For consultants

Quotes, retainers & invoicing for consultants

Send proposals with flexible pricing, lock in retainers, and let PaymentPing chase late invoices so you don’t have to email a CMO twice.

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The consultant billing problem

Senior clients, soft scopes, awkward follow-ups.

Consulting billing has its own shape. Your clients are senior — CMOs, VPs, founders — and chasing them for payment feels career-limiting in a way that chasing a small-business owner doesn’t. You sold them on judgment and clarity. Following up three times about an unpaid invoice doesn’t exactly reinforce either.

Then there’s the scope problem. Consulting engagements flex. The discovery call turns up a workstream nobody priced in. The strategy phase gets longer because the client’s team needs more workshops. A rigid quote with a fixed total feels transactional — and worse, it forces you to argue about a change order every time the work shifts. Most invoicing tools assume scopes are knowable up front, the way e-commerce assumes a product has a SKU. Consulting isn’t that.

Retainers are their own thing. The whole point of a retainer is that it just goes out every month, on time, looking the same as last month. But most invoicing tools either make you build the retainer invoice from scratch each time or hide recurring billing behind a higher tier. Meanwhile the math on “invoice in 7 days, pay in 30” quietly stretches your runway by a month and a half before you notice.

PaymentPing is built for service work specifically: proposals that flex, retainers that go out cleanly, and reminders that sound like you on a polite day — not a debt collector.

Use cases

How consultants actually use it.

Proposals with sliding-scale pricing

Most consulting proposals don't have one number on them. They have a range, because the final number depends on which workshops you run, how many stakeholders you interview, or how deep the strategy phase goes. PaymentPing lets you quote a range natively, instead of forcing a single number you'll renegotiate later.

Quote ranges like $5,000–$8,000 depending on workshops
Client sees a clean "What's Included" list instead of confusing line-item totals
Tax shown on both the min and max
Final invoice amount filled in after the kickoff conversation, not before

Auto-reminders that don't sound automated

Default reminders go out 1, 7, 14, and 30 days after the due date. The wording is calm and professional, and you can rewrite each day's template independently. Nothing has to sound robotic just because it's automated — and a CMO won't get the same email tone you'd send a tiny startup.

Edit each reminder day's template in your own voice
Use {{placeholders}} for client name, invoice number, amount, due date
Pause or skip reminders for specific invoices when a client asks for time
Pre-reminder digest at 6pm the night before, so you can override anything that doesn't fit

Recurring retainers without manual sending

For clean monthly retainers — same scope, same amount, same due date — PaymentPing lets you reuse the structure of last month's invoice and send the new one in seconds. More complex retainer logic (hours banks, rollover, true-ups) is roadmap, but the standard “$X per month for these deliverables” case is solved.

Duplicate last month's invoice in one click
Same line items, same client, fresh due date
Reminders fire on the same cadence every month
Hours banks, rollover, and usage-based true-ups are on the roadmap

Quote → invoice without rebuilding

Once a client accepts a proposal, the last thing you want to do is rebuild the invoice from scratch. PaymentPing collapses that step: when the client clicks accept on the public proposal page, a draft invoice appears in your dashboard with the same line items, same client, same totals.

Public acceptance page (no login required for the client)
Auto-converts accepted proposals into draft invoices
Owner notification email the second a proposal is accepted
Sliding-scale quotes leave the final number blank for you to confirm

The features that matter

Three things consultants care about most.

If you’re comparing options, also check out the side-by-sides with Bonsai and FreshBooks.

Sliding-scale quotes

As far as I can tell, no other invoicing tool does this. Quote a price as a range — $5,000 to $8,000 — for engagements where the scope flexes with workshops, stakeholders, or research depth. The PDF, email template, and acceptance page all handle ranges natively. When the scope firms up after kickoff, you fill in the final number on the invoice.

Send range-priced proposals for scope-flexible work
Client sees "What's Included" instead of mismatched totals
Tax shown on both the min and max
Final invoice amount confirmed after the conversation, not before

Customizable reminder templates

Every reminder day (1, 7, 14, and 30 days past due) has its own editable template. Match the tone you'd use with a senior client — calm, brief, no urgency theatre. Pro plan users can also reshape the schedule itself if the default cadence doesn't suit your engagements. Read the full breakdown on the dedicated automatic payment reminders page.

One template per reminder day, edit them all in your own voice
{{placeholders}} for client name, invoice number, amount, due date
Pro plan: change the cadence (e.g. day 5 / day 14 / day 30 instead)
Pause or skip reminders per-invoice when context calls for it

Public proposal acceptance

Senior clients hate logins. The proposal page is a public link — they click, read, and hit accept, no account required. Acceptance auto-creates a draft invoice and notifies you by email. It feels like a one-click checkout, but for getting hired.

See how reminders fire after acceptance on the automatic payment reminders page.

The workflow

How consultants use PaymentPing.

Four steps from proposal to paid. None of them is “email a CMO twice about a 30-day-overdue invoice.”

1
Send a proposal with sliding-scale pricing
Fixed price for tightly-scoped work, sliding scale ($5,000–$8,000) when the engagement flexes with workshops or stakeholder depth. Add line items per phase or just a single “What’s Included” list.
2
Client accepts on a public link, optionally pays a retainer deposit
The client gets a branded email with a link. They click, read the proposal, and hit accept — no login, no password reset. If you set a deposit percentage, that’s pre-filled on the invoice that’s waiting for them.
3
Invoice each milestone or month
For phased engagements, send a clean invoice at each milestone. For monthly retainers, duplicate last month’s invoice in one click and send. Same line items, same client, fresh due date.
4
Reminders go out automatically; you stay above the chase
Once the invoice is sent, the reminder schedule kicks in. Day 1, 7, 14, 30 past due — calm, professional emails go out on your behalf. You stop thinking about it until the invoice is marked paid, and your relationship with the CMO stays intact.

Pricing for consultants

Pro is the natural fit.

Most consultants land on Pro at $29/month. You get unlimited active clients, custom branding so PDFs match your firm’s look (no “Powered by PaymentPing” footer), and a customizable reminder schedule if the default cadence doesn’t fit your engagement rhythm. For senior-client work, the branding piece matters — a clean, on-brand PDF lands differently in an executive’s inbox than something with a free-tier watermark.

No intro discount that doubles in month four. No annual contract you have to argue with support to cancel. The free trial is 14 days and doesn’t ask for a card. See the full breakdown on the pricing page.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Can I send a proposal with phases or options?

Yes. Quotes support multiple line items, so you can break a proposal into phases (Discovery, Strategy, Implementation) and price each one individually. If the total is still moving, use a sliding-scale quote to give a range like $5,000–$8,000 depending on which workshops or workstreams you run. Clients see a clean breakdown without the awkward "and one more thing" email a week later.

Does PaymentPing handle retainers?

For straightforward monthly retainers, yes — you can issue a recurring invoice each month with the same line items, the same amount, the same due date, and let the reminder cadence handle late payers. More complex retainer logic (tiered hours banks, automatic rollover of unused time, usage-based true-ups) isn't built in yet and is on the roadmap. If your retainer is "$X for Y deliverables this month," PaymentPing handles it cleanly today.

Can I export billable hours?

No — PaymentPing isn't a time-tracking tool, and I'd rather it stay focused on the billing side than do time tracking poorly. Most consultants I talk to pair it with Toggl, Harvest, or a spreadsheet. Track hours wherever feels natural, then drop the totals into a PaymentPing invoice as line items when it's time to bill.

Does it look professional enough to send to enterprise clients?

Yes, especially on the Pro plan with custom branding. Pro removes the "Powered by PaymentPing" footer, lets you upload your firm's logo, and produces PDFs that hold up next to anything a CMO or VP would expect to see in their inbox. The proposal acceptance page is clean and minimal — closer to a one-click checkout than a clunky form. No one will think you're cutting corners on the billing side.

Can my clients pay in their currency?

PaymentPing is USD-first today. You can send invoices to clients anywhere in the world and they can pay via Stripe, but the currency on the invoice is USD for now. Multi-currency support (CAD, GBP, EUR, AUD as the primary targets) is on the near-term roadmap. If you bill mostly in another currency, email me and I'll let you know when it ships.

Ready to send proposals that pay themselves?

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