COLO gives editorial, commercial, and book illustrators a single workspace for commissions — from the initial brief to a signed usage-rights contract, sketch approvals, final delivery, and the invoice — without spreading your studio across email threads, a contract PDF, and a separate billing tool.
TL;DR
Editorial, commercial and book illustrators use COLO to run a commission from brief to signed usage-rights contract, sketch approvals, final delivery and invoice. Proposals scope the commission and the licence, contracts carry usage-rights clauses written once rather than renegotiated in email, and invoicing ties to milestones so a four-month book-cover job is not funded out of your own pocket.
Who this is for
You are a working illustrator taking on commissions for editorial pieces, brand campaigns, book covers, packaging, or merchandise. A typical month is four briefs, two signed commissions, three rounds of sketch reviews, two finals, and a usage-rights conversation that nobody likes having.
The friction tends to be the same shape every time:
- Usage rights are negotiated in email and then lost in email. The brand wants "global, perpetual"; you agreed to "campaign, 12 months, Europe"; six months later neither of you can find the thread.
- Sketch rounds are not the same as final rounds. You quoted three rounds of sketches and one round of final revisions; the brief slid into five rounds of sketches and a redrawn final — and your day rate did not move.
- Payment terms get awkward on long projects. A four-month book-cover commission with no deposit and no milestones means you are funding the project out of your own pocket until delivery.
Three features illustrators use every week
Proposals that scope the commission and the licence
Present the commission — number of illustrations, format, sketch rounds, final rounds, usage rights, fee — in a single branded document the client can review and accept. Win more clients with branded proposals and a modern way to collaborate. Licence terms (territory, duration, exclusivity, exclusions) sit on the proposal next to the price, so the brand knows exactly what they are buying before they sign.
Contracts with usage-rights clauses you only write once
Build reusable templates for editorial, advertising, packaging, and book commissions — each with the right licensing language baked in — and e-sign them inline. Contracts can greatly enhance the management of agreements, ensuring better compliance, organization, and efficiency. Every signed contract is timestamped and stored against the client record, so when a brand wants to extend the licence two years later, the original terms are one click away.
Invoicing tied to milestones, not just delivery
Send the deposit invoice with the contract, schedule a sketch-approval invoice mid-project, and let the balance invoice fire on final delivery. Integrating invoice functionality into our application streamlines the billing process, enhances accuracy, improves cash flow management, and provides a better overall experience for both businesses and clients. You stop financing the client's project, and the client knows exactly when each payment is due.
For more, see contracts and invoicing and payments.
A typical commission in COLO for an illustrator
- Enquiry — a brand or publisher emails a brief; the lead lands as a client record with the brief, the reference material, and a sketch deadline.
- Onboarding — you send a branded proposal that scopes the commission, the licence, and the milestones; a contract that captures the usage terms; and a deposit invoice. The client signs, pays, and the project opens.
- Delivery — sketch rounds, comments, and approvals run inside the project so nobody loses count of which round you are on; finals attach to the same record.
- Payment — milestone invoices fire on sketch approval and final delivery; the brand pays from the portal; the contract terms govern any future licence extension.
How illustrators use COLO today
Monday morning, a magazine editor emails about an editorial commission — a quarter-page colour illustration for the next issue, three weeks out. By 11am the lead is a client record with the brief, the reference notes, and the air-date attached. You pick the "Editorial — One-Off" proposal template, fill in the fee, the sketch and final rounds, and the licence (editorial one-off, print + web, 12 months). By Tuesday the contract is signed, the 50% deposit has cleared, and the commission is on the editing queue.
Through the next two weeks the sketch and refinement happen against the project. Round-one sketches drop against the sketch milestone; the editor's comments live inline against the actual image they are looking at, not as a paragraph in a separate email. The contract names two sketch rounds; round three would invoice as a small change-order, so when the editor asks for a third pass you can have the conversation grounded in a document — and decide whether to absorb it or bill it. The final goes out on the agreed day; the masters drop against the hand-off milestone; the balance invoice fires automatically.
Eight months later, the same magazine asks whether they can re-use the illustration in a year-in-review compilation. The original contract is one click away; the licence-extension fee schedule is in the same record; the new invoice goes out in two minutes. The conversation about usage rights, which used to take three days of email archaeology, takes the time it takes to send the invoice. The portfolio of past commissions stays organised by client and by licence terms — not by which folder on which drive the source files happened to land in.
What it costs vs your current stack
Most working illustrators carry a three- or four-tool stack — a proposal-and-contracts tool, a separate invoicing app for billing, a file-sharing service for delivery, and a spreadsheet for licence terms. The monthly bill comes to roughly $60–80 before the first commission of the quarter is invoiced. COLO replaces the contracts, invoicing, and licence-tracking layers with one workspace.
| Tool | Plan | Cost/month |
|---|---|---|
| Current 4-tool stack | Bonsai + Stripe + Dropbox + Sheets | ~$70 |
| COLO Solo | Free | $0 |
| COLO Pro | Per user/mo | $18 |
| COLO Grow | Per user/mo | $24 |
You swap a $70/month stack for one tool that already does this work. Pro adds an agent or assistant seat; Grow adds the white-label client portal on your studio's custom domain.
FAQ
Q: How do I scope a licence so the brand cannot quietly extend the usage later?
The contract template names the territory, the duration, the channels, and the exclusivity; any change to those terms requires a new agreement (and usually a new invoice). The clause does the awkward conversation for you.
Q: Can I issue a deposit, a sketch-approval payment, and a final payment on the same project?
Yes. Schedule milestone invoices on the project — deposit on signing, sketch-approval payment on round-one approval, balance on final delivery. The client portal shows what is paid and what is outstanding.
Q: How do I track sketch rounds without spreadsheets?
Each round is logged against the project with the date, the file, and the client's response. When the brief slides into a fourth or fifth round, you have the receipts to issue a change-order invoice.
Q: How does COLO compare with using a generic invoicing tool plus a PDF contract?
For most illustrators, the all-in-one keeps the licence terms, the milestones, and the payments tied to the same record. See our post on client management systems for freelancers for the trade-off.
Q: Can the client portal show the brand a clean view of their commission without showing them my workflow notes?
Yes — the portal shows what you share with the client; your internal notes, drafts, and sketch experiments stay on your side.
Q: Can I run an agent or representative on my workspace without giving them access to every client?
Yes. Invite the agent as a workspace user with access only to the projects they manage; they never see the commissions they are not staffed on.
Q: How do I bill in the client's currency for international brands?
Each client record holds the invoicing currency; invoices issue, send, and accept payment in that currency. The finance dashboard converts to your reporting currency on the day the payment cleared.
Q: Can I run a long book-cover or graphic-novel commission with monthly milestones?
Yes. Schedule milestone invoices on the project — deposit, mid-book milestone, balance on delivery — so you are paid as you work, not all at the end.
Q: How do I track sketch versions when the client wants to compare round one and round three?
Each round attaches as a version against the sketch milestone; the audit trail shows what was sent on which date and what the client said about it. When round three diverges from round one, the comparison is one scroll.
Q: Can I issue a usage-extension invoice years after the original commission?
Yes. Open the client record, create a new invoice line for the licence extension on the agreed extension fee, and the brand pays from the portal. The original contract terms govern the fee.
Pricing
Solo plan is free forever for one illustrator. See our pricing for Pro and Grow plans if you grow into a small studio. For the wider trade-off, read all-in-one vs multiple tools.