[Teekay]

I started a side gig late last year as a freelance developer (web and desktop apps). Initially, I won one or two projects on Elance and since my skills were considerably rusty at the time, the projects took a few weeks each and I would typically only have one or two active clients at a time.

Fast forward to today, and I already have 4-5 active clients and tasks start to slip through the cracks. It takes me longer to respond to their questions and I don't properly follow-up with those I've served in the past to see if they have any new projects I could do.

This calls for some type of "CRM" or any sensible organization really, where I'd keep track of all clients and projects and be able to see what are my outstanding tasks, where I need to follow-up, etc. My question is, if you are in a similar position, what's your approach and what tools do you use?

When I Google "Small business CRM", I get tons of results but it seems that a majority if not all of them are web-based, targeted at real companies with employees, and quite pricey. My preference would be an offline system that I can use on a plane, and ideally a one-off payment not a subscription.

The reluctant shopper in me tells me I should just use Gmail and Google Calendar properly. The tasks management in Gmail seems too simple though.

Or, perhaps a physical paper notebook / organizer? These used to be quite popular in the days before the internet. Anybody here using them?

[tynamite]

Use a notes app.

[TheMaleBrain]

Start with Excel.
Make lists of tasks and do a daily follow up.

Google "freelance CRM" instead. Or "SOHO CRM" (Small office, home office)

[Phoenix]

Yeah I don't think you need anything special. Just a basic Todo program, and a basic calender program with alerts. The other management systems always feel heavy and clunky. Google calender also annoys me because it's online - nothing will ever be as fast and seemless as an offline program, and nothing loads faster than notepad.

[atlant]

What helps me immensely is taking just 10-15 minutes at the end of every day to roughly plan the next one. Go through relevant emails or in your case Elance messages etc., note down who you need to talk and deliver to tomorrow.

That doesn't mean creating some incredibly rigid or specific schedule, but just making an outline of what needs to be done. I find that considerably reduces my stress by the next day too as I am not scrambling to follow up with things I had forgotten about.

[Noir]

Evernote synchronized with Sunrise on your phone -> Evernote on your PC.

[Phoenix]

Out of interest, what kind of rate are you pulling on average with your freelancing, and how much experience do you have in the thing you freelance?

[Teekay]

@Phoenix, it would be a long story and I might throw out a datasheet at some point. In short:
I don't do hourly jobs. When I land a client I convince them to change it to fixed price. That's for two reasons: I don't want clients thinking about my value in terms of dollars per hour but rather dollars per value delivered, and am 100% opposed to having any kind of screenshot-taking contraption monitor my work, which Elance requires for hourly jobs.
This means my rate depends on how efficiently I can deliver the scope of work, and so far it's always come out in the range of $50-80 per hour. There are some projects, however, where I see a big potential in the client and will treat the first project as an investment - there, my effective rate plummets but I intend to make up for it once I know the client better.
My experience is varied, I've done programming between 2000-2003, then switched to suited-up jobs but kept programming on the back burner as a hobby. Slowly transitioning back to it since 2011 since it's a great job to enable location independence and because I love doing it.

[Shimmy]

Check out the project management software Asana. It's great for creating detailed tasks with check boxes on sub tasks and setting due dates.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njrmCe7Mty0

[CleanSlate]

I use a google based excel sheet, with a few columns:

- Company
- Name
- Title
- Email / Phone
- Date of Last Contact
- Status

The last two columns are key for me. I sort my list by "Date of Last Contact" to see which ones I haven't followed up in a while. Then I also sort by status with keywords like "Project Underway", "Sent Estimate", "Invoice Due", "Paid", "Follow up in 2 weeks", "Wait for contact", etc.

It helps me move all projects that are already underway to the top of the list, and work on them. Then I sort which ones haven't paid their invoices and send them a friendly reminder. Then I check to see whom I sent an estimate but received no response (checking the last contact date) and follow up with them asking if they had any concerns with my estimate.

I feel no need for an expensive piece of CRM software, those are better suited for bigger companies with employee payrolls and more people to manage, etc.

[ElJefe1]

Hubspot has a really good sales CRM, its free and will always be free, also another which again is free is SugarCRM you have to install it on a cloud server you could use like Amazon Web Services it is free for a year. I actually use both SugarCRM isnt really updating the free version anymore and maybe a bit more than you need, and you'll have to find someone to install it for you, Hubspot is cloud based nothing to install and a bit easier though not as robust as what you'd find with SugarCRM though for your purposes you may not need everything with Sugar. I've used Zoho in the past and it kind of sucks in my personal opinion, Sales Force is super expensive. There are quite a bit more out there though I can only comment on the ones I've used. These are better than using a spread sheet as you can setup tasks to call cusotmers in the future, take notes on projects, take notes on customer calls, you can use sub categories like cases for clients you have done or will do multiple projects for so your notes section isnt cluttered and again the best part about both of these is they are free...

[Valentine]

Asana for managing the tasks/deadlines + Google Sheets for client details and other static info.

[RatInTheWoods]

You could knock something custom made in MSaccess in a small amount of time.

It could handle emails, invoices and tracking etc

[RichieP]

Helps first to split it up into different categories of tasks:

Client correspondence for ongoing projects
-Followups for repeat/referral business (this is really part of marketing)

Tools can help but ultimately it's about scheduling time for these things. Some people like to batch "project correspondence" emails 2x a day, e.g. 10am and 4pm. You take 30mins to ONLY deal with corresponding with clients re: current projects.

Then schedule followups as part of your marketing, say once a month you contact past clients with a keep-in-touch note, updates about current projects you finished if relevant to them, and ask if they need any help with X.

Really you just need calendar + spreadsheet.

If you want to automate more of your outreach or followup, pm me, I'm pretty deep into this at the moment.

[Beyond Borders]

Just managing my to-dos in Toodledo has worked for me. I base the way I use it on the GTD (Getting Things Done) principles, so you may want to give that book a read.

[ElJefe1]

Why are any of you using spreadsheets, calendars, in conjunction with this app, or that app and try?.... Especially when you can use a cost free solution that encompasses all of the tools you need in one database, it seems to me its making things harder on yourself or over complicating it when a CRM automates all of these things and you can integrate it into other software, applcations, email, tools, and phone systems you maybe currently utilizing. I mean yeah using all of these different methods work but so will using a handsaw to cut down a tree, while the chain saw just sits there next to you unused.

[CleanSlate]

ElJefe1,

I just signed up on Hubspot. Thanks for the recommend! I think I will like it better than my own Excel sheet, which is starting to look messy and cumbersome.