Whether you charge by the word, by the project, or on a steady monthly retainer, Fee-Lion bends to your pricing instead of the other way around. Here’s how to quote, deposit, and collect for copy work without chasing a single email.
Price the words your way
Copywriters rarely bill hourly — you bill the deliverable. In Fee-Lion, that maps cleanly to fees/units line items, where each line is quantity × rate. Open Estimates from the left sidebar and start a new one.
- Pick a layout under Settings → Preferences → Branding so your estimate looks like you, then choose a starting template.
- Add a fee/unit line for a flat per-piece price — “Landing page, long-form” at qty 1 × $1,200, or “Email sequence” at qty 5 × $250.
- Charging per word? Set the unit rate to your word price and the quantity to the word count — “Blog post” at qty 1,500 × $0.40 reads as $600.
- Set your tax and a deposit % on the estimate, then send it.
You can mix and match: a per-project fee for the homepage, a per-word line for the blog, and a discount for a bundle all live on the same estimate.
Tip: Save your usual rates as defaults under Settings → Preferences → Estimates so a new quote is mostly pre-filled. Future-you, mid-deadline, will be grateful.
Get a deposit before the cursor blinks
Words take time, and rewrites take more. A kickoff deposit protects that time. Set a deposit % on the estimate — many copywriters land at 50% — and your client sees it the moment they review.
When the client opens the magic-link portal, there’s no login to fumble. They read the scope, hit Approve, and you convert the estimate to an invoice in one click. The deposit invoice carries a Pay button; they pay by card and the money lands in your own Stripe. You start writing knowing you’re already part-paid.
Set up a monthly content retainer
Ongoing clients — the newsletter, the weekly blog, the always-on social copy — are where retainers shine. Instead of re-quoting every month, bill on autopilot.
- From Invoices, create a recurring invoice for the monthly scope (e.g. “Content retainer — 4 posts + 1 newsletter”).
- Set the cadence to monthly so it issues itself on schedule.
- Invite the client to turn on auto-pay so each month’s invoice charges their card automatically — no reminder emails, no “did you get my invoice?”
If a month runs over scope, add a one-off invoice for the extra pieces alongside the retainer. The recurring run keeps humming; the extras get their own line.
Keep an eye on what’s owed
Track every quote, deposit, and retainer from the Reports section. The ops dashboard shows money in motion at a glance, and invoice aging flags anything drifting past due so you can nudge before it gets awkward. For the fastest path of all, hit the ⌘K command palette and type something like pay INV-204 or create invoice for Acme — straight to the action, no clicking around.
Join the discussion
Members join the discussion
Comments are for Fee-Lion users. Enter your email and we'll send a one-time link to sign in — no password.