How to Bill Clients as a Music or Audio Producer

Studio time is your inventory, and every hour you don’t price is an hour you give away. The fix is a clean estimate that books the date with a deposit, charges sessions as a day-rate, counts mixes and masters as units, and caps revisions before they spiral. Here’s how to build it in Fee-Lion.

Build the estimate around your studio rhythm

Open Estimates in the left sidebar and start a new one. Your line items map straight onto how an audio job actually runs:

1. Add your tracking sessions as a fee line — your session day-rate as the rate, the number of booked days as the quantity (a 2-day tracking block at $600/day = $1,200). If you’d rather bill by the hour, use a task line (hours × rate) instead.
2. Add mix and master as unit lines — one unit per song, priced per track. Five songs to mix at $250 each lands as 5 × $250, and the math stays obvious to the client.
3. Add a revision rounds line as units — for example, “2 included revision rounds” at $0, with a separate “additional revision round” unit priced for anything past the cap. This is your safety net against the never-ending tweak.
4. Set your tax and a deposit % on the estimate so the date isn’t held for free.

If you bill the same shape every time, save yourself the setup by picking a template before you start.

Tip: Spell the revision cap out as its own line item, not buried in the notes. When a client sees “2 included revision rounds” and “additional round — $150” side by side on the estimate, the boundary is theirs to manage, and the upsell writes itself.

Collect a deposit to lock the date

Studio days are perishable — a held date someone cancels is revenue you can’t get back. A deposit turns “I think we’re on for the 14th” into a real booking.

• Set a deposit % on the estimate (40–50% is common for session work that reserves your calendar).
• Want it applied automatically to every estimate? Set it once under Settings → Preferences so you never forget to ask.
• When the client approves in the portal, the deposit is what they pay up front — the date is yours, and the balance follows on the final invoice.

Send it, get approval, and convert when the mix is done

1. Send the estimate from the Estimates list. Your client opens a magic-link portal — no login, no account — reviews the line items, and approves with one click.
2. On approval they pay the deposit, and you’ve got a confirmed booking on the calendar.
3. When the masters are delivered, convert the estimate to an invoice (or spin up a project to track the sessions). The deposit is already credited, so the invoice shows only the remaining balance.
4. The invoice carries a Pay button. The client pays by card and the money lands in your own Stripe account — you keep control of payouts, minus a small platform fee.

If extra revision rounds piled up during mixing, add them as line items on the invoice before you send it, so the final bill matches the work that actually happened.

Tip: Long-term artist or label on retainer? Set up a recurring invoice with auto-pay for a monthly block of studio hours, and reserve the one-off estimate flow for project-based mix and master jobs.

What’s next

• Price an estimate with tasks, fees, and units
• Collect a deposit on an estimate
• Convert an estimate to an invoice
• Set a default deposit percentage