Make Invoicing and Project Management A Breeze with LSP.expert

Everyone loves getting paid.

But…invoicing and tracking expenses can be a drag!

While a range of invoicing tools like FreshBooks or Xero are available on the market, they’re not ideal for language professionals. Want to bill by the word, charge different rates based on language or subject, and easily track rates, income and expenses for each client – all from a single program?

Enter LSP.expert, a web-based tool designed by and for translators to seamlessly manage projects, quotes, invoices and more!

Introduction to LSP.expert

Launched by professional translator Caroline Bries and “IT guy” Cédric Degallaix in 2016, LSP.expert is now used by over 600 language professionals.

It offers numerous features for language professionals, including billing by language pair, service, and fuzzy matches.

LSP.expert is designed for multilingual language professionals, with a user interface available in English or French and the ability to send customized invoices and emails in any language – setting up templates is easy.

The tool is competitively priced and comes with a 30-day free trial. The Freelancer tier (12.50€/month billed yearly) includes 10 clients, unlimited jobs, quotes, invoices, expenses, time tracking, multiple currency management, and the ability to import matches from CAT tools. When your business grows, upgrade to the Freelancer Plus tier (15.50€/month) for 50 clients and the ability to sync deadlines to your calendar and send invoices and billing reminders from your own email address. The Premium and Team tiers are designed for small teams and agencies, offering unlimited clients and advanced outsourcing features.

The dynamic team regularly releases updates, including a comprehensive overhaul with a new user interface, fine-tuned price calculations and hierarchies, bulk actions, and team features for Project Managers in early 2023.

Create a job on LSP.expert

Setting up a job on LSP.expert is easy.

Click “Add a job” in the upper right-hand corner to open a new pane.

Name your job and fill in the client name, due date, and service. You can also add optional details such as start date, start and end times, domain, labels, and language pair.

LSP.expert offers many time-saving features. Once you’ve added a client, language pair, or service, you can select it from a drop-down menu for future jobs. Some domains and services come pre-configured, and you can set up your normal working hours, then use the “start of day” and “end of day” buttons to make calendaring a snap.

Under Quantity, choose the billing Unit (customizable with translator- and interpreter-friendly options like Day, Hour, Word, Page, or Trip for all your languages) and specify the number of units. You can also add fuzzy match breakdowns.

Under Billing, choose invoice settings (per unit, with or without matches; fixed price; time-based invoicing; or non-billable) and currencies. Selecting time-based invoicing creates a built-in time tracker for the project. Add a Purchase order number and Additional information if needed.

At this stage, you can add discounts, charges, or a minimum fee.

Click “Add,” and the tool will calculate your earnings for this project.

You can update project settings at any time.

Customize services, languages, domains and pricing

In addition to adding information on the fly when creating jobs, you can also set up default services, languages, domains and pricing. To do so, open the left sidebar, click your name in the lower right corner and select “Settings.”

Under “System values,” specify your Services, Language pairs, Units, Matches, Taxes and Domains of expertise.

Many System values are preloaded; these will update as you add new values when creating jobs. Click the blue button to add system-wide values or the three dots to Edit. Pick Pin to pin it to the top of any dropdown menu. No longer offering a service? Disable it, and it will no longer be listed (but will still show up for reporting).

For interpreters, “Language pairs” offers a convenient “bidirectional” toggle.

“Units” is completely flexible. In addition to charging by the word, line, page, or project and time-based units like hour or day, you can add any others you need. This is useful for interpreters, who may want to add a “per diem,” “travel day,” “sound check,” or “mileage.”

Pick “Prices” > “Clients” to set your default rates for a specific service, language pair, unit, unit cost, currency and domain, and pricing for fuzzy matches.

Pricing fuzzy matches

Many translators who work with CAT tools offer discounted prices for “fuzzy” and “perfect” matches.

When creating a job, you can specify the matches you bill for and their prices.

Then, manually enter the word count for each match type or import an analysis from your CAT tool. LSP.expert can read analysis files generated by SDL Trados, Wordfast Pro, MemoQ, Memsource, CafeTran Espresso, Pairaphrase, Smartling, Déjà Vu X3, and XTM.

Time-based billing and time tracking

If you offer proofreading, transcription, or interpreting services, you may charge by the hour or minute.

When creating a job, select “hours” as your billing unit and “time-based invoicing” as invoicing type.

To start the timer, click the “Time-tracking” tab and “Start tracking time,” and a timer will pop up. Click “Stop tracking time,” and the entry will be added to the project. Need to adjust or log time? Click “Add a time” or the three dots icon and “Edit” to update your project.

Time can be marked as non-billable and invoiced down to the minute.

Logged time entries are automatically included in the final project invoice.

Create and send invoices

Creating and sending an invoice is easy. Open the sidebar, select a Job, go to the Invoices tab and click “Create invoice.”

You’ll see an overview of the invoice information, including Invoice number, Client information, Issue date, Due date, Sent date, and a status where you can choose between “Created,” “Sent,” “Paid,” and “Credited.” Numbers are automatically assigned in sequential order. You can also customize your starting invoice number or invoicing conventions or manually change invoice numbers.

For a project with multiple services, you can add multiple lines to your invoice. You can also apply discounts or add taxes, Notes or Terms with a few clicks.

To send invoices to a client, click “Actions,” “Send email.” Pick the recipient (and optionally, cc: other contacts), and LSP.expert will auto-populate the Subject field and body of the email. You can create templates that include variables like invoice number, issue date, due date, total, nickname, or attachment and translate the text to your client’s language with a convenient dropdown menu. Then, send it off with a single click through LSP.expert’s built-in email system or your own business email address. (The tool supports Gmail, Outlook, and SMTP.)

Need to upload the invoice to a client’s platform? Simply generate a PDF under the “Actions” menu.

You can also send a partial invoice partway through a project and track paid ones under “Actions.”

To create a quote, follow the same steps under the “Quotes” tab, then send it to your client from within the tool.

My favorite feature? Sending off multiple invoices at the end of the month with a single click. Simply select all the jobs you want to invoice and click Invoice, “All jobs.” LSP.expert will create and send invoices for all selected jobs.

Customize invoices

It’s easy to add your business information and customize branding to match your colors.

Under “Settings,” “My company,” you can add your logo, business name and address and tax identification number. (The field name will update based on your country.)

LSP.expert offers various invoice templates. Even better, you can automatically add your terms and conditions inside your invoices or quotes or as a default attachment.

Track due dates and payments from the dashboard

Click the bell icon in the sidebar to see notifications.

This includes upcoming due dates or overdue project notifications, plus payment-related information. Late payment? Check your bank statement to see if it’s arrived, send a reminder email through LSP.expert with just a few clicks, or pick up the phone and text or call.

Labels and filters

Filters are an easy way to zoom in on different job categories.

Click the “Jobs” menu, then select “Filter” to narrow down jobs by settings like client, service, language pair, domain, status, start date, delivery date, due date, supplier, outsourcing status, and label.

LSP.expert lets you create labels to classify your jobs, clients, suppliers, quotes, invoices, expenses and purchase orders. Head to “Settings,” “Labels” and add them to reflect how you organized your business for even more fine-grained filtering.

Reporting

Ever asked yourself these questions:

How much did I invoice this month?
Is June always slow?
Which clients are most profitable?
How many words do I translate per hour for each client/service/specialization?
How much will I have to pay in taxes this quarter/year?

LSP.expert’s integrated reporting tool is ideal for answering questions like this.

Click “Reports” in the left sidebar, then check out options like “Monthly sales,” “Turnover,” “Profit and loss,” “Tax summary,” “Sales by service,” “Time spent by service,” “Sales by client,” “Profitability by client,” and more!

It’s perfect for tracking monthly revenue, comparing year-on-year growth, understanding seasonal dips, identifying profitable clients, and ensuring enough revenue to cover expenses and taxes.

The last word on LSP.expert

While a spreadsheet might do the trick for tracking payments when starting out, it can quickly become overwhelming. And most commercial invoicing tools simply aren’t designed for language professionals' needs.

I’ve followed LSP.expert for years and have been impressed by how they continue to introduce new features to make invoicing and project and money management easy...so translators and interpreters can quickly fire off invoices and spend our time on what we love.

LSP.expert has kindly offered the techforword community 30% off any new yearly subscription with this link and coupon code tfw30. Plus, you get a free 30-day trial. So what are you waiting for? Let’s get your financial house in order.

Make Invoicing and Project Management A Breeze with LSP.expert