Freelancing - Tools of the Trade

The world of freelancing is an exciting and sometimes scary environment. On the one hand, you are in complete control of the business, you dictate what you want to spend money on and how much to charge for projects. The profit margin is often a lot better especially if you can get a fairly steady influx of work. However, freelancing is not without some inherent problems, for example, the administration can be a nightmare when you have previously relied solely on an HR department or accountant.

Being a freelancer often means that you work from home; this is great for saving money on rented office space. However, face to face client meetings will be a problem. Also working solo at home without interaction with others who share your field of expertise can sometimes mean that your ability to progress in terms of knowledge might be stifled. The main advantage of working in an agency or simply in an office is that you learn through other's experience. As good as Google is for information, nothing beats face to face chats and help when you are stuck.

To help all you freelancers we have come up with a list of tools that should help you make the experience as efficient and seamless as possible. We have grouped the tools into 3 areas of interest:

• Organisation
• Preparation
• Presentation
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TOOLS FOR ORGANISATION

The organisation is key to all business regardless of whether you work freelance or for a blue chip company. However, the difference for a freelancer is that organisation is integral to ensuring you can live off your skills. There are a couple of main areas to focus on when considering exactly what needs to be 'organised'.

Contracts

The pitch with the potential client went really well and you are in negotiation processes with the client in terms of the scope of work and the costs. Your first port of call should be the drawing up of the contract, your terms of service or rather what exactly you are going to do. This allows you to confirm through writing your obligations to the project, the timescales and most importantly what you are being paid to provide. You should draft your own terms of business and contracts using a professional. The benefit of a watertight contract is quite simple, once the work is agreed the client cannot change the scope of the work. This hugely improves the efficiency of your work allowing you to concentrate on what needs to be done.

Billing invoices and taxes

These are pretty integral to your freelancing business, especially if you want to get paid. First of all, decide on the frequency of payment. If you are working on a project that will last several months then you might be best off with monthly payments. However, if the project is likely to take considerably less time then maybe a one-off invoice will suffice. Either way, there are a lot of billing tools that allow you to control the payment process. It really depends on what level of involvement and obviously the cost, you want to spend on the accounting side. Freelance UK has a number of specialist freelance accountant’s partners, who can handle VAT, Corporation Tax & Annual returns. You can handle all your own taxes however for new freelancers, who may be unsure about tax procedures, having a safety blanket like an accountant is a pretty safe bet.

Budgets

This is separate from billings and invoices as it is a little bit of a departure from how your freelance business functions. Simply put, unless you have guaranteed work for the next 12 months then it is likely that your workload will be subject to some uncertainties. By managing a budget you can ensure that you can pay expenses and make the most of the money that is coming in. There are plenty of free tools that help you manage budgets, check outMint's free online budget calculatoror if you need a little bit of persuasion as to why spending money on 4 boxes of caviar might be a bad idea visitMoney Saving Expert's demotivatorapp.

PREPARATION

Project Management

It is incredibly important to ensure your project is manageable. A good schedule allows you to set out a timeline of events with key milestones as well as, integrating admin and most importantly client time. Time management is integral to project management and understanding your limits is important when setting time. Knowing when you work best during the day will ultimately help you manage your project timelines much more effectively. Similarly, setting a time during the day for clients is useful especially if part of your service is consultancy. Again there are plenty of tools out there for project tracking and creation.Creative Pro Officeintegrates calendar settings and timesheets allowing you to create activity reports for clients. It is also quite versatile allowing you to also create and manage invoicing and billing templates and giving clients access to read-only reports. Other pure project management solutions include the ever popularBasecampa really slick timesheet interface that also acts as a file hosting service, andactiveCollab, a collaboration suite built-in issue tracking functionality.

PLACES TO WORK

Many freelancers may be inclined to work at home or other establishments with tables and coffee. Thanks to mobile broadband, powerful laptops and the increasingly popular smartphone your office really can be anywhere. The flexibility of being a freelancer is partly the reason why it is so exciting. If you feel like you would like more of a central base of operations to meet likeminded individuals then consider 'co-working' arrangements. Co-working is a really interesting concept where freelancers and small businesses of different elks interact with one another is a shared office environment. The benefit of co-working environments is the work network. Co-working environment attracts all sorts of freelancers from PR types to web designers which is perfect if you have a burning question on something that isn't quite your field of expertise.

PRESENTATION

Finally, you have the finished project and you are ready to present back to the client. Naturally, you want to impress the client but somehow showing your product within the confines of your home is unlikely to impress. Choosing the right environment is important to ensure that your product, whether it is a new website design or a consultancy report, is presented in exactly the way you want. The culmination of your work deserves the right attention. The issue with presenting your work in a public environment like a cafe, bar or pub is that you have to contend with a multitude of environmental factors - noise, lighting and seating arrangements. One solution is to use the client's premises if they have meeting facilities, however, this can also have problems. The pressure of setting up and dealing with any technical issues is likely to eat away at your overall presentation time, giving you fewer opportunities to sing the virtues of your project.

A solution to client office space is to book externalmeeting rooms. External meeting rooms are useful because they bring the client out of their own environment and give you the opportunity to present your project on your own terms. You can select the seating arrangements, the beverages/refreshments and any other technology facilities. This can be incredibly powerful especially in regards to technology. Often external meeting rooms have access to large-scale projectors, displays and other audio-visual equipment that might ordinarily be out of reach for yourself or client. Many hoteliers and conference venues offer affordable rates and some like De Vere offer 'instantinstance meeting rooms' facilities for on the fly meeting arrangements. This can be useful for last minute client meetings that require both parties to meet in a central location. And once the meeting is over you can take the client to the pub if you like!

Freelancing can be a difficult game, however, it can also be incredibly rewarding. You have complete control over the running of your business and you work to your own rules. Just make sure you work in the easiest most efficient manner by using tools to facilitate all your processes.

More on working from home as a freelancer.