For many freelancers, records are the last things we think about. There’s a design to finish for a client or an accounting department to call about an invoice — there’s always something more important than handling records. But the fact remains that those records are important at some point. Whether you need to go back to an old version of a project for your client or you need to pull your copy of an invoice, having an organized system is crucial.

The biggest problem we face in getting our records into order (and keeping them that way) is that most of us work on our own. It’s hard to find time for tasks like filing when it’s just you. These tips will give you a few ways to streamline your record keeping.

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I haven’t thought about my 2008 tax return since April 15th. I probably would have continued to ignore it, except for the fact that last week I received a revised 1099 from one of my clients. It turns out that the form that they send me for my tax records was way off from what they had actually paid me, a fact that they hadn’t caught until just now. To make matters even more complicated, I haven’t actually worked with this client since May, 2008. I had to go dig out records from more than a year ago to figure out just how much trouble I was in. Continue Reading

Last year, I was in the middle of a project with a graphic designer. She came to a meeting with the client and I completely distraught – she looked as if someone had died. She cried as she explained that her computer had died over the weekend, taking with it her work on this project and six years worth of other projects. She had a computer repair service working on retrieving all her data: they had charged her almost $2,000 and couldn’t guarantee that they would be able to restore anything.

$2,000 is pretty steep for retrieving data, admittedly, but my colleague was effectively at the mercy of any one who could even offer to get her data back for her in time for her project deadlines.

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