Vibe Invoicing

14 Jun, 2025

Freelancers, designers, engineers, and artists — we’ve all been there. You finish a project, send an invoice, and realize… you’ve undercharged. Again. Not because you didn’t put in the hours, but because those hours don’t reflect everything you went through.

The Problem with Traditional Invoicing

The most common invoicing methods are :

• Time-based invoicing: You charge per hour or day, based on market rates or your needs.
• Project-based invoicing: You quote a lump sum, usually based on the client’s budget.

Both are valid. Both are flawed. Neither accounts for:

• The emotional strain of working with difficult clients
• The effort of pre-sales conversations
• Delayed payments and resulting "payment anxiety"
• Doing work you don’t enjoy or is not aligned with your ethical compass

These hidden costs compound and lead to burnout, frustration, and — ultimately — unsustainable careers for many creatives, especially those who are neurodivergent or struggle with executive function.

Introducing Vibe Invoicing

Vibe Invoicing is a model I’ve developed that separates the financial and emotional components of your billing. It’s a framework for freelancers and creatives to price their work in a way that honours both their economic needs and their emotional realities.

Here’s how it works:

1. Calculate Your Baseline Financial Needs
   

You start with the essentials:

• Your monthly living costs
• Your workable hours per month
• Any savings or comfort buffer you want

From this, you calculate your survival hourly rate, future-proof rate, and comfort rate.

2. Estimate the Project Scope
   You input the estimated number of hours for the client. Multiply this by your base hourly rate to get the base project cost.

This is the most neutral, logic-driven part of the invoice.

But it’s not the full story.

3. Add Emotional Surcharges
   This is where emotional honesty meets professional strategy. You evaluate the emotional friction in the project.
   

Emotional Factor Surcharge (in %)

• Delay in payment : Does the client have a history of not paying on time? The landlord wants rent on time. So, does the government and utility companies.
• Difficult to work with : Nice project, but maybe the client can treat me better? Clash of cultures?
• Work you don’t like doing or not aligned with your moral compass: "I want to do illustrations, but I get paid to design UI" - actual quote from a friend.
• Pre-sales effort : Took 200 hours to be able to complete the project sale. How can I get paid for that?
• Time Probability : "The project is too undefined and may not complete in the time the client wants. I can communicate to them. But the corporate food chain does not allow 'failures' pre-emptively. So, I might have to ask some friends to come in and help to meet deadlines. This is where I hide my friends" - actual quote from another friend.

This was built based on several conversations with friends in similar industries. The PROs do this intuitively. Feel free to add your own parameters.

They’re "compensation" for emotional labor and risk that you might face like delayed payments, project pauses, budget freeze, and even ghosting.

4. Communicate with Transparency (or Not)
   You don’t have to disclose emotional surcharges to the client — but you’ll know that you’re being compensated fairly. And if you ever do choose to explain it (say, with a long-term or ethical client), it opens space for better relationships.

Why This Matters

Vibe Invoicing is not about charging more. It’s about charging right.

It gives space for people who:

• Work slowly, but deeply
• Are emotionally engaged in their work (...and can't help it)
• Have anxiety, ADHD, or are otherwise neurodivergent
• Want to keep hustling but try to get paid too
• Do unquantified work like empathy, iteration, and emotional regulation
• Need to pay mental health bills

It helps you make informed decisions. It is not a directional indicator, but rather a compass that provides some thinking one can do before charging low, which often happens in these precarious times.

What’s Next?

You can play with this google sheet. I may "vibe code" a react app that makes this easier to communicate. Think of it as part calculator, part self-assessment, part empowerment tool.

Until then, feel free to use the template or reach out if this framework resonates with you.

Cheers, Rohit