My first major freelance publication dropped a little over a year ago. Before then, I had no idea I could pitch and sell articles to websites and magazines. Getting paid…to write??? No one told me I could do that!
However, I learned early on that finances are the hardest part of freelancing. If you enjoy filling out forms, signing contracts, invoicing, not getting paid, and complicated taxes then this is the life for you.
I am a Capricorn who craves structure. My hobby (I swear this is not a joke) is making spreadsheets. I have 6 freelance-related spreadsheets, but today I’m going to focus on my finance one.
I switched from Google Sheets to Airtable because of the added functionality and ability to color code.
Disclaimer: this is not an ad for Airtable. As a writer, I’m an expert at performing labor for others for free. If Airtable wants to sponsor/hire me, I’m available, but honestly I just really love spreadsheets.
Airtable has four plans to choose from, but I use the free version. It’s free to sign up and if you do, please use my referral link so I can get more storage space and color options.
You can use any spreadsheet software to organize your finances, but I find Airtable’s drop down menus game changing.
I group my data into 8 different columns: publication, pay, stage, pay date, method, taxes, transferred, and tax year.
Most of these are self explanatory, but I want to clarify the others. Stage (above image) helps me track where I am in the payment process and lets me know if the responsibility is on my end or a publication’s.
Method is how I’m getting paid: direct deposit, check, or PayPal.
For taxes, I set an equation that calculates 30% of the number I type in the pay column. And, transferred is a check box I tick after I transfer that 30% into my savings account.
Shout out to every freelancer who had a hellish first year of taxes and warned others. Because of them, I put 30% of my freelancing income into a separate account. I intended to use this to pay any taxes I owed at the end of the year.
Fortunately, I work another part time job that takes taxes out of my paycheck and my wife has a full time position, so we didn’t owe any money to the IRS. Even better, I still had that 30% saved to do whatever I wanted with. I’m not taking any chances next year because we came really close to owing money.
I created a fake spreadsheet because I don’t want to put my own finances on display, but it’s identical to the one I use for myself.
Airtable automatically adds the numbers in a column which saves you the step of inputting an equation. In 2018, this person made $400 and put $120 aside for taxes. And, it looks like they’re struggling to get paid in 2019. Yay realism.
You can add other columns or options that suit your needs and group the data however you like. I group mine by tax year, but you could group by stage instead which would look like this.
If you prefer looking at data in different ways, you can use the views function. I like the standard grid view, but you can add their kanban view if you like dragging cards to different stacks like so:
Hope that helps! As I said, I have 5 more spreadsheets related to freelancing including pitching, current assignments, and submissions. Let me know if there’s any interest, and I’ll publish more of them.
UPDATE: I made a public template because I understand that not everyone is as enthusiastic about creating spreadsheets as I am.
Baylea Jones
Medium member since Feb 2019
Baylea Jones is a freelance writer and teacher living in Houston with her wife. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Western New England University.
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Generic drugs are copies of brand–name drugs that have exactly the same dosage, intended use, effects, side effects, route of administration, risks, safety, and strength as the original drug. … A generic drug, one used for hypertension, is metoprolol, whereas a brand name for the same drug is Lopressor.
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Generic brand 🆚 Name brand Throughout the world billions got one thing in common , shopping! Is the one thing we all must do weather it’s purchasing clothing , food etc: Everyday we head out and travel to our nearest supermarkets and purchase Food for our homes.
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Just because we listened to God yesterday, doesn’t guarantee we’ll listen today. Or that if we do, we will obey.
Let’s face it. We probably all have selective hearing when it comes to hearing and obeying God. So often we probably obey because we were going to anyway.
