Business Tools For Freelance Creatives

This is the golden age of freelance work, especially for creatives: designers, filmmakers, producers, animators, voiceover artists, audio engineers…

Nearly every week I get a call that sounds like, “I’ve decided to make the leap: I’m going freelance.”

…but what inevitably follows that phrase is a series of questions:

• How did you set up your LLC? Do I even need an LLC?
• What do you do for bookkeeping and invoices?
• How did you set up your website?
• etc.

There are so many good options and solutions for each of these tasks. Anyone can Google these. But sometimes it’s also helpful to hear what 1 person used that work well for them. That’s what this article is: the business tools that have worked well for me as a freelance writer.

LLC Setup

First… yes, you need an LLC. You don’t want to get sued and lose everything you own. Let your business be your business and you be you.

For me to create an LLC, I only needed 2 things:

1. To form the business with the state (for me, Georgia)
2. An EIN, for taxes

I chose to use ZenBusiness to accomplish the first task. For a premium, I have ZenBusiness auto-file my annual report with the state so I don’t have to worry about it each year.

After forming the business, an EIN can be registered for free via IRS.gov. So long as you have your business name picked out, all of this can be done in an hour.

Business Banking

With my LLC in place, I chose Novo for business banking. There are a few specific reasons I like Novo:

1. It’s free.
2. It allows you to separate your funds into virtual Reserves, including allotting a percentage of every income transaction to a specific Reserve. For example, I have 30% of every income transaction automatically put into a Reserve called “Taxes”. That way, when I pay my quarterly Estimated Taxes, the money is already set aside.
3. It allows me to pay contractors and receive payments with free ACH Transfers (i.e. direct deposit).
4. It allows me to accept credit card payments (via its Stripe integration).

There are a few things Novo does not do: issuing checks, wires, limitless ATM withdrawals, etc. But in the few (very infrequent) instances I’ve needed one of those services, I have been able to use a 3rd-party platform.

Bookkeeping/Accounting

With my business banking set up, I linked the account to QuickBooks Self-Employed. This is a cheaper, scaled-down version of QuickBooks. QuickBooks Self-Employed allows me to do the following:

1. Automatically import every business banking transaction
2. Attach receipts to every transaction (in case I get audited)
3. Assign every expense to a category for tax purposes (e.g. Legal fees, home office expenses, contract labor, etc.)
4. Exclude all personal expenses
5. Track all my driving miles for work projects
6. See my revenue, cash flow, and net profits at a glance
7. Export my data to a spreadsheet (to use when I file my annual taxes)

The one major feature of QuickBooks that I don’t use is their invoicing. I prefer to have my own template (in Google Docs) and to avoid fees on my payments.

Quarterly Estimated Taxes

Luckily, the government has come a long way with its online platforms. In addition to paying your federal quarterly taxes at IRS.gov, estimated taxes for your state can also be paid online on your state’s website (e.g. Georgia’s Tax Center site). These are free.

A Website

Websites don’t need to be complicated. SquareSpace has made it easy to set up a nice looking website within a few hours. It’ll cost you at least $200/year, but it’s still one of the easiest ways to pass around a clean, curated portfolio.