We put a lot of effort into starting projects; from nurturing prospects through to agreeing terms and requirements. But what about when projects are completed – how do you wrap up and complete projects?

In order to keep a good relationship and possibly win future business with the customer, doing a project hand over is just as important as the project start.

What to include in the hand over….

So you have a web site, and the web site has a nice Contact Us page, and maybe you have even done some extensive A/B version testing to see what layout will get the most enquiries. That’s all great, but….

PostHeaderIcon Are you planning for your freelance future? Why you must act now, before its too late!
PostDateIcon June 19th, 2012 | PostEditIcon Edit

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attended a freelancing workshop with about 120 other freelancers. This workshop covered all kinds of subjects, from legal issues, to finding work, to working with agents and also finance. It was an ‘advanced’ workshop – all the subjects were based around the assumption you had been freelancing for a while, so the presentations and discussions covered the more advanced aspects (such as better haggling with agents/clients/bank managers, dealing with difficult legal issues, expansions, overseas markets, etc).

As part of the freelancing discussions around finance, there was a general question asked – who in the group was planning for the ‘end game’? The definition of an end game was left open – it could be retirement, or selling the business or emigration or even returning back to the (shud

Over the weekend I met up with another small business owner and we got chatting over a few beers. He was slightly depressed about the state of his business, and that fact in the last two years he had seen no growth. Nothing. Zilch. Zip. His turnover and profits for 2011 and 2010 were almost identical to 2009.This made him nervous, because everybody was talking about growth. New customers, new was of selling, new products, new price structures grow, grow, grow was the key messages he was seeing. To stay static was to stagnate and die.

Whilst it can be good to rub shoulders with other people (saves going stir crazy at home), one of the problems that a busy freelancer can face is the distraction of office talk. Who is going out with whom, what happened at last nights party, and what happened in the program that was on TV last night.All of this can be very distracting when you are desperate to complete a project and get the invoices raised.

Whilst it can be good to rub shoulders with other people (saves going stir crazy at home), one of the problems that a busy freelancer can face is the distraction of office talk. Who is going out with whom, what happened at last nights party, and what happened in the program that was on TV last night.All of this can be very distracting when you are desperate to complete a project and get the invoices raised.

I have a confession for you: for the last couple of months, I have been having a real struggle to make both my company current account and my own personal account balance. At the end of both March and April, I have really come close to running out of money. For instance in April, I only had 12 left over in my personal account from the start of the month to the receipt of the April pay cheque.But you know what. I love it. These two months have caused worry, caused stress, and at times it has caused panic. But it has been really useful.

A question for you: When you look back at your historical quotations, estimates and proposals, is it clear on the documents how long the figures are valid for?

Put it another way, what happens if a prospect from a few years ago knocks on your door and expects you to honour the quotation you produced which is based on your 2006 prices? Do you honour it, or do you expect that you can refresh the quotation with the current prices and everybody will be happy?

Last week, my business made £1,180 from a customer without doing any work. All it took was for this particular customer to pay their invoices late. This one customer was over 80 days late in their payment, and the amount was large.

When working with my customers, most of the products I deliver are based around Business Intelligence. I provide tools for them to perform quick analysis by dragging selection criteria (in the form of column names) into windows, and selecting which information they want to report – the tools then crunch large amounts of data and produce answers in the form of tables, graphs and trend plots. Using such tools, they can quickly report on anything from yearly turnover, number of patients seen in a hospital, or breakdown of budget verses actual figures.

But what if they (or the system) gets the answer wrong?