Are you a freelancer? If yes, then, you will know that you need to track care of everything – right from planning new ventures to monitoring budgets, you will have a lot more on your hands to keep track of. Now, while some people love to dabble in paper, many swears by word processors – but you know what? These two-mentioned options are not that easy to manage.
Keeping track of your revenues and expenses on paper or word processors is not a wise way to go about it – you will need to make columns and if you make one mistake – just imagine, you will have to start all over again.
It is for this reason that Excel is recommended – and you know, even if you are not that great at creating spreadsheets and all that stuff, all hope is not lost. There are plenty of Excel templates (both free and paid) that are scattered through the internet that you can use to keep track of your revenues and expenses as a freelancer.
Today, it’s all about the free ones that you can download and use – like right now!!
Personal Budget
This free Excel template is brought to you by Microsoft – but what makes this template useful is that if you want to see the top 3, that is, expenses, savings and your income – this template is the perfect fit.
This Excel template features two graphs that will show you the difference between your expenses and income.
Graphic Design Invoice
If you are a freelancer, then, you must be working online – and that means you will need an invoice template. Often, most of the invoice templates feature a record of the services that you have offered and the money that you will need to collect from your clients.
It is suggested that your invoice templates need to look as much professional as possible as you will be presenting it to your clients – and while it’s not exactly a must, but you can prefer to opt for a minimal yet beautiful invoice template.
Creative Brief
Creative briefs are considered to be quite important with designers – no matter what industry you work in. They act as a bridge of communication for your clients as with creative briefs, you can make them understand about the project including all its details.
In regards to creative briefs, there are many types that you can go for based on your needs – while some are simple stating only the basics such as the project’s name, client’s name, budget and such. Detailed creative briefs include information such as goals of the project, components needs for the project and such.
Time Tracking
Time is valuable, so, it makes no sense if you don’t keep track of it. Brought to you by ‘Vertex42’, this Excel template is a must if you want to keep track of your time for billing reasons.
That said, if you simply want to keep an eye on your workflow, this Excel template works just fine. Or say, if you want to get paid ‘by-the-hour’ for your project.
Editorial Calendar
If you are a blogger, then, you will know how much scary it is to come up with new content every day – so, it makes sense that you will need to organize and plan everything right down to a tee.
Opt for this Editorial Calendar (it’s an Excel template, by the way, and shared by HubSpot) – you will find columns based on the date of publishing, the title of the content, keywords and such.
Gantt Chart
If you have a big project consisting of multiple phases, then, the Gantt Chart template is for you. Gantt Chart is a horizontal chart that shows the starting and the ending time of an individual project, if it’s made of multiple phases.
Creating a Gantt Chart based on your needs is not hard to create on Excel – all you need to do is to set the tasks and add their periods and you will have a chart on your hand showing you the visual details of the project.
Or, you can go for this free Excel Gantt Chart template by ‘Vertex42’ that you can edit based on your needs.
Social Media Content Calendar
If you are a freelancer that focuses on social media, then, this template is the right choice for you.
Brought to you by HubSpot, this Excel template is a must for if you want to plan your social media campaigns and need to be reminded to post about important stuff.
Project Budget
Want to budget a project? Go for this template – brought to you by ‘Vertex42’, this free Excel template features a spreadsheet that you can use to track your budget.
no matter how big your project is and how much detailed, you will three spreadsheets – while the first one features a detailed view of the project, the second one is a basic spreadsheet of a project budget followed by income, and the last one focuses on a monthly budget of the project.
Project Schedule
If your project is small and simple enough, then you don’t need a detailed spreadsheet – a simple one will do.
Take, for example, this template – you will be able to create a simple timeline for your small project that will be spread across multiple weeks. That said, you can also customize the spreadsheet and can add milestones based on your needs.
Set of 27 Templates
Instead of downloading Excel templates from here and there, you can opt for this set – consisting of 27 free Excel templates, this set includes everything from invoices to receipts to sign-in sheets that you can use either online or can print them out for your purposes.
Being a freelancer is not that easy, but, today, with the help of the internet, it has become much easier than before – and while these templates aren’t the only tools that you are going to need, but they certainly will make your workflow that much easy to maintain and keep in order.