Nearly each enterprise I’ve began has concerned hiring freelancers. They’re extra inexpensive and versatile, plus it’s simpler to scale up or down as wanted. One or two is simple, however issues can get messy whenever you’re coping with any greater than that.
I’ve since constructed my very own customized freelancer administration system, I began with freelancer administration templates. Right here’s a curated checklist of my favorites.
monday.com: A strong and versatile freelancer administration template
Trusted by over 225,000+ companies, monday.com is likely one of the hottest challenge administration platforms on the market. It’s excellent if you happen to want an organized and versatile technique to handle work to your in-house staff, freelancers, businesses, and even different departments.
monday.com has a free plan for as much as two customers. It’s restricted, however it’s a good place to start out if you wish to attempt it out earlier than paying.
Extra on monday.com: monday.com Assessment | monday.com vs Jira | monday.com vs. Notion.
To begin, you’ll want so as to add your entire sources, together with freelancers and in-house staff members if you happen to’re managing their work right here too. From there, you may invite as many visitor customers as it’s worthwhile to at no further value.
As soon as they’re onboarded, you can begin assigning duties. They may be capable to observe their time, monitor deadlines, add recordsdata, depart feedback, and extra.
The most effective half about this template is the way it brings your entire outsourced duties collectively. You’ll simply be capable to preserve observe of every little thing occurring outdoors the corporate in a single place. Every process can have its personal standing, allotted period of time, due date, proprietor, and assignee.
It’s easy, but efficient. You can even add extra columns if it’s worthwhile to.
monday.com makes it straightforward to regulate entry and enhancing capabilities so that you don’t have to fret about freelancers having the ability to see stuff you don’t need them to.
ClickUp: A Kanban-style freelancer administration template
ClickUp is one other highly effective possibility if you would like an entire challenge administration answer.
Its beneficiant free plan contains collaborative doc sharing, whiteboard options, dash administration, calendar views, and Kanban boards. It’s greater than sufficient to get began and plenty of smaller companies can keep on the free plan for fairly a while.
You’ll be capable to invite as many free customers as you’d like, simply understand that you received’t have granular entry controls except you improve.
Extra on ClickUp: ClickUp Assessment | ClickUp vs Asana | ClickUp vs. Notion.
Kanban boards are easy, acquainted, and extremely visible — they’re nice for managing tasks and duties, particularly these you’re outsourcing to a contractor. They seemingly received’t need to study a brand new system or marvel the way it works.
All you need to do is create a backlog of duties, assign them, set due dates, and invite them to collaborate with you on ClickUp.
They’ll be capable to handle their work, mark duties as full, depart feedback, ask questions, collaborate on paperwork, chat with you, and extra.
It takes only a few minutes to configure every little thing if you happen to’re utilizing this template as is. In any other case, it might take as much as an hour to customise it to match your wants. You possibly can regulate the columns, fields that present on every card, what it appears to be like like whenever you open a card, and nearly each different component.
You possibly can even flip off options you aren’t going to make use of. This ensures no person makes use of them by chance.
Knack: Handle tasks, resumes, and invoices in a single place
Knack is a no-code growth platform that’s nice for corporations who need to create their very own customized apps. You should utilize it to construct net portals, databases, challenge trackers, and even a listing to handle your entire freelancers.
There’s no free plan, however there’s a 14-day free trial if you wish to attempt it earlier than you make investments. Plans begin at $59 monthly.
It’s a bit dear, nevertheless it’s value it if you happen to want the extent of customization it offers.
This template is nice if you happen to want a full system to handle freelancer tasks and duties, invoices, service agreements, and resumes.
It permits you to create an entire listing of each freelancer you’ve ever labored with. This may be helpful if you wish to have an accepted checklist of contractors or a big pool of freelancers you may choose from at any time.
It’s additionally invaluable if you happen to do numerous recruiting or biking by means of.
You’ll be capable to categorize your listing based mostly on their expertise, expertise stage, kind of settlement, or some other customized attribute you’d like. This makes it straightforward to seek out precisely what you want whenever you want it.
Contractors will be capable to ship invoices and even add a portfolio of their work instantly throughout the platform. They’ve full entry to their profiles and may replace them any time.
The draw back of this template is how a lot upfront work is required. You’ll seemingly need to do a little bit of customizing, coaching, and tweaking earlier than you begin utilizing it. Constructing a customized no-code app is at all times more difficult than you assume it’ll be.
Nevertheless it undoubtedly pays off if you happen to want it.
Airtable: A complete freelancer administration database
As a strong relational database builder, Airtable makes it straightforward for non-developers to construct programs, together with a freelancer administration database. On high of that, you may make the most of automations to streamline notifications, process assignments, and extra.
Airtable’s free plan helps as much as 1,000 data per base, which is greater than sufficient to start out.
Extra on Airtable: Airtable Assessment | Airtable vs Asana | Airtable vs Trello.
This template comes with prebuilt tables for contractors, assignments, tasks, and your inside staff. Though it’s technically for managing contractors and their work, you should utilize it to handle in-house tasks and duties in the identical place with out making too many changes.
For every contractor, you may add their space of experience, occupation, portfolio, work hyperlink, contact, secondary specializations, approval standing, and get in touch with data.
Out of the field, it covers every little thing it’s worthwhile to find out about every freelancer. It even has a selected view for monitoring them by means of your recruitment pipeline.
As soon as on board, you may affiliate contractors with their assignments, set due dates, clarify challenge scope, connect your contact, and some other particulars it’s possible you’ll want.
Airtable’s flexibility means you may add new fields, take away fields, or edit present fields to make it be just right for you.
With every task, the supervisor will be capable to add suggestions. Over time, you should utilize this to find out if you wish to preserve working with particular freelancers.
Total, it’s versatile and highly effective if you wish to do numerous customizing.
Asana: An easier freelancer administration template for small to mid-sized groups
To this point, we’ve lined extremely versatile and highly effective challenge administration choices. Asana isn’t as versatile, however is far simpler to make use of. It has a inflexible hierarchy and eliminates the issue of there being dozens of various methods to perform the identical factor.
Out of the field, it’s able to go with out a lot reconfiguring. Its free plan can be among the finest, permitting for limitless duties, tasks, and storage for as much as ten customers.
Extra on Asana: Asana Assessment | Asana vs Basecamp | Asana vs Wrike.
After including this template to your account, you’ll begin with creating a listing of your freelancers. You’ll be capable to save their contact data, charges, areas of experience, and previous tasks. It is a nice useful resource as your contractor pool grows bigger.
From there, you may assign work, share paperwork, set due dates, and collaborate instantly inside Asana.
Customers will be capable to type and group duties nonetheless they’d like, and there are quite a few totally different views they’ll select from — Record, board, timeline, and calendar to call a couple of.
However maybe the very best a part of this template (and Asana usually) is that every challenge has a devoted message board. This implies freelancers can message your staff and anybody on the challenge can reply.
Managers and supervisors will even recognize its in-built automation guidelines and customizable dashboards.
Excel, PDF, and Google Docs freelancer administration templates
When you’re working with a handful of contractors and don’t want a system for collaborative process monitoring, you should utilize a spreadsheet or doc to remain organized.
Even if you happen to determine to make use of a extra complete platform for managing your freelancers, every of the templates beneath can nonetheless be a helpful useful resource.
Template 1: A freelancer invoicing template (PDF or Excel)
It might sound apparent, however requiring freelancers to make use of your invoicing template goes a good distance in guaranteeing every bill contains all the main points you want. I used to let freelancers bill nonetheless they’d like and it wasn’t till I introduced a controller on board that I noticed I wanted a extra standardized means.
Other than standardization, your staff will be capable to course of them sooner and keep away from widespread errors when issuing funds.
They’ll know the best way to spot issues early to make sure everybody nonetheless will get paid on time.
This free HubSpot template is obtainable as a PDF or Excel file. All you need to do is present your e mail deal with and some particulars about your enterprise.
File in hand, you can begin by filling out your organization data, like your identify, deal with, cellphone quantity, and e mail.
From there, you may present a replica to every of your freelancers. They’ll be capable to duplicate it and fill in their very own data earlier than submitting it to you for cost.
There’s an space to explain the scope of labor, checklist every process accomplished, and calculate whole quantity due based mostly on hours labored and their hourly charge. You possibly can simply replace this if you happen to cost by challenge or deliverable as a substitute.
On the backside, freelancers may also add a tax charge, low cost, or delivery and dealing with charges if wanted.
Template 2: A one-page challenge temporary template (Google Docs)
When you’re searching for a easy, reusable template you should utilize to assign work to a freelancer, this free Google Docs template from TeamGantt is a good possibility.
It’s easy and extremely easy, however outlining priorities, expectations, and necessities up entrance usually results in higher outcomes. That is very true when working with freelancers who could not have the identical stage of context as your in-house staff.
This template permits you to summarize your objectives and supply the context contractors want to fulfill your expectations. From there, you may break it down additional into duties and deliverables you want from them.
You’ll be capable to add screenshots and pictures if wanted, which might be useful for demonstrating what you’re after or offering directions if wanted.
There’s additionally an space to outline what’s out of scope. This may be extremely useful from the freelancer’s perspective — it lets them know what you’ve considered and don’t want from them. In lots of circumstances, realizing what’s out of scope is extra useful than understanding what you want.
Within the sidebar, you may add contact data for key stakeholders and others concerned within the challenge. This lets them know who to speak to if they’ve questions.
You possibly can obtain this template in panorama or portrait orientation, relying in your preferences. You’ll additionally be capable to copy it as many occasions as wanted.
How to decide on a freelancer administration template
Until your wants are extremely primary, I counsel reframing this query — as a substitute of selecting a template, take into consideration selecting a platform that may work effectively for what you want. From there, you may obtain their freelancer administration template into your account and get began.
That mentioned, listed below are some elements to remember as you make your resolution.
Degree of element
How a lot data do it’s worthwhile to seize? Some templates cowl the fundamentals, like e mail, cellphone quantity, and pay charge. Others are extremely subtle and canopy earlier work historical past, ranking programs, lively standing, and extra.
Some could even let freelancers arrange a profile, submit invoices, message your staff, and extra.
As I discussed, every template’s capabilities are closely influenced by the platform relatively than the template itself.
You’ll seemingly be capable to add, take away, and replace as wanted however core performance isn’t one thing you may change.
Mission administration capabilities
If you wish to streamline the way you assign work to your freelancers, you’ll want greater than only a database of their contact data. Take into consideration the challenge administration fashion you need to use and which varieties of challenge boards you’ll have to facilitate this work.
Some challenge administration programs double as freelancer databases, whereas others don’t have the very best database however shine with regards to monitoring duties.
Scalability
Take into consideration the variety of freelancers you’re presently working with and what number of you’re planning to work with shifting ahead. Some templates work finest for small groups whereas others can accommodate upwards of fifty+ freelancers.
Greatest practices for managing freelancers
I’ve been working with freelancers for almost all of my profession. Over time, I’ve discovered quite a bit about what works and what doesn’t.
Right here’s my finest recommendation in lower than 5 minutes:
- Stick with a easy onboarding course of.
- Set up a recruitment course of and persist with it.
- Get as particular and clear as you may about your expectations.
- When doubtful, over talk together with your contractors.
- Discuss by means of miscommunications on the cellphone if you happen to can.
- Keep away from micromanagement. You employed them for a motive — allow them to do their job.
- Be ready to examine their work completely till you belief them.
- Set up long-term working relationships when you may.
- Hold an ongoing checklist of freelancers you’re comfy hiring once more.
- Usually filter out these you have been lower than happy with.
- You get what you pay for.
Working with freelancers might be extremely efficient, particularly if you happen to handle them effectively. Staying organized, conserving observe of labor, and paying them on time is vital to mutually useful partnerships you may depend on for years to come back.
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