Who wants a snazzy invoice?

I do. I like the idea of reflecting a small part of myself in a document that is otherwise so impersonal. I also like the idea of making business, including invoices, fun. There is a part of me that has always chafed at formality.   

I was therefore pleased to learn, when I first got the invoicing program that I use, Billings, that it came with pre-designed templates. I chose one with a clean design that matched my minimalist tastes. I thought it was both professional and had a certain light quality, with blue and grayscale lettering.

All seemed (mostly) wonderful until a few month ago, when I received an email from a long-time client. Their finance person was having trouble reading my invoices. The font was too small. A PDF of my invoice—as they saw it—was helpfully attached.

I was shocked at what I saw. It looked like my invoice had been printed out, written on, and then either photocopied and/or scanned back into a digital format. The greyscale and blue lettering had not transitioned well, and what remained was fuzzy. Even I could not read portions of the invoice.

No kidding, the font was too small.

To make this worse, I heard something similar from another client a few months earlier. Again, their finance department was having trouble reading my invoice, specifically my address. Though the editor I work with at that publisher is fantastic, I had had payment issues with them for a few years, so I have to admit that I was not the most sympathetic for their finance department. Yes, I want them to get my address correct, but to redesign my whole invoice? Really? I found a workaround by re-writing my address in the comments section, in a large, black font, and that seemed to work for them. When I received this second complaint, it finally hit me–maybe the reason for the payment issues was because they could not read my invoices either.

I felt guilty and embarrassed. How many other clients had been struggling to read my invoices? I assumed that my invoices stayed in their digital format, as a PDF, but clearly that is not always the case. I also should have taken the first complaint much more seriously, and tried to understand why their finance department was having trouble. 

I also needed to redesign my invoice.

Looking through the templates in Billings showed that they all incorporate colour or greyscale, and they all use a small font size. I tried to modify the template I was using, but increasing the font size caused the text to bunch together, which still made for difficult reading. In the end, I modified a different template. This is now strictly black and white, has large font, and has a spread-out design, so the text does not bunch. I also avoided any sort of background design behind the text, so that the text and the background do not blend.

The template is not as snazzy, but so far there have been no complaints, and payment problems with that one client seem to have stopped. Lesson learned that while fun and personalization have their place—I still think—functionality is also important. It is a problem if my clients cannot access the information that I am trying to send them.

What business practices have you had to change based on feedback from clients? How did you deal with them?