QBN Business Advice
- Started
- Last post
- 7 Responses
- capn_ron
I could use some great advice for a business that has somehow fallen into my lap. I had done some design work for a client that does manufacturing for multiple other clients. They apparently liked my work and work ethic and are now recommending everyone that goes to them to contact me for any design needs.
It has been about three requests a week for over a month now and at least one accepts the estimate to start the work. I've got so many questions about business right now and i know some of you have some answers for me and others.
1. I'm looking for a new business tracking system that will help me gather contact information, stage of contact (estimate sent, work done, emailed, etc), that may also have an estimate/invoice feature in it.
2. I'm also wondering what i need from a fellow designer if i'm sending them lots of work to make sure i'm kosher when tax time comes. Like a w9 and invoices, is there anything else?
3. Lastly, this one is hard, but has anyone found a way to simplify quotes in order to make it really easy to offer estimates. Like a full brand package is always the same price. A logo is always the same price. A food label always the same price?
Anyway, maybe we can use this thread to gather and answer other business questions by fellow designers to see if we can help each other out.
- capn_ron
- capn_ron6
Just remembered another important one... for every 1 dollar I make I've been saving about 35 percent for taxes. Does that sound within reason?
- Not tax advise, but depends where you are based, type of service and where the clients are. I assume you are in the US?maikel
- not if u compare yourself to bezos or mush...neverscared
- thenohero1
Might serve some of your needs, https://functionpoint.com/
- skinny_puppy3
1. sounds like a CRM and sales funnel. There are many tools out there for this (Hubspot, Pipedrive, SugarCRM).
I would start as simple and as cheap as you can with something like Trello, Notion or Excel until you know exactly what you need, then you can look at more expensive tools and see if they add more value to your business. You may never need to go more expensive I know of a team that was handling a complex business with over a hundred customers in Notion.
- nb4
My instinct would be to set up my own solutions with Airtable. If you’re comfortable with the basic concept of a database, it’s not any more difficult than learning some other software and it gives you the advantage of organizing how YOU want, nothing more nothing less. And a bit more design-y.
Think of a database as spreadsheets that can have relationships between the data in the cells.
Start by sketching out a plan for organizing your information before you try to enter everything in airtable.
I’d start with this:
1. Create a Base called Customers. The first column should probably be Company Name. Then add columns for each piece of information you might collect. Eg. Contact person, Address, phone, email, hourly rate, Client Since, etc.
2. Create a Base called Services. This will be for all the services you provide and eventually could automate your estimating. (You said you want to generate standard estimates from a list of services). So first column is Service and might include Logo Design, Small Website, Large Website. Then add columns for things like Description, Cost. (Note: cost could be a $ value, or it could be hours which then gets multiplied by the Hourly Rate value from your Customers database. Do you see how planning ahead of time will help?
3. Create a Base called Estimates. First field should be Estimate Number, and Airtable can generate a sequence. Then, create Estimate columns that “relate” to other bases. Get it? So you have a column for Customer and that pulls from the first column of your Customer base. The following columns might be Service 1, Service 2, and so on. This could allow you to pull in from your Services base and VERY quickly generate estimates. You can have Airtable generate PDFs.
4. Create a Base called Invoices. First column should be Invoice #. Then create columns that pull from your other Bases (Customer, Services). Now, at this point you could create columns inside Invoices Base to track payments, or you could create a new Base for payments. This would depend on questions like: do clients pay all at once or in two chunks? Or do you want to have monthly payment plans. If you have complex payment options, you may want your own Base to track payments.
Here’s why Airtable is great:
once you get set up, you can enter and lookup info manually, like if you meet a new client at a bar or networking event. And you can easily set up a form for new clients to request an estimate, or for existing clients to request an estimate. They can input their name and contact info and even select from a list of Services they want and you can basically automate the entire process. All the data gets input directly in airtable and you can edit it manually if you need.
Plus you can scale it up and even create dashboards for yourself and output profitably reports or anything you can imagine.
Airtable can also generate emails or pdfs or feed data to other sources. Like your website.
Airtable is extremely customizable, scalable, and is more elegant than most business software. And a good community of users and people who extend it via APIs and Zapier.
If all this seems too complex, just use Notion or Google Sheets until you’re ready to scale up. No biggie.
For your second point, hire an account to advise you.
- capn_ron3
Thanks for the responses all. I plan on starting in a google doc tonight to get a progress list going for each person who has contacted me with status and info and whether any jobs were done for them.
I've heard of Airtable and am going to look into it more.
I know the tax question is always iffy, but i'm in California USA so i'm trying to make sure i won't owe anything at the end of the year. I'm already paying quarterly taxes and saving all my business receipts to offset.
Moving forward i'm going to just keep tryiing to make progress rather than overthink things. Motion is better than being stuck.
- nb3
Your city, town or state almost definitely has some sort of small business advisory association. Typically, they have people that can answer all these types of general business questions like taxes, write offs, licensing requirements, how to hire or subcontract.
In my experience, the organization is set up because the local government really wants small businesses to succeed because it’s very good for the owner and the community.
When I started out, I was introduced to these folks and I remember thinking I was too small for their help, and that somehow “design is difference, they don’t know my industry”. I could not have been more wrong. Get to know them. Take their advice. Use them for free legal advice and as a free biz & accounting consultant.
- capn_ron1
I just got going on airtable and it seems like a good place for me to start some organization. I was going to set up a google doc for contacts and such, but airtable seems to integrate pretty well for me.
As for what you're recommending nb, I agree. I need to seek more advice and will look into the association here in cathedral city, ca. I've been a lot more vocal lately with friends about this all and have received some great advice already. I was a little like you where i didn't want to ask because design is "different". I'm really just trying to be as organized in this beginning process as i would be on any design project so that it goes as smoothly as possible. I also want to make things automated so i'm not doing estimates, invoices, etc from scratch everytime.
I appreciate the feedback so far.