Invoicing merchants and getting paid

After you agree to the scope of work with the merchant, you need to agree on how you'll be paid for the work: either at an hourly rate, or at a fixed price.

In the Experts Marketplace, experts are required to use Shopify’s invoicing tool whenever possible. Before you send the merchant an invoice, you should have an agreement around the milestones, scope, and payment schedule. These agreements might be outlined in your proposal. For the best merchant experience, you should break up larger payments into multiple payments based on key milestones. For instance, with a small project, you might charge 50% up front and 50% after the project is complete.

When you come to an agreement, you can create an invoice to send to the merchant from the Jobs page in your Partner Dashboard.

After the merchant receives the invoice, they can authorize the payment from the Shopify admin and pay using the existing payment method that they have on file. After the merchant has paid the invoice, you'll receive a notification and will receive the payment (minus the 10% commission fee) as part of your next partner payout. The 10% commission fee reflects fair exchange of value for investment in helping to reduce a Partner's marketing and operational costs of finding and working with merchants.

If you're working on an accepted proposal, then you need to create an invoice for the merchant outside of the Experts Marketplace. An accepted proposal is work that isn't associated with a specific Shopify store at the time that the proposal is accepted.

Information to include in your proposal

Include as much detail as possible in each line item. For each line item, you can include the specifics of the work done or time spent on the task, and whether it’s fixed price or an hourly rate.

Before sending the invoice, be sure to add the appropriate tax. The tax you need to charge will be based on your location relative to the merchant (for example, experts with registered businesses in Canada need to charge HST tax to Canadian merchants). Please consult your local tax authority when in doubt, because you are responsible for charging the correct tax to the merchant.

Creating invoices

You can create an invoice from the Jobs page in your Partner Dashboard.

Steps:

1. From your Partner Dashboard, click Services > Jobs.
2. Click the All tab to view your jobs.
3. Click the name of the job that's ready to be invoiced.
4. Click Create invoice.
5. On the Create invoice page, enter the invoice number, as well as your business number and tax number (if required). Other information, such as your business and store's information, is pre-filled.
6. Choose when you want the payment to be due.
7. Enter line items for all services provided, including custom details related to rates and total amounts owing. You can add or remove multiple line items to reflect all services provided.
8. At the bottom of the invoice, click Tax and then enter the tax amount.
9. In the Additional notes section, add any required or helpful information about the invoice, such as terms and conditions, your refund policy, or more details about the job.
10. If you want to save your invoice, then click Save. After you save the invoice, you can come back to edit and send it later.
11. If you want to send the invoice to the merchant, then click Send. On the Send invoice dialog that appears, you can edit the email address, subject, and message that you want to send the merchant.

After you send the invoice, the merchant receives an email notification. The merchant must then approve the invoice through the Experts Marketplace.

Only store owners can pay invoices. If the user associated with the job in the Experts Marketplace is not the store owner, then they'll receive the invoice, but they won't be able to pay it. They need to share a link to the invoice with the store owner, who can then pay the invoice in the Experts Marketplace.

Tracking invoices

You can keep track of your invoices on the Invoices page in your Partner Dashboard.

The top-level navigation lets you sort through all invoices by type. Each entry in the list shows the details of the job, the price of invoice, and the date that it's due.

Each invoice is assigned a status that shows its current state:

• Draft - You have drafted the invoice but it hasn’t been sent yet.
• Sent - The invoice has been sent but not viewed by the merchant yet.
• Viewed - The merchant has viewed the invoice but not yet paid.
• Refused - The merchant has refused the invoice. You can issue another invoice with the necessary changes.
• Paid - The invoice has been paid, and you should see the payout on the Payouts page in your Partner Dashboard.

Next steps

If you haven't done so already, then you can mark the job as complete.