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The Freelancer’s Guide to Creating and Tracking Invoices
As a freelancer, you rely on invoices to get paid for your efforts. Creating useful invoices can mean the difference between getting paid on time and having to wait months before receiving payment.
Sending invoices is a vital part of being a freelancer. Creating a smooth invoicing process will help your cash flow remain steady and get you paid without too much hassle. Getting paid quickly happens when you have and utilize efficient procedures. If your clients don’t know what to do once they receive your invoice, it’s going to take extra time to get paid.
Today’s post will help you as a freelancer understand the best ways to create and track your invoices. When you have better project-tracking practices, you’re in a better place to get paid for all of your efforts.
Create Different Invoices For Various Types of Projects
There are two significant ways freelancers can charge for their services: hourly and per project. Each method has different types of invoicing and different ways to track work.
Billing hourly is simple to track. All you need to do is find a way to track the time spent on each project and charge for each hour you complete. Some clients have a maximum amount of time you can spend on their tasks each week. If this is the case, you need to have measures in place to stop you from working too much. If clients have listed a hard limit, they won’t pay you for any work done over that.
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How to Manage Your Team’s Projects and Times with Timing and Zapier
Please note: while you can still use the guide below for managing your team with Zapier, we now offer Timing for Teams, which is much more convenient.
Two weeks ago, we explained how you can use Timing with Zapier to streamline your billing process. Today, we will build on these foundations to help you manage your team’s projects and times through Zapier. If you are unfamiliar with the process of connecting Timing to Zapier, have a look at that article for a detailed example.
In particular, you can have Zapier automatically create projects for each of your team members, then send their tracked time to a shared Google Sheet for reporting. That way, you can quickly consolidate your time tracking and billing in one place.
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How to Streamline Your Billing Process with Zapier and Timing
One of the most common questions we hear at Timing is: How can I bill my clients for the time I track with Timing?
Thanks to the Timing Web App and its Zapier integration, we now have a much better answer to this question. Our Zapier integration lets you send your times to hundreds of other billing and time tracking services, such as FreshBooks, Quickbooks, Toggl, and many more!
Zapier is a web service that lets you connect thousands of apps, sending data from one service to another. For example, you can use the Timing web app together with Zapier to automatically export tasks, create projects, and even post messages to Slack when you start a task. Zapier automatically processes your data in the background, so you can keep focusing on your work at all times. Simply set your “Zap” once and forget about it — no extra work on your end.
Read on for a step-by-step guide on using Zapier to send your Timing tasks to FreshBooks for invoicing. This process works just as well for a whole lot of other invoicing apps, of course! Plus, we’ll inspire you with several more ideas for integrating your Timing data with other apps.
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A Breakdown to Setting Your Rates as a Freelancer
One of the most significant benefits of working for yourself is setting your own rates. One of the biggest drawbacks of working for yourself is also… setting your own rates. Setting freelance rates is both an advantage (hello, higher income!) and a burden (what the heck do I charge?!).
Charge too much for an hourly rate or a project, and you risk losing a client or a job. Charge too little, and you risk losing time and money on a project that doesn’t pay you what you’re worth.
We’re not going to sugarcoat it: Setting freelance rates is a challenge, and it doesn’t necessarily become easier as you advance in your career, gain experience, or increase your income. Still, there are a number of strategies and principles to keep in mind when setting your rates, so that you can strike a balance and get the most out of every client or project.
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The Surprising Ways in Which Insurance Can Help Freelancers
Ashley Baxter is building With Jack, a platform that helps keep freelancers in business. Ashley enjoys sharing her experience of bootstrapping a business as a solo founder in one of the least start-up friendly industries in the world. In this guest article, she outlines why having business insurance is crucial for many freelancers.
Insurance should be a vital part of every freelancer’s toolbox alongside invoicing and working with a contract. Despite this, I’d estimate only a quarter of freelancers are properly insured. This is because insurers do a terrible job of explaining how insurance is useful to you and the type of risks you face on a regular basis.
We’re going to cover some of the common problems freelancers face and the role insurance plays in helping you in these situations.
