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This morning, I was told that I needed to directly fax an invoice to the client's accounting department. The DVDs of the completed project have been delivered to the project manager a day before, but it was necessary to send the billing information to another person of the same company.

As I prepared the invoice, I gathered a few documents that I typically fax as attachments: a copy of the contract, a signed delivery receipt of the DVDs, and as an added documentary support, I decided to send them a metadata sheet of the project itself.

Although probably not necessary, I thought that including a project's metadata sheet would be a good way of providing as complete an information as possible so that client's accounting department will also "see" the photos that have been shot and submitted.

The project's metadata sheet provides a complete information of everything that has been actually shot, and even everything that has gone through post-production. I don't know why accounting will have need for such detailed information, but at least, including it will give them an idea of what they are being billed for.

Typically, I don't include a metadata list of the shots specially if I'm dealing with only one or two people. But when so many people and so many departments are involved in a project, and to do my part in providing detailed and accurate information about my involvement and participation in the project as a photographer, I would add a metadata sheet to the documents that I submit. This way, there will be additional documentary evidence of the actual work that has been done and delivered. And, in the case of the company's accounting department, it might prove to be helpful in making sure that the processing of the invoice will be done with no delay that's usually caused by incomplete or missing documentary evidence.

How do I export a project metadata and prepare a copy?

• In Aperture, select all the images in a project.
• Choose File > Export > Metadata.
• When the dialog box appears, type a filename in the Save As field, and choose the location to Export this file. (What has been created is a tab-delimited text file that uses Unicode encoding to support any foreign characters or symbols in the metadata.)
• Open the file with any of your favorite text editor or word processor to see the information. You can also open it in a spreadsheet program such as Microsoft Excel. In my case, I used Apple's Numbers from iWorks '08. Using a spreadsheet program automatically converts the tab-delimited texts into the spreadsheet's column. It makes everything look neat and very organized.

A little formatting here and there, and the file with your project's metadata is now ready for use.

There are other ways I use the project's metadata. From experience, it's usually an easy way for me to check the authenticity or to quickly review information on any of the images I've shot. And, other than providing documentation for the company's accounting department, exporting metadata for use in other computers or to share with a colleague can also be a great way to keep information about the images consistent and well organized.