You do not have to buy anything in your first year. A freelance business has five jobs to cover — send invoices and get paid, keep a ledger, pay the IRS, keep receipts, remember the dates — and every one of them has a free answer that is good enough to carry a real business….
Give thirty days’ notice for an ordinary increase and sixty for a large one. Ten to twenty percent is the range that goes through without a fight. Put the new rate and its start date in one short email, tie the date to a boundary the client already has on their calendar — a renewal,…
If you have no budget and only send a few invoices, Wave has a free plan that does the bookkeeping. If you drive for work, QuickBooks Solopreneur at $20 a month is the only one of the three that tracks mileage by phone GPS, and that deduction is usually worth more than the subscription. If…
Clear scope, flat fee. Unclear scope, hourly. That is the whole rule, and the reason behind it matters more than the rule itself. The two models point your incentives in opposite directions. On a flat fee, getting faster pays you more. On an hourly rate, getting faster pays you less. Everything else follows from that….
The formula is (what you want to keep + your tax set-aside + your business costs) ÷ your billable hours. The trap is the last number. Almost every rate calculator divides by 2,080 — 40 hours times 52 weeks — and leaves the tax line out entirely. You do not bill 2,080 hours, and about…
Send the first message before the invoice is due, not after. Timing does more work here than wording ever will. A note on day 22 of a Net 30 reads as helpful, because nothing is wrong yet. The same sentences on day 35 read as a complaint, and the client hears an accusation instead of…
Ask for 50% before you start. Not mainly because the money is better in your account than in theirs, though it is. Ask because of what it does to the client. A stranger who has paid you nothing is deciding, quietly, every week, whether this project still deserves their attention. A client who has already…
Net 30 means the balance is due 30 days after the invoice date. Net 15 means fifteen. Due on receipt means now. Pick whichever you like — but the number is not where your money leaks out. The send date is. A Net 30 you send a week after you finish the work is a…
An EIN is a nine-digit federal tax ID for a business. It is free, you apply for it at irs.gov, and the online application issues the number on the spot. You do not need employees, an LLC, or any particular income to have one. A sole proprietor can get an EIN for no reason other…
Electing S corporation taxation starts putting money in your pocket somewhere around $85,000 of net profit, and only if a fair salary for your own work sits well below that. Under that line, the payroll service, the extra tax return, and the qualified business income deduction you give up eat the whole saving. It is…