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 straightforward, 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 robust and versatile freelancer administration template

Trusted by over 225,000+ companies, monday.com is among the hottest undertaking administration platforms on the market. It’s excellent if you happen to want an organized and versatile approach to handle work to 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 begin 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 crew members if you happen to’re managing their work right here too. From there, you possibly can invite as many visitor customers as you must at no further value.

As soon as they’re onboarded, you can begin assigning duties. They’ll have the ability to monitor their time, monitor deadlines, add information, go away feedback, and extra.

The very best half about this template is the way it brings your entire outsourced duties collectively. You’ll simply have the ability to maintain monitor of all the things occurring exterior the corporate in a single place. Every activity can have its personal standing, allotted period of time, due date, proprietor, and assignee.

It’s easy, but efficient. You may as well add extra columns if you must.

monday.com makes it straightforward to regulate entry and enhancing capabilities so that you don’t have to fret about freelancers with the ability to see belongings 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 undertaking 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 lots of smaller companies can keep on the free plan for fairly a while.

You’ll have the ability to invite as many free customers as you’d like, simply take into account that you gained’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 probably gained’t need to be taught a brand new system or surprise the way it works.

All it’s a must to do is create a backlog of duties, assign them, set due dates, and invite them to collaborate with you on ClickUp.

They’ll have the ability to 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 all the things 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’ll be able to modify the columns, fields that present on every card, what it seems to be like whenever you open a card, and nearly each different factor.

You’ll be able to even flip off options you aren’t going to make use of. This ensures no one 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, undertaking 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 per thirty days.

It’s a bit dear, nevertheless it’s value it if you happen to want the extent of customization it gives.

This template is nice if you happen to want a full system to handle freelancer tasks and duties, invoices, service agreements, and resumes.

It lets you create an entire listing of each freelancer you’ve ever labored with. This may be helpful if you wish to have an permitted checklist of contractors or a big pool of freelancers you possibly can choose from at any time.

It’s additionally invaluable if you happen to do a variety of recruiting or biking via.

You’ll have the ability to categorize your listing based mostly on their abilities, expertise stage, sort of settlement, or another customized attribute you’d like. This makes it straightforward to seek out precisely what you want whenever you want it.

Contractors will have the ability to ship invoices and even add a portfolio of their work instantly 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 probably need to do a little bit of customizing, coaching, and tweaking earlier than you begin utilizing it. Constructing a customized no-code app is all the time tougher than you assume it’ll be.

Nevertheless it positively pays off if you happen to want it.

Airtable: A complete freelancer administration database

As a robust 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, activity assignments, and extra.

Airtable’s free plan helps as much as 1,000 information per base, which is greater than sufficient to begin.

Extra on Airtable: Airtable Assessment | Airtable vs Asana | Airtable vs Trello.

This template comes with prebuilt tables for contractors, assignments, tasks, and your inside crew. 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 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 all the things you must learn about every freelancer. It even has a selected view for monitoring them via your recruitment pipeline.

As soon as on board, you possibly can affiliate contractors with their assignments, set due dates, clarify undertaking scope, connect your contact, and another particulars chances are you’ll 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 project, the supervisor will have the ability to add suggestions. Over time, you should utilize this to find out if you wish to maintain working with particular freelancers.

General, it’s versatile and highly effective if you wish to do a variety of customizing.

Asana: A less complicated freelancer administration template for small to mid-sized groups

Thus far, we’ve lined extremely versatile and highly effective undertaking 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 also be top-of-the-line, 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 have the ability 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 possibly can assign work, share paperwork, set due dates, and collaborate instantly inside Asana.

Customers will have the ability to type and group duties nonetheless they’d like, and there are quite a few completely different views they’ll select from — Record, board, timeline, and calendar to call a number of.

However maybe the perfect a part of this template (and Asana normally) is that every undertaking has a devoted message board. This implies freelancers can message your crew and anybody on the undertaking can reply.

Managers and supervisors may even respect its in-built automation guidelines and customizable dashboards.

Excel, PDF, and Google Docs freelancer administration templates

For those who’re working with a handful of contractors and don’t want a system for collaborative activity monitoring, you should utilize a spreadsheet or doc to remain organized.

Even if you happen to resolve 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 could 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 means.

Other than standardization, your crew will have the ability to course of them sooner and keep away from frequent errors when issuing funds.

They’ll know methods to spot issues early to make sure everybody nonetheless will get paid on time.

This free HubSpot template is offered as a PDF or Excel file. All it’s a must to do is present your electronic mail handle and some particulars about what you are promoting.

File in hand, you can begin by filling out your organization data, like your identify, handle, cellphone quantity, and electronic mail.

From there, you possibly can present a duplicate to every of your freelancers. They’ll have the ability 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 activity accomplished, and calculate whole quantity due based mostly on hours labored and their hourly price. You’ll be able to simply replace this if you happen to cost by undertaking or deliverable as a substitute.

On the backside, freelancers may add a tax price, low cost, or transport and dealing with charges if wanted.

Template 2: A one-page undertaking transient template (Google Docs)

For those who’re in search of 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 might not have the identical stage of context as your in-house crew.

This template lets you 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 have the ability to add screenshots and pictures if wanted, which could 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 instances, realizing 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 undertaking. This lets them know who to speak to if they’ve questions.

You’ll be able to obtain this template in panorama or portrait orientation, relying in your preferences. You’ll additionally have the ability to copy it as many instances 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 can work nicely for what you want. From there, you possibly can obtain their freelancer administration template into your account and get began.

That stated, listed below are some elements to bear in mind as you make your determination.

Degree of element

How a lot data do you must seize? Some templates cowl the fundamentals, like electronic mail, cellphone quantity, and pay price. Others are extremely refined and canopy earlier work historical past, score 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 moderately than the template itself.

You’ll probably have the ability to add, take away, and replace as wanted however core performance isn’t one thing you possibly can 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 undertaking administration fashion you need to use and which forms of undertaking boards you’ll must facilitate this work.

Some undertaking administration programs double as freelancer databases, whereas others don’t have the perfect database however shine in the case of 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 transferring ahead. Some templates work greatest 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. Through the years, I’ve realized rather a lot about what works and what doesn’t.

Right here’s my greatest 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 possibly can about your expectations.
• When unsure, over talk along with your contractors.
• Speak via miscommunications on the cellphone if you happen to can.
• Keep away from micromanagement. You employed them for a cause — 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 possibly can.
• Hold an ongoing checklist of freelancers you’re snug hiring once more.
• Usually filter out these you have been lower than happy with.
• You get what you pay for.

Working with freelancers could be extremely efficient, particularly if you happen to handle them nicely. Staying organized, holding monitor of labor, and paying them on time is vital to mutually helpful partnerships you possibly can depend on for years to come back.