Invoice template for language courses
Teaching students a new language can be highly rewarding, and a lot of fun. You teach them how to express ideas with increasing complexity and understand new meanings of terms. As students progress, subtle nuances within the language are explored as they become expert speakers. Often, such intricacy leads to moments of confusion.
Your invoicing should never be one of these moments. Whilst the language may be hard, billing your students should always be easy.
This article explains how you can use invoicing software to quickly create invoices for language courses, allowing you more time to focus on language development in the classroom. It notes the different pricing options you may choose for your students, reminds you of the necessary invoice fields, and suggests how your invoice could even become the first language-learning opportunity for your students. Different invoice templates for language courses are also provided.
Pricing for language courses
Before issuing your students an invoice, you will need to decide how you’re going to charge them for your courses. There are a number of different options available:
Charge per unit
Charge per week
Charge per day
Charge per hour
Charging per unit
Charging per unit may be the simplest method for billing your students. It is also the most understandable for prospective students. Rather than working out exactly how many hours your course equates to, you can simply charge the overall price for the course or module.
If you offer a course like ‘A1 - Italian Beginners’ for example, your students will know exactly how much this is and will be able to compare your prices to others.
Charging per unit is the most common method when selling a language course.
Charging per week or per day
Before a student decides to take a language course, they may wish to brush up on their language skills. Often, this requires an intensive language course that will last only a short period of time but will be crammed with content. Sometimes, these courses may have a specific focus, for example, grammar, speaking, or writing.
With these courses, it can make sense to provide your prices as in a weekly or daily form. This is because rather than providing a standardised course, these courses are developing specific skills. Students will therefore want to know exactly how much classroom time they are going to get.
What should I charge for complete language courses?
Whether you choose to charge per unit or per week/day, you will also need to decide on your prices. These will depend on a number of factors. Before setting your prices, you should ask yourself:
What level is the language course designed for?
How many students will be in the class? (Smaller class sizes are usually more costly)
What are your qualifications in the language?
How sought after is the language in your area? (E.g., courses in the UK that teach Khmer may be less common, and therefore more expensive than French courses)
Charging per hour
Language learning is hard. And whilst classroom instruction is necessary, it’s not always enough. Private tutoring can therefore help students continue to develop outside of the classroom by supporting them with homework, catching up on missed lessons, or simply revising difficult material.
Private tutoring is commonly charged per hour and paid as you go. This allows both you as an instructor and your student, to maintain flexibility and work around both of your needs.
What should I charge for hourly language tuition?
Deciding how much you should charge for hourly tuition will depend on how competitive you want your prices to be. The best thing to do is have a look at the going rate for language tuition and then work from there.
When pricing your private tuition, you should ask yourself:
Are you a native speaker of the language?
Do you have relevant qualifications (e.g. teaching qualifications or academic qualifications in the language)
How much experience do you have with private tutoring?
Regardless of how you choose to price your language courses and tuition, your rates will need to be clearly stated on your invoice.
What if I want to charge with a different unit of measurement?
Usually, your invoicing software should offer you enough options for your unit of measurement. However, if you feel you have an insufficient choice and the options don’t accurately reflect your services, some invoicing software will allow you to create your own custom units of measurement.
When invoicing for language courses, it may be you want your unit of measurement to be ‘per course’ or ‘per semester’. If so, remember to update your prices accordingly and choose a unit of measurement that is easily understandable.
To manually add a unit of measurement in SumUp Invoices, simply create a new invoice as normal. In the item line, expand the drop-down menu for ‘Unit’ and click ‘Add New’. You can then add a new type of unit that reflects your services.
What information needs to be on my invoice?
Your language course invoice needs to include certain information in order to be compliant with UK regulations. Your invoice is a legal document that will be sent to your students when their payments are due.
The invoice breaks down the details of the sale and is an official request for payment. It must include:
The word ‘Invoice’
A unique invoice number
The date the invoice was sent and the date the language course was rendered
Contact information of both the teacher (or language school) and student
The terms of payment (including any late fees you will charge)
Details of the language course (i.e. name, dates etc.) and cost (per unit/day etc.)
The total amount that is owed.
When invoicing for language courses, be very clear about what you are invoicing for. Being specific about the dates of the course and what level the course is aimed at will help to minimise student concerns that the course does not match their abilities. Equally, if you charge additional fees for textbooks, make sure that this is broken down on the invoice so there are no surprise costs.
For a more extensive breakdown of what information you need to include on your invoice, take a look at our other article: “What information needs to be on an invoice?”.
Terms and conditions for language courses
Language courses often get a lot of immediate interest. People like the idea of being able to communicate in foreign languages and develop their cultural understanding.
However, when things start to get busy, people also look for ways to reduce their workload. The additional courses people take on can often be neglected in times of stress, which can lead to people seeking refunds.
Therefore, make sure that your terms and conditions are clear from the start and you write them in the appropriate field of your language invoice template. You need to ask yourself:
Is it possible for a student to have a refund on a course they have cancelled?
If a refund is possible, how much notice must a student provide?
You may wish to include a phrase like this in your terms and conditions if you don’t wish to offer any refunds for a change of heart:
“Refunds are not provided after payment has been received.”
Equally, if you’re privately tutoring, consider whether you will still charge students for last-minute cancellations or missed appointments. This should also be stated in your terms and conditions.
Deposits for language courses
If however, you want to allow your students the flexibility of cancellations prior to starting your language courses, you may wish to implement a deposit system into your invoicing. That way, it makes it less likely that your students will back out of your language course and even if they do, you can still charge an administration fee.
For more details about how to include a deposit system in your invoicing, take a look at our article: “Managing deposits with invoicing software”.
Designing your language course invoice template
Your invoice is an easy opportunity to market your brand. When a customer receives an invoice from a company, they should immediately know who it is from.
It’s therefore common for companies to choose to create their invoice template using their standardised company colours and fonts. Adding a logo to an invoice template also makes the document appear more professional. Therefore, consider adding the logo of your language school so it stands out from the competition.
Alternatively, you may want to reassure your customer that they’re signed up for the correct language class by issuing your invoices in colours that mirror that country’s national flag.
Here is an example of how you could design your invoice for a foreign language course:
Want to make your invoice the first bit of language learning for your students? Invoicing software will usually allow you to invoice in foreign languages, depending upon the laws of the country. For example, if you’re teaching advanced Danish and you know your students have a solid grasp of the language, you may want your invoice to be in Danish. ‘Faktura’ may even become the first word they learn on your course!
Free Word and Excel invoice templates for language courses
If you prefer to use Word or Excel to create your invoices, you can download our free invoice templates below. Each invoice can be customised with your language school’s logo, business details, and chosen payment methods.
Creating language course invoices with Word will require you to manually calculate the totals. Our Excel templates will calculate your totals automatically but may be more complicated for a novice user.
Remember to check whether or not your business is VAT registered. Depending on your business structure, you will need to send a different type of invoice. If you want to create your invoice in Word format, the VAT and non-VAT invoice templates can be downloaded separately; if you want to use Excel, select the appropriate tab when you download the file, one tab has a premade VAT invoice template, one has a non-VAT invoice template.
Invoicing software for language courses
You can use invoicing software to simplify your invoicing and ensure your documents are compliant. Whilst Word and Excel invoice templates for language courses are simple to use, they are not specific to local requirements. However, invoicing software like SumUp Invoices will make sure that your invoices are compliant with local legislation.
SumUp Invoices will also help you to accept payments from customers and save you time. Whenever you send an invoice, a payment link will also be included in the email, allowing your customers to complete an online payment quickly and securely.
With SumUp Invoices, all of your invoices will be easily accessible and you will be able to track any outstanding payments. Once an online payment has been made by your customer, it will be automatically matched with your invoice.
Ultimately, the simplicity of SumUp Invoices to create your invoice template for a language course will save you time, stress, and allow you to get on with the more important part of your business: teaching your language.