I remember deciding last year that I’d set half a day aside every week for business admin. It was really important, I decided, to safeguard that time and I’d be able run a business properly this way with all the right things in place. And honestly, I think I’ve managed that a handful of times over the last year. Instead, admin is snatched scraps of time between projects. So other than investing in a virtual PA (the absolute dream), what has worked to help keep my admin head above water?

Separate Your Money

Every time you have an invoice paid, squirrel at least 25% of that away in a separate account for tax, national insurance and pension. And if you’re serious about a pension, you’re looking at more like 40% of each invoice. It’s the only way to safeguard that for your tax bill and not risk mixing it up with what can go on day-to-day bills or the odd treat. Even better, have your work invoices paid into a separate account to your day-to-day spending, that way it’s a hell of a lot easier to track income and expenditure when it’s the only things listed in that bank statement.

Keep Receipts

It seems kind of quaint now to get a receipt but while you’re there grab yourself a polly pocket, label it up with the year and make sure you collect them. You’ll thank yourself at the end of the year.

Monthly Cashflow

It’s not the greatest of spreadsheets, but at least once a month I log anticipated income and paid invoices, as well as expenses. Reconciling your bank statement monthly is a hell of a lot easier than the potential mess but the end of the financial year. It also helps me to keep an eye on where I’ve got lighter periods of work coming up.

File Your Projects

And not just the successful ones – I run three main project folders. One for current live projects, one for work I’m waiting to hear about and one for unsuccessful bids. They all serve a purpose and together help me track not just what I’m working on but what’s in the pipeline, as well as reflecting on why I wasn’t successful at ours.

Build Your Templates

As I submit more bids, work with other freelancers and generally develop my business, I’ve also grown and developed my documents. There’s nothing like having a little bank of templates, pulling together the best bits. It’s a huge time efficiency to gained when starting new work.

Track Your Hours

Now this one I’ve only started doing properly in the last month, for all my work. Before I attempted a few versions of an Excel spreadsheet but they were never quite right. I always ended up tweaking formula, overwriting cells and generally spending more time than I wanted faffing with them. I’m now trialling Clockify as one of the free platforms and I’m actually really enjoying it. Not only can I track key contracts I need the hours for, but it’s been really interesting to see how I’ve used all my other time across the week (but not all of it is good!).

Web Sweep

At least once a month I do a sweep of my website and LinkedIn to make any updates – upload a new testimonial, update your offering and just generally check everything’s okay.

Reminders

When it gets busy, I just can’t trust myself to remember some of the admin bits like the date to invoice so my calendar is packed full of reminders which I set up when I start any new project.

Buffer Your Socials

I still aspire to be more regular and consistent with my LinkedIn content but what is a gamechanger is carving out chunks of time to create content and using a free platform, like Buffer, to schedule upfront.

Lists

A classic but why change something that works so well? Every single week I start a new list, categorised by client with an extra category for business admin. For anything critical I break out a highlighter. There’s something about writing the lists by hand really like, it emphasises the importance of the tasks but mostly the satisfaction of clicking a tick box on a screen just isn’t the same.

Summary

It may not be perfect but it’s holding me together for now!

Photo by Sear Greyson on Unsplash