Ask FreelanceSwitch: Getting New Clients and Bookkeeping Software
In this issue of Ask FreelanceSwitch, we look at getting new clients and bookkeeping software. Ask FreelanceSwitch is a regular column here that allows us to help beginners get a grip on freelancing. If you have a question about freelancing that you want answered, send an email to askfreelanceswitch@gmail.com.
Question 1
I currently don’t have any kind of financial safety net, and freelancing is currently the only way I can earn a decent income while staying flexible with my time, schedule and commitments.
The one thing that I feel concerned about setting myself up in business as a freelance front end developer is not knowing how to ensure a supply of good quality, reliable, paying clients right from the start.
There’s inherently a little more risk in freelancing than in working for an employer: you’re guaranteed to get a regular stream of work from an employer, but there’s no way to absolutely guarantee that you’re always going to have clients coming to you as a freelancer.
But there are quite a few different ways that you can bring in clients, which can let you build up a full-time income if you’re going to devote some time to it. Unfortunately, it’s rare that someone can go from zero to sixty — or have enough work to cover freelancing full-time the first day he starts out. Anyone who tells you that is going to try to sell you something immediately afterwards, like prime beachfront property in Kansas.
You are going to have to work at getting clients. You’re going to need to identify who your ideal client is, network with people who fit that description, get your name in front of them, build marketing materials just for them and so on. If you devote the time to doing so, you’re going to have regular work coming in.
If that doesn’t appeal to you, you can always head over to the various bid sites and accept a lower price for your work — if you put in a dozen bids a day, you’ll probably land at least one of them. That’s not my preferred approach and I wouldn’t consider the clients you’ll land through such sites to be the highest quality. But it is an option.
Question 2
What kind of software for accounting does FreelanceSwitch or its users recommend? I’d like to keep records of clients, past projects, create invoices quickly, track profits and expenses and then make it easy to do my taxes when that comes around.
Right now I’m using Excel and well – it’s not that great.
Up until the end of the last tax year, I used Quickbooks. I resisted changing over to a web app because I prefer to pay for software once, rather than pay a subscription. But Quickbooks was difficult for me to keep up to date — my bank didn’t play nicely with the automatic import feature that was supposed to pull in all my transactions.
So I recently switched to using a combination of Freshbooks and Outright (disclosure: I also write for Outright’s blog). I’m absolutely loving it: Outright can notify me about all sorts of details about my freelancing business, as well as spit out reports that lets my CPA do my taxes very quickly. Freshbooks has allowed me to pretty much automate my invoicing process. I’m easily spending a tenth of the time I was before on bookkeeping.
I would say that Outright may not be ideal for freelancers outside of the U.S. — its tax tools don’t seem particularly international. If that’s crucial for you, you may want to research what web apps have your country’s tax requirements baked in.
That’s just what I use, though. Please share what you’re using for bookkeeping in the comments — any software that’s particularly rocking your world?
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I’m just looking for a simple double-entry book-keeping system – was thinking of trying Outright (I already use Freshbooks for invoicing).
I don’t care about the tax bit – I’m in South Africa and I have a registered “closed corporation” which, by our tax laws, is obliged to have a CPA look at the books once a year. However, I find them quite expensive, and if I could do most of the book-keeping in advance and simply present them with ledgers, rather than having their interns manually capture the records from my bank statement, I could save a lot of money…
Any suggestions for double-entry book-keeping?
Also, I would prefer something offline (I feel the same about subscriptions as you, Thursday), or something really cheap – with our exchange rate, $30 a month (LessAccounting, for example) is really quite pricey for me and I might as well stick with my CPA…
Amanda Think you can already cut your Freshbooks cost in half by using snapbill http://snapbill.com from R50 a month, been using them for the past 8months. [I'm also South African Based]
They also have a Debit order facility . Check them out.
Thanks, Tshepo – I will give them a try…
I would like to devote time on getting clients,but just wonder that are there some specific ways to do so?
And did anyone meet the problem about allocating time in each piece of things at the start?
I mean, how much time should I spend on seeking target clients directly?If I spend all time on it, I may get no client a week even a month at the start.
And how much time should I spend on bidding site?This way I may get client on much lower price.
What do you think?
I was user of outright earlier but then I switched to Wave Accounting, a google app which is awesome. I would recommend that to you as well.
Thanks for sharing the accounting software. I had no idea that these things existed. Up until now I’ve been doing everything in excel and sending it over to my contractor accountants who some how make me pay less tax.
Are there any bits of software you could recommend to help with managing expenses and tax relief as well?
Nobody who is on social media should ever have to worry about finding clients.
First of all, you need to be a really active Twitter user. And you should be on Facebook.
If you tweet a lot you will get lots of followers. It’s what you’re supposed to do – be active on social media. Your friends from social media will always be a stepping stone to paying clients.
Only someone who isn’t qualified to be a freelancer will have problems with tweeting a lot. If you don’t have enough ideas to tweet 10 or 20 times a day, you’re clearly not qualified or cut out to be a freelancer.
Hanging out in coffee shops and running into other freelancers is another sure fire way to build up your list of clients.
We offer a nice and cheap (5$/month for freelancers) invoicing (proposal, project management, client collaboration, time tracking…) software, just take a look!
You can try it for free (or even use it for free if you are doing 2 invoices per month).
http://www.bunkerapp.com/
Caroline Mayrand
I use Harvest(getharvest.com) for project management, estimates and billing. I really like using their timesheets. To manage expenses and income and tax forms I use Outright. It is very friendly and connects to Harvest, PayPal and my bank account really easily.