You may or may not know that alongside my photography business I also work as a business advisor. I’m contracted by Enterprise Exchange, a wonderful social enterprise, to assist people who are long-term unemployed, ex-offenders, or facing additional barriers to employment. It’s a client group I really enjoy working with, and it’s incredibly satisfying to see someone launch themselves into a new freelance career.
Working in this role has reminded me of what it felt like to be setting up in self-employment. After ten years of doing everything for myself, I forgot how scary it can seem at the beginning. Keeping appropriate records, understanding tax returns, thinking about how to market your services – these things are all second nature to me now, but they once felt overwhelming.
I love being able to share my experiences and help others, so I’ve put together this handy download. In this Zip file you will find:
- The New Freelancer’s Checklist
- A template income and expenditure spreadsheet
- An invoice template
- A worksheet to help you identify who your potential customers are
- A marketing activity log
- A guerrilla marketing strategy template
You’ll need MS Office to work on the documents, but where it is appropriate I have included PDF copies that can be printed as well.
By following the New Freelancer’s Checklist you’ll be able to set your business up legally in no time. I’ve also included links to some other resources, such as the HMRC YouTube channel, which contains some handy explainer videos.
Here’s how to use each document:
The New Freelancer’s Checklist
This is the backbone of your set-up process. Print it and tick the boxes as you work your way through it!
Income and Expenditure Spreadsheet
As soon as you start your business, you need to keep records of income and expenditure. If you don’t want to commit to the ongoing fees associated with accounting software like QuickBooks, Xero, or FreeAgent, you can use this workbook. The workbook contains four sheets and the income and expenditure sheets are fairly self-explanatory. I recommend keeping receipts in the cloud – for example in a Dropbox folder – and changing the file names of each receipt to correlate to the entry number on the sheet.
In the Mileage sheet, you can detail your business-related journeys. You can claim 45p per mile for using your own car, or 20p per mile for using a bicycle. I’ve included one formula for each, which can copy down the rows as you use it.
The final sheet is the invoice log. Whenever you send an invoice, record the details here. Use it to see at-a-glance which invoices are due soon, and which are overdue. You could even add your own notes on the end if/when you send a reminder.
An Invoice Template
I’m always astounded when I ask fellow freelancers for an invoice and they say they don’t know how to send one. Well, from now on I’ll be sending this to them. Simply fill in the blanks and you have your own personal invoice ready to go whenever you need it!
Customer Demographic Worksheet
One of the most common problems that new freelancers have is working out which marketing methods to use. Before you can do that, you need to identify who your customers are and how they behave. This handy table explains itself and contains an example. Complete as many customer profiles as you like and then decide how best to reach them. It’s not conclusive, but it’s a good starting point.
Marketing Activity Log
I’ve included my actual figures from the start of 2020 as examples here. Once you’ve decided how to reach your customers, you need to be able to monitor your success or otherwise. If it can’t be measured, it’s not marketing. Some things are fairly simple, like pulling website hits from your Google Analytics dashboard or looking at Mailchimp click-through rates, but others might need a little more creativity. For example, if you flyer a local area, did you receive more visitors to your website vs the previous week?
Seven Paragraph Guerrilla Marketing Strategy
Adapted from the book “Guerrilla Marketing” by Jay Conrad Levison, I find this simple structure a great way to put together a skeleton marketing strategy and help set marketing intentions in your own mind.
Of course with all of these, I could go into infinite detail, but the point of the toolkit is to get you off the ground with a minimum of fuss and expense. I’d also recommend checking out my blog about 7 Free Productivity Apps for Freelancers.
I’d love to know if you use the toolkit and find it helpful, so please do get in touch and let me know!
