When you’re a freelancer, you’re the one who’s responsible for finding clients, doing the work, and handling all of your bookkeeping and administrative tasks. Because there is so much to get done on a daily basis, it’s really easy to become unorganized. Check out these simple tips for organizing your freelance business and keeping it that way.
Save Your Notes Online
It’s really easy to save notes online, and doing so helps you avoid having stacks of notebooks and paper lying around. When it comes to saving notes online, you have several different options. You could use a note-taking app, like Evernote, or you could save all of your notes as Google Docs in your Google Drive. Both are easy to use and access when needed, but using Evernote lets you install a web clipper on your browser so you can save important information you find online with just a few clicks.
Complete Your Work In the Cloud
Google Drive and Microsoft 365 both make it easy to complete all of your work in the cloud. Both have spreadsheet and word processor options, among many others, that you can use within your internet browser. The work you do is saved in the cloud, which means you can access it from any location or device as long as you have an internet connection. And the best part is, it’s easy to share your work with your clients. All you need to do is give them access to the link containing their deliverables. This eliminates a lot of the back and forth emails, which helps you keep your inbox clean and organized.
Put an On boarding Process in Place
Every freelancer has certain tasks they complete when they bring a new client on board. Maybe you send the same email to clients when you forward over their contract and that you follow the exact same process every time you create a proposal for a potential client. It’s the repetitive tasks like these that you need to think about automating. This way, you have an organized process that’s easy to follow, and many of the steps are completed for you, so you save time.
Implement an Off boarding Process
What happens when you complete a job for a client? Many freelancers don’t have an off boarding process in place because once the job is complete, they don’t take the relationship any further. However, when you have an organized off boarding process, it not only saves you time and keeps your business organized, but it also encourages repeat business.
Some steps you might consider adding to your off boarding process include:
- Saying thank you and including a brief overview of what you enjoyed about their project
- Sending a client survey to get feedback on your quality of work, level of service, and processes.
- Asking for a testimonial or a review of your services.
- Outlining your client’s next steps so they know exactly what to do with your deliverables.
- Putting a follow-up sequence in place that ensures you keep in touch with past clients on a monthly or quarterly basis.
Start Using a Project Management Tool
When you’re working on a project with clients, there’s often a lot of back and forth communication, and when you’re using your email to communicate, the email threads can become confusing for both you and your client real quick. Fortunately, you can solve this problem by implementing the use of a project management tool, like Asana or Trello. This way, both you and your client can see an organized list of tasks you need to complete and the due date for these tasks, and you can message each other within the system so all of your notes are easy to find later.
Setting up systems and processes to organize your business and maintain a simple, organized system is imperative to your success. Not only will it help you stay on top of things and impress your clients, but it will also save you a lot of time in the long run.
Also Read: Advantages Of Partnership Over Sole Proprietorship