How to Send an Invoice to Your Studio Employer Without Another Tool

You edited three weddings for Studio A last month. Time to get paid.

If you’re a freelance editor or photographer, your invoicing workflow is probably some combination of: a shared Google Sheet you update every time you deliver a cut, a PayPal link pasted into Slack, a Bonsai trial that auto-renews at $24/mo, or a text message at 11pm that says “hey, just a reminder I’m owed for Anna/Lars”. None of these are great. Some are actively harmful to your professional reputation.

There’s a better pattern: send the studio a structured payment request from inside the same tool they’re already using to track your work.

Why this is different from “an invoicing tool”

Invoicing tools (Bonsai, Harvest, FreshBooks, QuickBooks Self-Employed) are built for clients who receive an invoice once. They’re overkill for a freelance editor who invoices the same three studios 20–40 times a year.

What you actually want: the project you just finished is already in the tool, you know the studio, you know the rate, you know the work. You click one button, fill in line items, and send.

What you don’t want: log into Bonsai, create a new client, create a new project, fill in 14 fields, attach your logo, preview, send. That’s performative bookkeeping. Eight minutes per invoice, 30 times a year — that’s four hours of your life you’ll never get back.

How FlowShot’s payment requests work

If you’re using the cross-org My Tasks inbox, you already have this. Here’s the flow end to end.

Step 1: Click “Request payment”

From the My Tasks page (URL /my-assignments), there’s a Wallet icon button. Click it.

A dialog opens titled “Request payment” with a subtitle: Submit a payment request to another team member for work on your assigned projects.

Step 2: Pick the studio

If you work for multiple studios, the dialog asks which org this request is for. (Single-studio editors skip this step automatically.)

Step 3: Pick the project

A dropdown of your assigned projects in that org. Pick the one you finished — 2026-08-15_Anna-Lars_Wedding, for example. This is the project the payment is linked to in the studio’s Financial Inbox, so they see “Alex billed $800 for the Anna/Lars wedding edit”, not a disembodied invoice with no context.

Step 4: Pick the recipient

You’re paying out from the studio, but someone needs to be on the hook to approve it — usually the studio owner or a co-owner. FlowShot pre-selects whoever you sent your last payment request to (or falls back to the studio owner if there isn’t one yet). You can change it.

Step 5: Add line items

This is where the real structure lives. Each line item has a description (“Edit highlight reel, 4 min”), a quantity, a unit price ($800), and a currency (USD, EUR, GBP, whatever).

Add as many as you need. If you edited a 4-minute highlight, a 25-minute documentary, and cut a 30-second teaser for IG — that’s three line items on one request.

The line items aren’t decorative. They render in the studio’s Financial Inbox the same way they do for you, so the studio owner sees exactly what they’re paying for.

Step 6: Pick payout method

This is the key detail. FlowShot supports:

• PayPal — your PayPal.me link or email
• Zelle — phone number or email
• Venmo — @handle
• Cash App — $cashtag
• Bank transfer — IBAN / ACH / routing + account
• Custom link — anything else (Wise, Revolut, a payment link you control, wire instructions)

The studio pays you out of band. FlowShot routes the request to them with your preferred method so they can pay you the way you want to be paid.

Step 7: Send

Click Submit. Done.

On the studio owner’s side, a notification lands in their Financial Inbox. They see who, which project, line items, total, your payout method. They approve, they pay, they mark it paid.

The whole cycle is visible to both sides. No email chains, no lost Slack messages, no “hey just reminder.”

The settings you set once

FlowShot remembers two things between requests, so you don’t re-enter them every time:

1. Last recipient — the studio owner or co-owner you sent the last request to
2. Last payout method — your preferred method + value

So the second request and every one after is: open dialog → pick project → line items → submit. ~30 seconds per request.

There’s also a settings popover (top-right of the dialog) where you can set studio-level defaults — a default rate per role, a default currency, a default payout method. Most editors don’t need this, but if you’re a highly structured freelancer with a published rate card, it’s there.

How this looks to the studio

This is the part editors don’t always think about: what does the studio actually experience?

When the studio owner opens their Financial Inbox, your payment request appears as a card. The card shows your name and photo, the project it’s tied to, status (“Pending approval”), the line items with descriptions and amounts, the total, your payout method, and “Mark paid” / “Dispute” buttons.

The studio owner can click into the project from the card, verify the work was delivered, and mark it paid. The common case is PayPal or Zelle from the studio account, then marking paid in FlowShot for the record.

Studios that work with lots of freelancers especially value this because:

• One bookkeeping trail per project — the Anna/Lars wedding has a client invoice (sent, awaiting payment) and freelancer payments paid out (PayPal/Zelle), all tied to the same project
• No chasing unpaid freelancers — the Financial Inbox shows who hasn’t been paid
• Clean tax year-end — export all freelancer payments for 1099 or the equivalent tax form in your country

The friction math

Compare the two flows head to head for a freelance editor invoicing a studio 25 times a year.

Bonsai or QuickBooks: 8 min per invoice × 25 = 3.3 hours a year, plus a $24/mo subscription = $288/year. No context linking — studios see invoices, not projects.

FlowShot payment request: 30 sec per request × 25 = 12.5 min/year. $0 (already included if you’re in the studio’s org as a team member). Tied to the project — the studio sees exactly what they’re paying for.

For 25 projects, you save ~3 hours/year of admin plus $288 in subscription fees, and the studio gets a cleaner bookkeeping trail. For editors with 40–60 projects/year, the savings compound.

What it doesn’t replace

Payment requests handle peer-to-peer inside a studio. They don’t replace a full invoicing tool if you also have non-studio clients — your own direct-booked couples, corporate shoots, commercial jobs. For those, you still want to send a branded invoice on your own domain, with your terms and your own payment instructions.

For that case, FlowShot has a separate client invoice module that handles full retainer + balance billing to end clients. Payment requests are specifically for you invoicing a studio that hired you, not a studio invoicing their own couple.

If you have both flows — you edit for studios AND you book your own weddings — FlowShot handles both, and which one you use depends on which side of the table you’re on for that job.

The 10-minute setup

1. Accept the studio’s invitation as a team member (if you haven’t already)
2. Open /my-assignments
3. Click the Wallet icon
4. Fill in your preferred payout method once (PayPal, Zelle, whatever)
5. Send your first request to the studio owner

Every subsequent request is 30 seconds, because FlowShot remembers your payout method and your last recipient.

If you’re currently sending a Google Sheet and a PayPal link, this is the simplest upgrade you can make to your professional image this month.

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Payment requests are included on every FlowShot plan — Starter ($25/mo), Pro ($49/mo), and Business ($89/mo) all get the same inbox. See the invoicing product page for the broader story on how FlowShot handles invoicing — both client-facing and peer-to-peer — or read the companion article on the cross-org assignments inbox if you’re new to the multi-studio workflow.