A Notion CRM, the automations that fill it, and the contracts that protect the work. Set it up in an afternoon, then let your inbox do the onboarding while you get back to shooting.
One-time purchase · Lifetime updates · Set up in an afternoon
Why this exists
Nobody starts making content because they love invoicing. But the moment brands start replying, you inherit a second job, and it's the one that decides whether you get paid.
A brand emails on Tuesday. You reply Friday. By then they've booked someone who answered in an hour. Speed closes deals, and you can't be fast by hand.
Net 30 becomes net 60 becomes an awkward DM. Without a deposit up front, you're financing the brand's marketing budget for free.
"Just one more revision." "Can we also run this as an ad?" No contract, no usage terms, so the answer is always yes, and always unpaid.
Three brands in DMs, two in email, one in a note app. You forget a follow-up, miss a deadline, and lose the deal you already earned.
The system
Not a course. Not a PDF of advice. Working infrastructure you clone into your own accounts and switch on.
Two linked databases: an Inbound Pipeline for every brand deal and a Content Tracker for every deliverable you owe. Rollups tell you your next real deadline. Filtered views tell you exactly who to chase this morning.
A brand submits your intake form. Before you've read it: the deal is in Notion, a Stripe customer exists, a $250 booking deposit invoice is drafted, and the brand has an email with the contract and a payment link. You import it as a blueprint. You don't rebuild it.
Plain-English agreements that cover the three things creators get burned on: usage rights, revision caps, and payment terms. Five fields per deal, then send.
How it runs
Nine questions capture scope, platform, usage rights, timeline and budget: the exact fields that decide your rate. The deal lands in your pipeline as a Lead.
Stripe creates the customer and drafts a $250 booking deposit invoice. The rest of the 50% deposit is billed when the contract is signed. The pay link gets written straight back onto the Notion card, so it's never buried in your sent folder.
Contract link, payment link, and what happens next, sent from your inbox, in your voice. The line that does the work: "your date isn't held until this clears."
Deposit paid, contract signed, scope agreed in writing. Open the Shoot Day view on your phone: hook script, concept notes, due date. That's the whole job.
What's inside
Thirteen files, one download. Yours forever, updates included.
Add-ons
Optional. It runs inside the morning Make scenario you already have, so it needs no extra scenario slot.
$29 one-time
When you mark a deal Completed, the next morning it sends the brand the final invoice for the balance: the deal value minus the deposits already billed, due in 7 days, with a pay link. When the brand pays, the deal records Balance Paid and the date. It never invoices the same deal twice.
Requires UGC Backend from the September 23, 2026 release or later. Automatic Balance Paid tracking needs the Payment Confirmation scenario running: on Make's free plan, swap it in, or use Make Core at $12/month.
New here? Get UGC Backend and Balance Invoicing together for $89, $19 less than buying both.
Before you buy
No, but this works best the moment you have one. The system is what turns a first inquiry into a paid, contracted job instead of a three-week email thread. Set it up before you need it, so your first real brand meets a professional.
Notion's free plan runs the CRM indefinitely, and the intake form runs on Tally's free plan, which is unlimited submissions. Make's free plan gives you 1,000 operations a month: the intake flow spends eight per inquiry, so that's the number that matters: roughly 115 inquiries a month before you'd need to upgrade, with a little headroom left for the daily deadline-reminder check (a couple of operations a day). Stripe charges per transaction only: 2.9% + 30¢, plus 0.4% for invoicing, capped at $2. The limit worth knowing is that Make's free plan runs two scenarios at once. Intake and deadline reminders is the pairing we ship active by default; payment confirmation is the easy third to add if you upgrade to Make's $12/month tier, or you can swap it in for reminders and tick the Notion checkbox by hand instead.
Less than it used to be. The CRM is a Notion template you duplicate in one click, and the automations import from a file. You're not building either by hand. What's left is connecting your own Notion, Stripe and Gmail accounts and pasting your details in. No code, no terminal. Budget about two hours, most of it signing into accounts.
No. A template is a pretty database. This is the schema plus the automation logic that fills it, the billing flow that gets you paid, and the contracts that protect the work. The Notion piece is one of three.
All of it. The rate card is a starting reference, not a rule. The multipliers for usage rights matter more than the base numbers. Contracts are plain-text templates you edit freely.
No. These are templates built from standard UGC industry practice, not legal advice, and Swamp City LLC is not your attorney. For high-value deals or unusual usage terms, have a lawyer in your jurisdiction review them.
Set it up this weekend. Never write another "just following up on that invoice" email.
Get the System