Last week I blogged about “The Business of Web Design – Road Show“, you’ll be glad to know I’ve got some locations sorted but I just need to agree dates, I’ll give you an update in next week’s post.

This week I thought I’d give you an insight into the tools I use to run my business and to keep things on track. A brief re-cap about how I run my show, I’m more of a micro-agency or virtual agency in that I work with freelancers to deliver the sharp end of my projects. Plus points of this approach are that you are able to scale up (and down) resource to match current project work load (i.e. not so easy with full time staff). On the down side the freelancers tend to work remote; that’s not particularly a down side per se but it does add to the organisation and communication burden. I do long for the day when, in my relaunched mini-agency (Hinkford), I can wander across the office and share ideas with developers/designers – anyway, more of that to come.

For now let’s take a look at some of the tools I use today:

1. Red Booth

Red Booth handles multiple projects well and the task lists are a breeze. My remote freelancers are invited in to relevant projects, assigned tasks, chat goes back and forth on points etc. Red Booth is my central point for staying on top of projects from a day to day basis. It has time tracking, group chat etc – not that I’ve played with those yet much.

2. Harvest

I’m getting tougher on recording where time is getting spent and Harvest really helps with this. It helps with staying on top of projects and how much time freelancers have used. And it also helps with me staying on top of my time and keeping an eye on where it goes.

3. Quote Roller

I think this package has a few warts but it is useful. It helps manage the process of producing quotes. You edit your ‘estimate’ in multiple sections online, enter your products/prices (which can be stored in a library) and, at the end, it’ll produce a nicely formatted PDF. At some point I’ll probably just set up a nice InDesign template for myself but, until that day, this is useful.

4. FreeAgent

No surprises here. A rock solid, web based accounting app. Apart from the expected stuff of invoicing etc, I like that way it has the concept of ‘projects‘ which means I have at-a-glance view of what I’ve billed for a project, how much remains etc.

5. Google Docs

A pretty obvious one which I’m guessing a lot of us use. One thing I use a lot are the spreadsheets for my ‘lightweight sales tracking approach‘. Very useful, very shareable and getting more powerful & reliable all the time.

So, those are some of the tools which I find useful, how about you?

Joel

p.s. it goes without saying that ‘Dropbox‘ is being used :)

p.p.s I’m always on the look out for talented freelancers to collaborate with.

p.p.s thanks to Chris for doing some cosmetic work on this blog; bringing it a little more in line with the 2014 conference website.