Help needed; providing a service for international websites

Cianos

Hey there,
I want to set up a service aimed at international websites - a consultancy of sorts. My aim is to offer to these sites a service in exchange for a fee.

I'm looking for a bit of advice on how I should go about setting this up. I will have my own website that I can reference them to to show. But my question is really regarding the payments and the invoicing etc.

If I am to receive payment for my services, how should I go about billing these websites? Should I set myself up as a sole trader, and what should I include on the invoice so that it makes sense for their own books.

And finally, I was considering just using paypal to process payments...would this be recommended?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Dakor

First of all, if you are hitting the international market make sure your website is capable of different languages, this can be easy enough to implement, but should be thought about before getting the website built. As trying to do it afterwards will cost you a lot more money.

Paypal can be a great way to collect payments especially from the international community. From what I remember Paypal allow you to accept payment in different currencies.

boomshackala

Here's an international invoice I recieved today. I've removed sensitive info, but you should have everything there. They debited my credit card using their merchant bank account and sent the invoice to me marked as paid. All I got was a link to their freshbooks page where I saw my invoice for my records. Freshbooks (http://www.freshbooks.com/pricing.php) is free if you have only 1 client. For software as a service you can also use less accounting (http://lessaccounting.com/pricing/) free lmiited use for freelancers

thesteve

And don't forget that if you're providing a 'service' to a country in the EU (not including Ireland), then you don't have to charge VAT

You can issue an invoice as a sole trader operating under a business name or a ltd. company, it doesn't matter really, just whichever suits you best

Don't forget to receive payments with paypal you have to pay a % of the amount, a lot of people just issue invoices with their bank details on them and accept payments that way.

Cianos

thesteve wrote: »

And don't forget that if you're providing a 'service' to a country in the EU (not including Ireland), then you don't have to charge VAT

You can issue an invoice as a sole trader operating under a business name or a ltd. company, it doesn't matter really, just whichever suits you best

Don't forget to receive payments with paypal you have to pay a % of the amount, a lot of people just issue invoices with their bank details on them and accept payments that way.

Thanks for the advice. I had thought that if I was to be charging people for a service, I would have to provide official details to represent the business. Because what's stopping any random person representing a business and scamming others.

kenbrady

thesteve wrote: »

And don't forget that if you're providing a 'service' to a country in the EU (not including Ireland), then you don't have to charge VAT

If they are vat registered and provide you with their vat number, which you must include on the invoice.