To help successfully run your freelance business and consistently deliver a great service, it is essential to have robust systems and processes in place. Even if you are a one-person business, systems, processes and automated workflows, where applicable, will ensure your business runs more smoothly and efficiently.
Here are 3 key systems and processes to consider implementing in your business.
1. Project and task management
Depending on your business, the work you carry out will likely be comprised of a series of tasks that go toward the completed product or service. At first, you might not know what these tasks fully look like or how long they’ll take, but as you gain experience, you’ll want to document them so that you can repeat the process and, where possible, discover efficiencies and opportunities for improvement.
To properly manage these tasks and successfully complete client projects, you’ll need to adopt some form of project and task management system. It could be a templated process and basic time management protocol that you follow, the use of an online (or series of online) tools, or something more sophisticated that allows you to collaborate with your clients in real-time, update them, and meet client deadlines.
Whatever system you adopt or create, make sure it’s relevant to you and your business. For example, you probably won’t need an expensive all-singing, all-dancing system if you are a one-person service business and not looking to scale.
With Invoice Ninja, a leading free invoicing software, you can make good use of the time tracking feature to manage tasks and projects so you know exactly how much time you’ve spent on a project and can invoice accordingly. Task time-tracking allows you to accurately record every second spent on each individual task and quickly transfer timed data to the relevant invoice.
When you’re done with a task or series of tasks within a project, simply click and send your work time to an invoice with 1-click! We also have a Google Chrome task extension so you can manage all your tasks within Chrome.
Try Invoice Ninja for free here.
2. Payments and auto-billing
Keeping track of payments coming in (and going out) of your freelance business will help maintain a positive cash flow. Sending invoices (and invoice payment reminders) out on time will mitigate the risk of late payment and help you get paid accurately and promptly.
This is an area where invoicing software can help streamline the creation, sending, and payment of invoices, saving you time and effort.
With Invoice Ninja, you can save time by automatically billing long-term clients with recurring invoices. If you have clients who need to be billed repeatedly on a fixed schedule (e.g., weekly or monthly), Invoice Ninja offers auto-billing via the world’s most popular payment gateways.
You can also set up a payment schedule on an individual invoice, allowing your clients to pay you over time. You can split the payment into equal payments on a predefined schedule or a custom schedule, where you can define each date and corresponding amount. Perfect for projects with milestone invoicing.
You can further improve cash flow by automating the creation of your customer invoices. This is because you can connect Invoice Ninja to thousands of apps via our platform integrators, such as Zapier, Make, and more.
See more of our small business and freelancer-friendly features here.
You should also aim to pay vendor bills on time to avoid late payment charges, keep a close eye on cash flow, and help maintain good relationships with them. You can set up a calendar alert to remind you when bills are due to be paid.
Good financial management and planning will pay off in the short and long term.
3. Client onboarding and offboarding
When you land a new client, you’ll want everything to go as smoothly as possible; that’s where a good client onboarding process comes in and does a lot of the hard work for you.
It could involve a simple automated welcome email to introduce yourself and provide some basic housekeeping guidance (i.e. what channel you communicate on, project review and completion dates, turnaround times, reminder of payment terms and conditions and anything relevant to the project) or it might be something more elaborate such as sharing project management tools, setting up passwords and access to online tools, social media, etc. Naturally, you’d already have your written agreement and payment terms and conditions agreed in writing before you commence any work.
At the end of a project, you want your clients to have a positive experience, as the last contact they have with you will likely be the one they remember. Therefore, in addition to getting your final invoice paid and requesting a testimonial and client referral, you may also want to thank the client for hiring you and wrap up the project professionally, ensuring there are no loose ends, all questions are answered, and you both part ways knowing it was a job well done.
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There are many other systems and processes you can implement in your freelance business, as well as automated workflows that will help your business run smoothly, but the three listed above are ones that will likely not differ too much from client to client and form part of the freelancer-client life cycle.
