I am a freelance editor. My business model is such that clients send material for me to edit and I return that material within a set timeframe. My fee structure is partially based upon that timeframe (72h, 48h or 24h). I mainly work with clients who need short turnaround times. I'm facing a challenging issue: clients ask if I'm available at a certain time. I say that I am at the time. I book myself around these expected clients, but the work never shows up. I've turned down work for work that never came in. To remedy this, I'm currently accepting work on a first come, first serve basis, but I am also losing clients who want to be sure they can get in when they need to. So, here we come to my PayPal issue. I need to be able to charge a deposit for holding an appointment and I'm not sure what the best way to do this would be. Because I charge by both the page count and the timeframe, I wouldn't know what the final charge would be at the time I'm collecting the deposit. Is it possible to create an invoice with an estimate, accept partial payment as a deposit, then edit the invoice once the work comes in to reflect the actual remaining balance? Is there another way to do this without creating more than one invoice for the same transaction? Thanks 🙂
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