewal.