General | Paymo.biz

We’ve been working on a couple of new features and tweaks that we hope you’ll enjoy.
Here’s a list of new stuff that has been made available in the past few weeks:

• no more messing around with CSV files if you work with Excel. You can now export any report directly into the Microsoft Office Excel format
• for all Google Apps users we’ve enabled direct exports for reports & invoices to Google Docs in PDF format
• you can now add internal notes to your invoices and all your invoice payments
• we’ve expanded the backup functionality to include task comments, discussions and invoices
• invoicing now supports Quebec tax rates

If you have any questions about the new features please let us know!

“Together we can do more” is a well known byword that we gladly submit to. Today we have joined forces with our friends at 123ContactForm – a professional online form and survey builder for a special offer. You will get a 35% discount with the top plan of 123ContactForm. This means $10.55 off for a month and $105.05 off for ONE YEAR.

This offer is available to all Paymo users. Whether you have recently signed up for Paymo or you are a long time user, you can get the discount for 123ContactForm by signing up with the promo code below:

123LOVESPAYMO

You can register for the top plan using the code here. 123ContactForm is an effective tool for creating any type of web form and survey as easy as 1-2-3, with no programming experience required. The intuitive interface makes it fun to customize and manage your contact forms, surveys, order forms with payment integration, event registration forms. You can also sign up for the free plan, which offers all the basic features of form building.

So you’re new to freelancing: you’ve tinkered with your letterhead design, perhaps chosen your official pen, but without clients you’re going nowhere fast. Many new freelancers find it hard to figure out where to start looking for clients, and sometimes more experienced freelancers forget about the classics when trying to mentor a newbie. They might have a great new trick worth listening to, but they built their sales process on learning through trial and error and persistence with the classic approaches. Here are the five ways that you can start looking for clients before the day is out, without feeling like you need to take a sales course just to get started.

1. Search for Postings

Often, potential clients will post an ad looking to fill their needs online, through job boards and similar sites. These aren’t ideal once you’re established, as you have more negotiating power when the client comes to you. However, they’re great for building some momentum in the beginning, and you can always return to trawling postings when business is getting slow.

2. Word of Mouth

Word of mouth is the best form of marketing. Word of mouth marketing generally takes place from one party who has used your services to another who is need of your services, in a setting where the seeker already trusts the recommender. This means you don’t need to work as hard to prove that you can handle the job because the recommendation has already created credibility. Word of mouth marketing is best achieved by doing a great job for every client — no matter how you’re feeling.

3. Advertising

If you’ve got some capital, you can try advertising your services. Pay per click is the most frequently used form of advertising because of its low cost of entry, using networks such as Google AdSense. If your products or services have consumer appeal then you can try advertising on Facebook. Banner ad networks like BuySellAds can help you place your ads on specifically targeted websites, and traditional media such as radio can be worth a shot if you want to target local prospects.

4. Events

Hit conferences, the local chamber of commerce and other business events to get your name out there and tell people how you can help them. Even if you’re catering to clients around the globe, it makes sense to take advantage of events in your local area to get local clients — every avenue unexplored means fewer sales. Get a set of business cards before you head out but also remember that you need to tell the people you meet how you can solve their problems — not just slap a piece of cardboard in their hand.

5. Cold Calling

Everyone hates it, but its a tried and true approach: pick up the phone and start dialling. Don’t give up after your first ten rejections, either. Cold calling takes persistence. Lots of persistence. However, hone your approach and test different scripts and voices as you go; if you don’t improve your game you won’t improve your conversion rate. Cold emailing works similarly.

What can you do to strengthen client relationships, ensuring that they are happy with your work and ready to hire you again for the next job? Aside from being great at what you do, there are a number of approaches seasoned freelancers and small businesses bring to their relationships with clients that strengthen and prolong them.

Customer service is number one.

You might be a one-person operation, not a corporation with a call center, but customer service is still your number one priority. Most freelancers operate as though a great deliverable is their number one priority, and while it’s certainly important that everything you hand over is high quality, the way you treat a client as a result of the mindset that customer service is key will improve your business for the better.

Know what they know about your field.

It helps to communicate with your client about what you’re producing if you know exactly what their level of knowledge is. A client who is a programmer will more readily understand what you’re doing with your code than a client whose came up an accounting career path. Sometimes, a client who has some but not much experience with your field is a dangerous thing — they send you in inadvisable directions and can be hard to talk off the cliff, and you’ll need to learn how to handle this situation.

Communicate clearly.

Far too much communication between client and contractor comes from unclear communication. Nine out of ten emails or calls end up clarifying what was meant to have been established in previous communications. Always be clear and thorough, but not long-winded. Staying concise helps make the message comprehensible, as long as you don’t sacrifice thoroughness for conciseness, and strong clarity is preferred to polite, flowery wording.

Get to know the company and market.

If you know the company, its history, its management team and its products or services, it’s much easier to make good decisions whether you’re a copywriter, designer, developer, or project manager. If you know the market and the industry even better, you can provide services that give your client the most competitive edge — a trait that’ll have you brought back to the table for the next project instead of your competition.

Ask the right questions.

Freelancers often bemoan the inability of clients to paint a clear picture of what they want, but often that’s why they’re hiring you: they don’t know enough to paint that picture. Despite the inexplicable complaining amongst freelancers, it is their role to discuss the project, draw out the details the client may think unrelated and put together a plan for approval. Know what questions you need to ask to draw out all the details you need before you can start making decisions, and play a role in educating the client where possible. It’ll be easier to work with them next time.

Running a freelance business can be costly — surprisingly so for those new to the gig. We’ve got a reputation for having a wide array of awesome deductions, and that’s true, but what’s even moreso true is that they are well deserved deductions. In this article, we’ll take you through 12 of the best deductions almost every freelancer can claim, but often newer players don’t bother with.

Of course, allowable tax deductions vary wildly from country to country. For those in the Western world, these should remain fairly consistent between countries with differences in the details, so consider this a jumping off point for further country-specific research.

Home office expenses

There are so many expenses incurred in running a home office and for many freelancers, this is unfortunately where the entirety of their deduction focus lies. As you’re about to see, it’s just the start — but certainly not to be ignored, because it can take a massive chunk off of that tax bill.

Internet, phone lines, mobile phones, office furniture, computers, utilities, stationery — there’s a laundry list of stuff that falls in this category. Make sure you check out the rules for each individual item in this category — you’ll often have to figure out the percentage of a net or phone connection that you use for business purposes as opposed to home purposes, or depreciate office equipment like computers over a few years and claim accordingly.

Research and publications

Need to buy a book for research, or you subscribe to a magazine that’s related to your field? You’re in luck — these are deductible expenses. As always, don’t jump the shark as you’ll need to be able to defend these deductions in case of an audit. No, that scuba diving magazine won’t fly if you’re a web designer who specializes in sites for politicians.

Education

On a related note, education that relates to your field is deductible. You can’t take classes in order to get into a new field and deduct them, but if you’re advancing your knowledge of the field you are already in you’re in luck.

Though this largely hearkens back to research and publications, textbooks and other expenses required by the class but on top of the class fee itself are generally deductible.

Meals, entertainment & other client meeting expenses

Some clients sure like to be wined and dined. I’ve heard of clients who will play hard to get just to try and get a business diner out of a service provider’s inner salesman. Fortunately, these pricey adventures — and their more common cousins, the coffee shop meeting — are deductible.

Beware your country’s laws, though — in some, such as the United States, you’ll only be able to claim 50% of the cost, not the entire bill.

PayPal fees

Many modern freelancers conduct business across and even within borders using PayPal. Despite its astronomical fees, this service is used out of convenience more than anything else — but if you go for that convenience you’ll feel it when the money gets to your bank account.

While it doesn’t quite make up for the loss of large chunks of your fees, you can deduct those fees from your taxable income. Small blessings.

Subcontractors

As you scale your sole proprietorship into a small business, or if you simply need to palm off some work when things get busy from time to time, you’ll find yourself using subcontractors more and more as time goes on. Fortunately, these expenses are deductible. Since they can be huge expenses — especially when they are ongoing — you’d find yourself unable to pay your tax bill without these deductions, so be sure to apply them.

Advisors

In a similar category to subcontractors are advisors who you go to for help with the running of your business — accountants, lawyers, business planners and the like. For business purposes, these guys are all deductible. If you use the same lawyer for business purposes as you do for personal matters, though, you’ll need to deduct only those bills that pertain to the business.

Unpaid invoices

What happens when a bad client doesn’t pay an invoice? Obviously you’re not going to be liable for tax on the amount you’re invoicing for as you never received payment, but what few freelancers realize is that you can actually write off the amount of that invoice as a bad debt. You spent time working and didn’t get paid for it, so it makes sense that the tax office should help you mitigate how that affects your tax bill.

Payments to non-profits

In some countries such as the United States, charitable donations are not valid business expenses. If you’d like to use your business to support non-profits while getting a tax deduction, though, you can opt for a marginally different solution: payments to non-profits for products or services.

In some countries donating to registered charities may qualify you for a tax deduction, so be sure to check out your local laws.

Health insurance premiums

If you’re coming from a full-time job to freelancing, one of your big concerns may be the lack of benefits such as health insurance. Most governments make this easier on the self-employed by allowing the cost of health insurance to be deducted from taxable income.

There are some conditions in most areas that you’ll need to check. You have to be paying the premium yourself, and if your spouse has a health care plan that covers you, your own health insurance won’t be eligible for deduction.

Car usage

Unless you work exclusively from your home office, you’ll likely be putting in some miles in the car getting to client meetings, co-working locations and cafes with Wi-Fi. You can keep meticulous mileage records and deduct your actual expenses incurred, or you can use the standard mileage rate determined by your country’s tax authority.

If using the actual expense method, which requires you to calculate the percentage of driving you did in a year that was business-related and deduct only that percentage of the costs, be sure to include expenses other than gas alone. Car services, repairs, and other maintenance costs can be included in the calculation.

Travel

Expenses incurred in taking business trips are tax deductible. There are a bunch of conditions that tax authorities impose in order to ensure you can’t deduct for any old holiday. There must be a pre-determined business-related purpose for your trip, outside of your own city, and be overnight or longer.

Travel is a big audit flag, as with car usage, so keep your records meticulous and don’t try and push the limits of your claims (not that you should be doing this at all to begin with). That said, it’s a fair business deduction so don’t let that scare you off — just be careful.

Though these 12 items are the biggest deductions that most freelancers will be able to make, there are plenty more possibilities — often niche items that apply to specific professions. Let us know about the little-known legitimate deductions that make your tax season a bit easier in the comments.