This advice is presented as if you're a freelance Illustrator or Designer. Although (hopefully) it should be useful to anyone who need to bill clients for any type of project. It explains the entire process of managing your cash flow, by gathering advice from the Designer News community. You can read more about the presentation on my website www.rob-gill.co.uk

1. A Freelance Designers Guide to Managing Money

2. Can I have you bank account details?

3. Cost estimates
Time estimates
Hourly Rate -vs- Flat Fee
Contracts
Invoicing
Tax

4. Should you ever
work for Free?

5. http://shouldiworkforfree.com/

6. Cost estimates…
“This is extremely hard to do early
in your career. Primarily because
you haven't had enough experience
in most cases to gauge a rough
sweet-spot of what your worth is.”

7. Cost estimates
🤑 Research. Try and find out what
others are charging (by looking on
job sites)
🤑 Hours + Difficulty
🤑 1 day equals X hours work (7-8?)
🤑 Work out what the client wants and
gather their requirements
🤑 Break all the tasks required into
small chunks
🤑 Order them in size
🤑 Work out how long the smallest task
will take, and the biggest (compare
this to previous experience, this can
be a university assignment)
🤑 Put a price on your time and work
the rest out with your estimates.
*Remember estimates
doesn't mean final!

8. “It's taken me several years, but
I've finally gotten to be
confident enough in my skills to
know almost exactly how long
certain tasks will take me, and I
can now craft more accurate
estimates because of it.”
Cost estimates…

9. Time Estimates
🤑 “However long you think it
will take, it will take 2-3
times that once your client
gets involved.”
🤑 “Add between 20%-50%
depending on how fussy
the client is”
🤑 “Include the time spent
emailing, coordinating with
printers, researching etc.”
🤑 “Guess the hours, add a bit
on top for unforeseen
problems”

10. Time Tracking
🤑 Harvest http://getharvest.com/
🤑 App Store “Time Tracker” £0-£3.99
e.g. TicToc

11. “The number of hours is very heavily
influenced by experience - it took a
few projects which involved me
being underpaid and overworked to
figure out exactly how long it
ACTUALLY took me to do things.”
Time Tracking

12. “Everyone vastly underestimates
a project or two starting out.
Learn from these mistakes.”
Time Tracking

13. Ways to charge: Hourly Rate
👍
Flexible, and transparent.
Covers revisions
👍
Use time estimate as a
Guide you always can
add remove
😢
Hourly rate means you
need to track your time
😢
8 hours days can easily
turn into 10+ if you
discount time spent
emailing, research etc…

14. What would you
charge per hour?

15. Ways to calculate: Hourly Rate
Junior Designer
Billable hours in a week
Billable hours in a year
Hourly Rate
= £18,000pa
= 37.5
= 37.5 x 47 = 1762
= £18,000/1763 = £9.23
Freelance Rate = £9.23 x (2 or 3 or 4…) = …
“Do a lot of research. Try and find out what others are
charging by looking on job sites.”

16. Ways to calculate: Hourly Rate
A
Annual Business Costs
B
Annual Personal Costs
C
Billable Hours
“If I had known what the cost of living was, I would have known what I needed to
make to survive on my own. This cost of living calculator is an amazing resource.”
Accounting fees
Banking fees
Studio rent
Utility bills
travel costs
hardware/software
insurance
advertising
+Others…
Total amount of disposable
income you’d like… plus…
Rent/Mortgage
Utility Bills
Savings
Pension
Billable hours in a year
(assuming 5 weeks holiday)
this will be 1762 again

17. Ways to calculate: Hourly Rate
A
Annual Business Costs
B
Annual Personal Costs
C
Billable Hours
A + B
C
= Hourly Rate
“If I had known what the cost of living was, I would have known what I needed to
make to survive on my own. This cost of living calculator is an amazing resource.”

18. https://www.hellobonsai.com/rates/

19. “I've worked my way up to that number
over several years after realizing I was
underpaying myself.”
Ways to calculate: Hourly Rate

20. Ways to charge: Flat Fees
👍 Easy solution for repeat
business, i.e. you know
exactly what you
charged last time
👍 Clients prefer flat fees
👍 As long as its calculated
on time with an added
buffer it shouldn’t cause
issues
😢
It can leave you out of
pocket if you badly
estimate the effort
required
😢
It can meant to don’t get
paid for expenses
😢
Negotiating a higher fee
maybe harder with
repeat clients, if you’ve
charged them before

21. What full time wage
would you like to earn
in you career?

22. “Entry salaries are rough to deal with, but
the speed you can improve your earnings
is phenomenal if you're doing a good job.”
“Come to terms with the balance of job
satisfaction and salary… learning is more
valuable than cash when you start out”

23. Contracts - Protect Yourself
🤑 Set a minimum fee based on time.
ie. ½ day rate (3-4 hours)
🤑 Work stops when the payments
stop. Take a deposit upfront.
🤑 I charge a down payment (usually
30%-50%) up front. That will weed
out the good clients from the bad.
🤑 Be sure to have a late
payment clause that
changes interest.
🤑 If you set mini deadlines,
set small fees against
each

24. Contracts - Protect Your Client
🤑 Agree deadlines and stick to them
🤑 Incentives to pay on time
(decrease for on time payment/
increase for late payment)
🤑 Assure them that you can agree to
change the terms later down the
line, resend contract at this point

25. Contract Examples
Design Contract
This Contract is between Ben Kamara (the "Client") and Rob Gill (the "Designer").
The Contract is dated November 23, 2015.
1. PROJECT AND PAYMENT
1.1 Project. The Client is hiring the Designer to do the following: The designer will assist in
helping to design visuals and prototypes for a mobile application called Scorescast. Some
branding, logo development and basic design work across other platforms may also be required.
1.2 Schedule. The Designer will begin work on November 23, 2015 and will continue until the
work is completed. This Contract can be ended by either Client or Designer at any time, pursuant
to the terms of Section 6, Term and Termination.
1.3 Payment. The Client will pay the Designer a rate of £500.00 (GBP) per hour. Of this, the
Client will pay the Designer £1,000,000.00 (GBP) before work begins. The Designer agrees that
it is not entitled to any further fees from the Client in relation to this project unless otherwise
agreed in writing by the Client.
1.4 Expenses. The Client will not reimburse the Designer's expenses.
1.5 Invoices. The Designer will invoice the Client for work done monthly. The Client agrees to
pay the amount owed within 28 days of receiving the invoice. The Designer shall be entitled to
charge, and the Client shall pay, interest on any unpaid amount from the due date until payment
is received at a rate of 5.0% per month on the outstanding amount.
2. OWNERSHIP AND LICENSES.
2.1 Client Owns All Work Product. As part of this job, the Designer is creating “work product”
for the Client. To avoid confusion, work product is the finished product, as well as drafts, notes,
materials, mockups, hardware, designs, inventions, patents, code, and anything else that the
Designer works on—that is, conceives, creates, designs, develops, invents, works on, or reduces to
practice—as part of this project, whether before the date of this Contract or after. The Designer
https://www.hellobonsai.com/ http://docpool.welcomebrand.co.uk/
Website project contract
Client name here
Offroadcode Limited
September 2012
Commercial in Confidence
LOADS of
resources here

26. Invoicing
🤑 “Use Software to help keep track
of invoices: Freshbooks, Wave,
Freeagent, Kashflow, Harvest,
Excel…”
🤑 Give the many ways to pay. Bank
Transfer, Cheque, PayPal (which is
great for international work!)
🤑 Be prepared for late
payments.
🤑 provide “30 days
notice”, in the contract
add a small % for each
day payment goes over.

27. Invoicing

28. “I only release a very low res
version until final invoice payment.
Then give them them all the high
res versions when payment clears.”
Invoicing

29. Relationships
🤑
“Send nice emails. Build a
good relationship with the
client. Understand where
they're coming from.”
🤑
“Only work with people you
are confident of having a
good working relationship
with. Trust needs to be built
otherwise as with all
relationships, it will break
down.”
🤑
If your unsure of someone to
begin with, as for payments
upfront and contracts to be in
place. As the relationship builds
you might be able to relax this
🤑
Meet them, spend time talking to
them, it will help you become
better at judging peoples nature
🤑
Be prepared to have a client base
and have the patience to deal
with every single one

30. Tax
🤑 PUT ASIDE MONEY FOR TAX!
🤑 “Doing your self assessment as a
sole trader is pretty easy - as long
as you have everything in order
before you sit down to do it.”
🤑 “keep receipts for expenses…
petrol, trains, new pc hardware etc
that are related to your work.
Even a % of your household bills, if
work from home”
🤑 Working full time and
freelancing part time, you
can pay tax on your
freelance earnings through
your PAYE (if below £3k)
just write a letter to declare
your freelance income &
expenses.
🤑 “keep track of any interest
you make in various savings
accounts… it’s all income”

31. “Saving shouldn't be as daunting as it
sounds, back then I associated everything
I earned with 'I need this to live' - save
something, even if it's as little as £25 a
month, if you get a raise, increase your
savings.”
Saving

32. “Save up at least 3 to 6 months worth of
living expenses. This will make the slow
times so much less stressful and prevent
you from taking on bad projects or clients
due to panic over finances.”
Saving