When you first become a freelancer, you need to think about many different elements of your business. You also need to consider any issues that could arise. One area where you could encounter problems is in administration tasks. Here’s a look at the common admin issues new freelancers face and how you can handle them.
Dealing with Tax Returns and Related Forms
One of the primary admin tasks all freelancers face is bookkeeping. You need to keep track of your income, expenses, and transactions throughout the year so that you have everything for when it comes to doing your end-of-year tax return. As a new freelancer, you probably don’t need to hire an accountant to manage your finances, but you may consider hiring an accountant or a bookkeeper as your business grows.
As your business expands, you could employ other professionals too. In that case, things get a little more complex because you have to deal with additional admin tasks like managing payroll. Keeping track of payroll is essential for tax purposes. You may need to generate pay stubs for employees, which list all of the crucial information related to a worker’s pay, such as wages and tax withholdings. Find out how to create a paystub with FormPros. The platform also provides other tools for saving time on admin tasks and ensuring all information on the forms is entered correctly.
Scheduling Time for Admin Tasks
With so many elements of your business vying for your attention, it can be challenging to find the time to complete all of your necessary admin tasks. But scheduling your time can help. Do not underestimate how important scheduling is. If you fall behind in admin tasks, you won’t be in control of your business and you could end up with a lot of work to do at the end of the year when it comes to completing your tax return.
By using effective time management scheduling for administration work, you will have more time to fully focus on other important areas of your freelance business. There are various easy-to-use time management apps available to help you solve the issue of finding the time to complete your admin tasks. As long as you come up with a schedule that works for you, and one that you stick to, your operations will run much more efficiently.
Handling Correspondence
As a freelancer, you’ll be dealing with different clients. You’ll also spend time writing to prospective clients and other professionals and organizations. That means you could end up spending a lot of time handling correspondence. When you have to deal with lots of correspondence daily or weekly, the task can soon become overwhelming.
If you don’t stay on top of your correspondence, it can even become detrimental to your business. For instance, you may get an inquiry from a potential client but because you don’t answer promptly, you end up losing that client. Setting aside specific time to handle correspondences is the first thing you need to do to handle this issue. You also need to prioritize and categorize the correspondences. By having a good system in place, you can ensure you always respond to the most important emails first.
Backing Up Your Documents and Records
If you were to lose your documents, records, receipts, and transactions, it would be devastating. Not only could you get into hot water with the IRS when it comes to filing your tax return. You’ll also not be able to have an accurate overview of your income, expenditure, profits, and so on. Therefore, it’s vital you back up all of your files regularly. There are various cloud services you can use to ensure your data is always backed up.