Translation invoicing, fuzzy match tiers included
An agency purchase order arrives with a match analysis attached, and this page works the resulting invoice out in full: every band, every multiplication, and the effective per-word rate that falls out at the end.
The purchase order arrives with an analysis attached
An agency sends the job and the CAT-tool analysis in the same email: so many new words, so many at each fuzzy band, so many repetitions, so many context matches. The rate you agreed applies to the new words only, and every other band is discounted against it by a percentage the vendor agreement set out. Nothing in a general invoicing tool knows what any of that means, so the arithmetic gets done by hand, once per completed job, ten to thirty times a month, on a calculator, at seven in the evening.
What each match band is worth
Below are the shares agencies most commonly apply, expressed against the new-word rate. They are a convention rather than a law: a vendor agreement can set any grid it likes and a direct client usually sets none at all. LingoDesk stores seven bands and not five, splitting 95-99% matches out from the 85-94% band and adding context matches, and it stores each band as an absolute per-word rate rather than a percentage, so a client whose grid disagrees with this table is still priced exactly.
| Match band | Share of the new-word rate |
|---|---|
| New words | 100% |
| Fuzzy match 75-84% | 60% |
| Fuzzy match 85-94% | 30% |
| 100% match | 15% |
| Repetitions | 10% |
One job, priced line by line
Take a card whose new-word rate is 0.12, in whichever currency that card is written in, and an analysis holding the word counts below. Each band gets its own rate and its own multiplication, and nothing is averaged. At the headline rate those 4,050 words would have come to 486.00; the analysis takes 108.60 off that, and the rate the job actually pays is 0.0932 a word, which is 78 percent of the number on the card. Every line is shown so you can check it.
| Match band | Words | Rate per word | Line total |
|---|---|---|---|
| New words | 2,500 | 0.1200 | 300.00 |
| Fuzzy match 75-84% | 800 | 0.0720 | 57.60 |
| Fuzzy match 85-94% | 400 | 0.0360 | 14.40 |
| 100% match | 200 | 0.0180 | 3.60 |
| Repetitions | 150 | 0.0120 | 1.80 |
| Total | 4,050 | 0.0932 | 377.40 |
Why a general invoicing tool gets the number wrong
A general invoicing tool offers one quantity, one unit price and one line. Faced with five bands a translator does one of two things. Either the bands collapse into a single line at an average worked out by hand, in which case the audit trail is gone and six months later nobody can reconstruct why that job came to 377.40 instead of 486.00, least of all the accounts department querying it. Or the whole word count goes out at the headline rate and a credit note follows, which is worse: a credit note against a translation invoice reads to an agency as a pricing error, and vendor scorecards remember pricing errors long after the money is settled.
How the invoice gets built here
Word counts go on the project, one figure per band, in the order the analysis prints them. The card assigned to that client carries a rate for each band, so raising the invoice multiplies each band by its own rate and emits one line for every band that has words in it. The invoice then reads the way the analysis reads and the two reconcile side by side. A rush job adds its multiplier as a separate line rather than quietly inflating the rates, because a client who can see the surcharge argues about the surcharge instead of about your rate. Where the total falls under the minimum charge, the minimum applies. What comes out is a PDF carrying your business name, address and bank details.
The agency invoice and the direct-client invoice are not the same document
Only one of the two sends an analysis. An agency mandates the match grid, requires its purchase order number on the face of the invoice, pays on terms it set rather than terms you set, and settles in its own currency. A direct client sends a file and a deadline: no analysis, no purchase order, no discount grid unless you volunteer one, and the price is the full rate or a flat project fee. Client type, purchase order number, payment terms and invoicing currency are all fields on the record rather than things to remember, which is what lets one invoice screen produce both documents correctly.