Academyby Dasow

Stop 6 of 8 · Weekly

Licenses, invoices and the paper

Check every font and stock licence against the real page before delivery, then invoice with the usage note that stops the argument a year later.

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The paperwork nobody teaches

Two things end freelance design relationships badly. A client uses the work somewhere the licence never covered, and a designer never told them there was a licence. Both are avoidable with a fifteen-minute pass before delivery and one paragraph on the invoice.

Rami runs the pass on the finished folder, not on the concepts. Concepts change. What ships is what has to be clean.

The pre-delivery pass

Check What you are looking for
Fonts Every face used, its licence type, and whether it covers this use
Stock and photography Source, licence, whether the client or you hold it
Client-supplied assets Logos and photos you were given, and who owns them
List what needs checking
Here is the delivery folder for the Sabor Taqueria poster set: [paste the file list and the fonts and stock used]. Build me the licence checklist. One row per font and per stock item: name, where it came from, what I need to confirm on the source page, and whether the licence is mine or has to be bought in the client's name. Do not tell me what any of these licences say. Give me the list of pages I have to open.

That last instruction is the whole rule for this stop. Claude drafts the checklist. The foundry page, the stock library account and the client's own contract are what answer it.

The invoice and the usage note

Invoice from the delivered scope
Here is what I delivered for Sabor Taqueria: [paste the asset list and the agreed fee]. Write the invoice body for Wave. Line items from the delivered scope, the total, payment terms of fourteen days, and then a usage paragraph: what the fee covers, for how long, in which media, and the fonts and stock licensed under the names I give you. Add one sentence saying other uses are quoted separately. Use only the figures I have given you.
The usage question, answered warmly
Sabor wants to use the poster on a billboard. The invoice covered social and in-store print. Write the reply: pleased they like it, one plain sentence on why outdoor sits outside what we licensed, what I need to check on the font and stock side, and an offer to quote the extension today. No jargon, no scolding, four sentences.

Keep the note

Save the usage paragraph and the licence checklist prompt in your new-work Project. They stop being paperwork once they are two prompts you run rather than two documents you write.

Quick check

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