[fr] J'ai préparé un tableau pour m'aider à avoir une meilleure visibilité de quand je gagne de l'argent, par semaine et par mois. Il est à disposition si jamais quelqu'un d'autre le trouve utile.
One of the things I want to start doing in 2010 (now that my accounting is in order for 2009, thanks to Buxfer and my brother) is start tracking when I spend time doing “paid work”. Accounting helps me track when I get paid, but not when I am actually spending time doing the work — and in the light of my weekly planning experiments, I want to gain more visibility about how my weeks and months are structured.
After torturing my brain quite a bit, I’ve come up with this Income Map Template for 2010. I’ve made it publicly available as a Google Spreadsheet so you may copy it and use it if you wish (feel free to adapt it and let us know what works for you in the comments).
The challenge here is that some of my income arrives monthly (retainers), some of it is a project package (one price for a certain amount of work spread over a certain time) and some of it is one-off (giving a talk, or half a day of WordPress training). What I’m really interested in is seeing when I’m doing work that I get paid for, weekly.
This is not about cash flow, although it deals with money (Buxfer takes care of the cash flow), but about time management.
With the help of this spreadsheet, I hope to be able to easily answer the following kinds of questions in 2010:
- how much paid work do I do in a given month?
- how much of my income is one-off gigs, compared to regular clients (retainers or long-term projects)?
- does my weekly income (one-off gigs, aside from retainers and long-term projects) vary a lot from week to week?
- where should I set the limit to the number of engagements I take in a given week/month?
So, to freelancers out there, who are not clocking time all week: are these questions also interesting to you? Does this make sense? Do you do this kind of “money-earning time-tracking”?
I’ve pulled together a few spreadsheets and omnioutliner templates in the past for just this purpose, but I’ve never really nailed it. Went back to a spreadsheet recently, and I’ll be checking your template soon.
I also use a colour coding system in iCal. It doesn’t provide figures for analysis, but it allows me to get a feel for the balance of the work that I’m doing at a glance.
Hi,
Since you use omnioutliner I’m going to assume you use a Mac. I use had the same problems until I switched to studiometry. It handles retainers etc quite nicely. Might be overkill for you but you never know. Check it out at http://www.oranged.net.
Regards,
Neels.
PS. No, I dont work for them.
PPS. No i don’t get paid to promote them 😉 I just find the software quite handy.
Thanks Stephanie,
Saw this on your twitter link. This is going to be very useful for me, going forward. I find time management a challenge when it comes to the many thinks I end up doing for a given client. The idea of conceptualizing the various types of projects and tasks using a worksheet like this is helpful, as I am trying to stop myself from getting caught up in the dreaded ‘scope creep’.
Setting clear boundaries with gutsy detachment is one of my goals for 2011.
Thanks !
Hey Kit, glad you find it helpful, and good luck for 2011! Boundaries are key.