Business Basics: Managing your clients and money

Heres the scenerio: You’ve got yourself a business set up, you built your website (maybe even for only $25.00) and you’re ready to rock. You contact your first potential clients and manage to land a sale! Congratulations! You’ve made your business into a reality. But here’s where it gets tricky – how do you manage your clients: their contact info, emails, files, notes, ect. And how you manage the money coming in (and out) of your business? With the vast amounts of articles out there showing you what tools and apps you can use to manage your business, how do you know what is right for you?

In this article, my aim is to show you what apps you’ll more than likely need and how you can get by in your business with little-to-zero dollars spent. I’ve always been someone who bootstrapped as much as possible (I used to run Bootstrapping Blog and wrote numerous articles on the subject) so I think it’s only right to show some business basics knowledge here on how you can do the same with your business.

Don’t go broke trying to make money

First things first, you do not need apps from 37 signals. I know everyone talks about them and makes you feel like you’re not a part of the in crowd if you don’t use them, but face it – spending $25-$100 per month on apps you (more than likely) will not use is a bit much for the beginnings of your business. You’re going to want to focus on making money first – if you don’t make money, you have no business and there is no reason to spend money on it. 37 signals offers a bunch of awesome products, but it’s not something required in order for you to start your business.

How you can manage clients and money for FREE

I was speaking with Jon Phillips from Spyre Studios about this topic earlier today and I think we both had a good grasp on what was needed for business management. When you’re a one person show, just starting out, there’s no reason you can’t build your business without putting money into it. A couple of the things you can do to manage your clients, projects and money are as follows:

• Client Details: Utilize gmail (or gmail for business and the labels you can apply to emails. Have your clients emails automatically labeled by creating a filter for it, and it makes managing your clients emails/notes/files a breeze
• Money Management: You can check out some of the free invoicing pdf or doc files around the web (or even make your own). And for up to three invoices per month, you can even get a free invoice machine account. If you’re after a free app that does all of this for you, there’s an open source version called siwapp which looks promising.
• Project Management: Vanilla Forums is a great way to set up a project management section of your site quickly and pain free. It’s also minimalist at heart so it makes everything run smoothly. *thanks to Jon for this tip – I’ll be utilizing it on future projects.
• Accounting: I haven’t done much on the accounting side of things, but the one app I have tried out and really enjoy is Outright. If you want to keep records of your money spend and made, see graphs and charts of it on a monthly/quarterly/yearly basis, Outright is perfect for you.

How you can manage your clients for a little bit of cash

After you’ve built up a bit of a client base (5-10 clients) you may want to grow your management a bit. Again, at this point, there’s no need to jump into the expensive apps that you don’t need for a one or two person show. Below are a few things you can check out to manage your money and manage your clients for a little bit of cash each month.

• Invoicing: As mentioned above, Invoice Machine offers up to three invoices per month to be sent and after that, you can jump up to their $12.00 per month plan which gives you up to 30 invoices (the plan I am currently using). You can also check out Freshbooks, which Jon highly recommends. I haven’t tested them out myself but I’m told it is a great app and it’s fairly cheap as well (as low as $19.00 per month).
• Client Management: Six Central is a company that has really caught my eye and seems like a really great fit for the budding freelancers out there. If you’re on a guerrilla mission, their very low $10.00 per month price for unlimited Invoices, Proposals and Clients is perfect!
• Project Management: One of the best project management apps out there is definintely Basecamp. So, if you’re dead set on spending a bit of cash, you can check them out and see that their lowest priced plan is only $24.99 per month which honestly is not that bad (if your business is in need of this much growth).
• Accounting Management: Less Accounting is a great app built by great people who really understand what freelancers need. They offer a limited version for free and have a low cost ($12 per month) plan that would suit you very well.

My personal opinions on the subject of managing clients and money

It’s taken me some time to find the right fit for my business. I’ve tried many (I mean, many) apps and have cancelled the majority of them. For now, I’m sticking with the following for my business.

• Invoicing: Invoice Machine
• Client Management: Gmail for Business
• Project Management: Currently I utilize Gmail for Business for this as well but will be checking into Vanilla Forums more
• Accounting Management: Outright

By no means am I saying that you should use what I use. Get in there, try a few out for a month or so and see what works best for you. And most of all, remember, if you’ve got questions about anything, feel free to leave a comment and I’ll do my best to help you out (and so will the other awesome readers of this blog).