Nearly each enterprise I’ve began has concerned hiring freelancers. They’re extra reasonably priced and versatile, plus it’s simpler to scale up or down as wanted. One or two is simple, however issues can get messy while 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 robust and versatile freelancer administration template
Trusted by over 225,000+ companies, monday.com is likely one of the hottest mission administration platforms on the market. It’s excellent in case you want an organized and versatile strategy to handle work on your in-house crew, 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 Overview | monday.com vs Jira | monday.com vs. Notion.
To start out, you’ll want so as to add all your assets, together with freelancers and in-house crew members in case you’re managing their work right here too. From there, you possibly can invite as many visitor customers as it is advisable to at no additional price.
As soon as they’re onboarded, you can begin assigning duties. They are going to be capable of monitor their time, monitor deadlines, add recordsdata, go away feedback, and extra.
One of the best half about this template is the way it brings all your outsourced duties collectively. You’ll simply be capable of preserve monitor of every little thing taking place 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 too add further columns if it is advisable to.
monday.com makes it straightforward to manage entry and modifying 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’d like a whole mission administration answer.
Its beneficiant free plan consists of 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 of invite as many free customers as you’d like, simply needless to say you gained’t have granular entry controls except you improve.
Extra on ClickUp: ClickUp Overview | 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 doubtless gained’t must be taught 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 of handle their work, mark duties as full, go away feedback, ask questions, collaborate on paperwork, chat with you, and extra.
It takes just some minutes to configure every little thing in case you’re utilizing this template as is. In any other case, it could take as much as an hour to customise it to match your wants. You possibly can alter the columns, fields that present on every card, what it appears like while you open a card, and nearly each different aspect.
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 need to use it to construct internet portals, databases, mission trackers, and even a listing to handle all your 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 per thirty days.
It’s a bit dear, however it’s value it in case you want the extent of customization it offers.
This template is nice in case you want a full system to handle freelancer tasks and duties, invoices, service agreements, and resumes.
It means that you can create a whole 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 possibly can choose from at any time.
It’s additionally invaluable in case you do numerous recruiting or biking by means of.
You’ll be capable of 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 while you want it.
Contractors will be capable of ship invoices and even add a portfolio of their work straight inside the platform. They’ve full entry to their profiles and might replace them any time.
The draw back of this template is how a lot upfront work is required. You’ll doubtless must 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.
But it surely undoubtedly pays off in case you 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 possibly can 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 Overview | Airtable vs Asana | Airtable vs Trello.
This template comes with prebuilt tables for contractors, assignments, tasks, and your inner crew. Though it’s technically for managing contractors and their work, you should use it to handle in-house tasks and duties in the identical place with out making too many changes.
For every contractor, you possibly can add their space of experience, occupation, portfolio, work hyperlink, contact, secondary specializations, approval standing, and call data.
Out of the field, it covers every little thing it is advisable to find out about every freelancer. It even has a particular view for monitoring them by means of your recruitment pipeline.
As soon as on board, you possibly can affiliate contractors with their assignments, set due dates, clarify mission scope, connect your contact, and some other particulars you could want.
Airtable’s flexibility means you possibly can add new fields, take away fields, or edit current fields to make it give you the results you want.
With every task, the supervisor will be capable of add suggestions. Over time, you should use this to find out if you wish to preserve working with particular freelancers.
General, 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 mission administration choices. Asana isn’t as versatile, however is way 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 the most effective, permitting for limitless duties, tasks, and storage for as much as ten customers.
Extra on Asana: Asana Overview | 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 of 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 possibly can assign work, share paperwork, set due dates, and collaborate straight inside Asana.
Customers will be capable of kind and group duties nonetheless they’d like, and there are quite a few totally different views they’ll select from — Listing, board, timeline, and calendar to call a couple of.
However maybe one of the best a part of this template (and Asana typically) is that every mission has a devoted message board. This implies freelancers can message your crew and anybody on the mission can reply.
Managers and supervisors will even recognize its in-built automation guidelines and customizable dashboards.
Excel, PDF, and Google Docs freelancer administration templates
If you happen to’re working with a handful of contractors and don’t want a system for collaborative process monitoring, you should use a spreadsheet or doc to remain organized.
Even in case you determine to make use of a extra complete platform for managing your freelancers, every of the templates under 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 making certain every bill consists of 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 spotted I wanted a extra standardized approach.
Apart from standardization, your crew will be capable of course of them quicker and keep away from frequent errors when issuing funds.
They’ll know learn how 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 title, deal with, cellphone quantity, and e-mail.
From there, you possibly can present a duplicate to every of your freelancers. They’ll be capable of duplicate it and fill in their very own data earlier than submitting it to you for fee.
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 in case you cost by mission or deliverable as a substitute.
On the backside, freelancers can even add a tax charge, low cost, or transport and dealing with charges if wanted.
Template 2: A one-page mission transient template (Google Docs)
If you happen to’re in search of a easy, reusable template you should use to assign work to a freelancer, this free Google Docs template from TeamGantt is a superb 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 might not have the identical stage of context as your in-house crew.
This template means that you can summarize your targets and supply the context contractors want to satisfy your expectations. From there, you possibly can break it down additional into duties and deliverables you want from them.
You’ll be capable of add screenshots and pictures if wanted, which may 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, understanding what’s out of scope is extra useful than understanding what you want.
Within the sidebar, you possibly can add contact data for key stakeholders and others concerned within the mission. 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 of copy it as many occasions as wanted.
How to decide on a freelancer administration template
Until your wants are extremely fundamental, I recommend 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 possibly can obtain their freelancer administration template into your account and get began.
That mentioned, listed here are some components to bear in mind as you make your resolution.
Degree of element
How a lot data do it is advisable 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, energetic standing, and extra.
Some might even let freelancers arrange a profile, submit invoices, message your crew, and extra.
As I discussed, every template’s capabilities are closely influenced by the platform reasonably than the template itself.
You’ll doubtless be capable of add, take away, and replace as wanted however core performance isn’t one thing you possibly can change.
Venture 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 mission administration fashion you need to use and which sorts of mission boards you’ll have to facilitate this work.
Some mission administration programs double as freelancer databases, whereas others don’t have one of the best database however shine with regards to monitoring duties.
Scalability
Take into consideration the variety of freelancers you’re at present working with and what number of you’re planning to work with shifting ahead. Some templates work greatest for small groups whereas others can accommodate upwards of fifty+ freelancers.
Finest practices for managing freelancers
I’ve been working with freelancers for almost all of my profession. Over time, I’ve discovered lots about what works and what doesn’t.
Right here’s my greatest recommendation in lower than 5 minutes:
- Keep on with a easy onboarding course of.
- Set up a recruitment course of and follow it.
- Get as particular and clear as you possibly can about your expectations.
- When unsure, over talk together with your contractors.
- Speak by means of miscommunications on the cellphone in case you can.
- Keep away from micromanagement. You employed them for a motive — allow them to do their job.
- Be ready to verify their work totally till you belief them.
- Set up long-term working relationships when you possibly can.
- Hold an ongoing checklist of freelancers you’re snug hiring once more.
- Commonly filter out these you had been lower than happy with.
- You get what you pay for.
Working with freelancers may be extremely efficient, particularly in case you handle them effectively. Staying organized, holding monitor of labor, and paying them on time is essential to mutually helpful partnerships you possibly can depend on for years to return.