Skip to content
PaloWorks
← All trades

Scopes, contracts & invoices for freelance designers

Lock the deliverables and the round count before you present route one, so the fourth logo direction is a priced change order instead of a donated weekend.

Start freeSee pricing — $19/mo

Free: 1 client + 3 active projects. Pro: unlimited at $19/mo.

Where the money goes for designers

  • You presented three routes, the client narrowed to one, and then asked to "just see one more direction" — a week of work with nothing to bill it against.
  • Feedback arrives from four stakeholders in four separate emails over nine days, and all of it gets treated as the same round.
  • The founder's board sees the deck on Friday and the brief has changed by Monday, but the fee has not.
  • Six months after handover the client wants the identity resized for a trade show pull-up, a LinkedIn banner, and a favicon, and assumes it is covered.
  • The 50% up front was agreed on a call, never invoiced, and now you are chasing the whole fee at the end.

What PaloWorks does about it

Every feature below is in the product today. Free covers the whole workflow for your first client; contracts, time tracking, and the calendar are on Pro.

Scope with a locked round count
Deliverables, rounds, timeline, and price sit on one page with its own URL, sent before you start. A third route becomes a conversation about price, not about taste.
Revision log
Each round is logged against the number the scope promised, and the project tells you when you have reached it — before the fourth set of notes, not after.
Change-order rounds
Past the included rounds the revision log gives you two buttons: add the extra round to the project as a logged change order, or raise an invoice for the extra work. Either way the overrun is on the record instead of absorbed.
Deposit and balance invoices
Both are calculated from the scope price. The deposit goes out at 50%, or whatever you set, before kickoff instead of living in a calendar reminder.
Contracts your client signs online
Generated from the scope you already wrote, covering ownership on final payment, portfolio rights, and what counts as a round — plain text you can edit before you send it. Signed by typed name, timestamped, and hashed at signature, so any later edit to the wording shows up.
Client message scripts
The awkward ones are already written, with this project's real links and amounts in them: sending the scope for sign-off, sending the deposit, saying a round is used up, chasing the invoice that is late.

What a designer invoice usually holds

Line items you can type straight into an invoice. Quantities, tax, and discounts are handled for you, and duplicating an invoice re-opens the same amount, notes, and currency as a fresh draft under a new number.

Sample line itemsExample amount (USD)
  • Discovery workshop and moodboard — 3 hoursExample amount: $450
  • Logo exploration — three routesExample amount: $2,400
  • Colour and typographic systemExample amount: $1,200
  • Brand guidelines PDF — 24 pagesExample amount: $1,800
  • Social profile and banner artwork — 6 sizesExample amount: $600
  • Print-ready file preparation and handoverExample amount: $450
  • Change order: fourth logo route after narrowingExample amount: $800
  • Deposit (50%) — brand identityExample amount: $3,450

The amounts are illustrations we wrote to show the shape of an invoice — not market rates, not a recommendation, and not figures from a real client. Amounts, tax, and discounts are yours to set, in your currency — PaloWorks does the arithmetic in whole cents so the totals never drift.

Questions designers ask

Is PaloWorks free for designers?

Free covers 1 client and 3 active projects: intake links, scopes, revision tracking, change orders, invoices, and card payments through your own Stripe account. Pro is $19/mo, or $192/yr ($16/mo billed yearly). It lifts both caps and adds contracts, time tracking, calendar, reports, planner, intake templates, multiple tax rates, draft from intake, and api and assistant access.

Do my clients need an account to see a scope or an invoice?

No. Every document you share — the intake form, the scope, the invoice, the project portal — opens from a link in their browser. There is nothing for them to install and no password for them to reset.

Can I send a designer a contract to sign?

Yes, on Pro. PaloWorks generates a project agreement from the scope you already agreed, your client signs it in the browser, and the signing record keeps the time, IP address, browser and a fingerprint of the exact document signed. Whether a particular agreement is enforceable depends on its terms and the law where you both work; PaloWorks is not a law firm and does not give legal advice.

What goes on a designer invoice?

The sample lines on this page show the usual shape of one. The amounts beside them are illustrations we wrote, not market rates and not a real client's figures — you set your own, in your own currency, and PaloWorks does the arithmetic in whole cents.

Templates and guides for designers

Not quite what you do?

The workflow is the same underneath. These pages are written in each trade’s own words.

Set up your next job before you start it

One client, one intake link, one scope with the rounds written down — the way a designer job should have been set up in the first place. About five minutes, and nothing to pay to try it.

Create your workspaceView pricing