Getting an invoice for your LinkedIn advertising campaigns is an important part of tracking your costs and managing your marketing budget. LinkedIn makes it easy to download invoices directly from the platform so you can have a detailed record of your spending.
Overview of LinkedIn Invoices
LinkedIn invoices provide a summary of your advertising costs and activity for a specific billing period. This usually covers the prior calendar month. For example, if you ran campaigns in October, your October invoice would be available in early November.
The LinkedIn invoice includes the following key details:
- Billing period – The calendar month the invoice covers.
- Account name – The name on your LinkedIn advertising account.
- Account number – Your unique LinkedIn account number.
- Contact – LinkedIn’s billing contact information.
- Payment details – Overview of payment amount, credits, and balance.
- Campaign details – Breakdown of costs for each campaign and ad unit.
- Impressions, clicks, and CPC – Performance data including impressions, clicks, and average CPC for each campaign.
Having all this data in one place makes it easy to understand where your advertising money went and evaluate the performance of your campaigns. Many businesses also require a formal invoice for their bookkeeping records.
When LinkedIn Invoices Are Generated
LinkedIn invoices are generated at the beginning of each month for the previous month’s advertising activity. For example:
- January invoice = December activity
- February invoice = January activity
- March invoice = February activity
The invoices are typically ready within the first 5 days of the month. You’ll receive an email notification when your new invoice is available.
How to Download Your LinkedIn Invoice
Downloading your LinkedIn invoices is simple. Just follow these steps:
- Log into your LinkedIn Campaign Manager account.
- Click on the account menu in the top right corner.
- Select “Billing & Payments”.
- Under “Invoices & Payments”, click “View Invoices”.
- Find the invoice you want to download and click “Download Invoice”.
- The invoice will download as a PDF file to your computer.
You can download invoices going back several months or years. This provides a complete history of your spending and campaign activity.
Understanding Your LinkedIn Invoice
Once you’ve downloaded your LinkedIn invoice, reviewing the details is key to understanding your costs and tracking campaign performance. Some of the key things to look for include:
- Total amount due – This shows your grand total due for the billing period after any credits are applied.
- Campaign details – The breakdown by campaign shows your cost and impressions for each initiative.
- Billing details – This section lists your payment setup, credits, and account balance.
- Impressions and CPC – These metrics allow you to evaluate campaign performance.
It’s also helpful to compare month-over-month invoices to identify trends in your spending and growth opportunities. The detailed campaign data enables you to see which initiatives performed best.
Managing LinkedIn Invoices
Once you’ve downloaded your LinkedIn invoices, here are some best practices for managing them:
- Download and save a PDF copy each month – Don’t rely on accessing past invoices within LinkedIn Campaign Manager. Download the PDFs to your own records.
- Review costs and metrics – Analyze the campaign details and performance metrics each month to optimize your initiatives.
- Submit for payment approval – If required, submit the invoice to your finance department for approval and processing.
- Use for budget planning – Reference past invoices to help plan and allocate your future marketing budget.
- File invoices for accounting – Proper bookkeeping requires retaining digital or printed copies of invoices.
Troubleshooting LinkedIn Invoices
In most cases, downloading your LinkedIn invoices is a quick and painless process. However, here are some tips for troubleshooting issues if they arise:
- Double check billing settings – In your account under “Billing Settings”, confirm invoices are enabled and the billing period is correct.
- Look for notification emails – If an invoice doesn’t appear, check if you received an email that it is ready to download.
- Check different date ranges – Try expanding the date selector when viewing past invoices to see if it appears.
- Contact LinkedIn support – If an invoice is still missing, reach out to LinkedIn’s customer support for help.
Using LinkedIn Invoices for Reporting
LinkedIn invoices provide valuable data for reporting on your advertising results. Here are some ways to use them:
- Track costs over time – Compare monthly costs to identify trends and optimize future budgets.
- Evaluate campaign metrics – Use impressions, clicks, and CPC to calculate ROI and cost per conversion.
- Report on cost per lead or sale – Match invoices with your CRM data to connect spending with leads and deals.
- Share data with stakeholders – Provide invoices to demonstrate how advertising dollars are being spent.
Regularly analyzing your invoice data and sharing it across your marketing and sales organization enables better decision making and accountability.
Automating Your LinkedIn Invoice Workflow
Manually downloading and managing LinkedIn invoices each month can be time consuming. Automating parts of the workflow can save time for reporting and analysis. Here are some automation tips:
- Use invoice parser software – Optical character recognition (OCR) can extract data from PDF invoices.
- Download programmatically – Scripts can login and download invoices automatically.
- Sync with accounting software – Automatically transfer invoice data to systems like QuickBooks or Xero.
- Setup alerts – Get notified immediately when a new invoice is ready via email or Slack.
Automation enables you to spend less time collecting data and more time turning that data into insights to improve your LinkedIn advertising performance.
Conclusion
LinkedIn invoices provide a detailed look at your advertising costs and campaign metrics. Downloading them directly from LinkedIn Campaign Manager each month and analyzing the data allows you to optimize your initiatives, report on performance, and effectively manage your marketing budget. With a few simple steps, you can access and manage your LinkedIn invoices efficiently.