How Do You Organise Yourself As A Freelance Designer?
This is more of a search for ideas and methods than an informative article. No matter how often I tidy and plan ahead, my desk after about 2 weeks always seems to revert back to the same crazy chaotic mess that it does. Trying to give everything that I have to do/ handle organised is something that I attacked recently and have come up with a somewhat 3 level solution.
1) Client Work
I like many, hate a messy desktop and computer, with files everywhere with uninformative names etc. So I bought a 500GB External Hard Drive and moved all Client related files onto the hard drive and organised them into folders. So basically, each Client had a seperate parent folder, each client folder had 5 child folders:
- Contact and Correspondence
I keep copies of all e-mail correspondence, as well as a .txt file with all their contact details
- Invoices, Contracts and Accounting
- Raw Files
PSD’s, AI files etc
- Client Supplied Content
- Saved Final Versions
2) Accounting and Finance
The big stuff, money!. Keeping track of it, payments, deposits, tax and invoices can be a hasssle. I went seeking some sort of software to do this (there is 0 for Mac, as usual) and came up with nothing. Then I got told about Freshbooks.
They have a simple 3 field sign-up form. You can invoice, and then e-mail the invoices as PDF’s complete with your logo and strapline or send them in the post to your client’s. It auto-responds to bank payments for you, sends late payment reminders etc, all completely automatically. A great web app and I highly recommend it.
3) Where and How I Work
This is basically an evolution from a previous post I made: A Good Work Environment
The space I use is often in a state of ‘organised chaos’ full of everything from text-books from university, plates, rubbish, video games, wires and all sorts of extra irrelevant clutter. I took the time to one day, clean out everything and I felt so much more ‘interested’ and ‘inspired’ in getting down to do all the client work I had waiting.
Ideas? How do you stay organised and efficient with your workloads?
Related Posts:
How Do You Organise Yourself As A Freelance Designer?
This is more of a search for ideas and methods than an informative article. No matter how often I tidy and plan ahead, my desk after about 2 weeks always seems to revert back to the same crazy chaotic mess that it does. Trying to give everything that I have to do/ handle organised is something that I attacked recently and have come up with a somewhat 3 level solution.
1) Client Work
I like many, hate a messy desktop and computer, with files everywhere with uninformative names etc. So I bought a 500GB External Hard Drive and moved all Client related files onto the hard drive and organised them into folders. So basically, each Client had a seperate parent folder, each client folder had 5 child folders:
- Contact and Correspondence
I keep copies of all e-mail correspondence, as well as a .txt file with all their contact details
- Invoices, Contracts and Accounting
- Raw Files
PSD’s, AI files etc
- Client Supplied Content
- Saved Final Versions
2) Accounting and Finance
The big stuff, money!. Keeping track of it, payments, deposits, tax and invoices can be a hasssle. I went seeking some sort of software to do this (there is 0 for Mac, as usual) and came up with nothing. Then I got told about Freshbooks.
They have a simple 3 field sign-up form. You can invoice, and then e-mail the invoices as PDF’s complete with your logo and strapline or send them in the post to your client’s. It auto-responds to bank payments for you, sends late payment reminders etc, all completely automatically. A great web app and I highly recommend it.
3) Where and How I Work
This is basically an evolution from a previous post I made: A Good Work Environment
Ideas? How do you stay organised and efficient with your workloads?
Related Posts: