• 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!

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:

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.

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.

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.

It’s also far too easy to go down the rabbit hole and spend a bunch of your day distracted by an endless Wikipedia chain or refreshing currency exchange rates.

Unless you work for in an environment that requires constant connectivity say, at a tech news blog most of us can benefit from knowing when to fire up the browser and when to stay offline. It’s probably naive to suggest turning the Internet off altogether far too many apps and operations depend on it these days but staying out of apps like the browser, email client and messenger at certain times can certainly be advised.

Don’t Start Your Day Online

The natural instinct for most web workers is to check email and missed Skype messages as soon as we get into the office (or dining room, or whether the computer is). Many productivity experts suggest that we slow down a little and leave the communication overload until later in the day. Checking in with your task manager and selecting the tasks you’ll tackle that day, and more importantly right away, is a great alternative.

It’s good to choose the biggest tasks first, those that require the most concentration and take the most time, and get them out of the way earlier, as early as you can before your eyes get tired of looking at the screen in the afternoon. Then once you’ve got those big offline tasks out of the way your output session you can check in and handle email and the like.

Schedule Times to Check Your Email

Don’t stop at just avoiding email in the mornings. Once you check your email once later in the day you”ll be tempted to keep looking every five minutes. Everyone does it don’t even try and deny it! Unfortunately, it ruins a lot of potentially productive time.

To avoid this, try setting specific times to check and zero your inbox, like just after lunch and as the last thing you do before clocking off. Alternatively, if you feel you really should handle email in the morning, try clearing it first thing, closing it, and not coming back to it until 5PM.

What If I Need to Check Facts?

Many of us are constantly firing up a Google search to check facts or do some research on a topic. It’s better not to interrupt your train of thought or flow when you’re working on something, so you should just power on with the rest of the item until you’ve done all you can without getting the facts. Cory Doctorow suggests using the letters “TK” in a document to signify areas you need to check into further, he says these letters are very rarely combined in English, so shouldn’t fire too many false positives on a search through the document later.

Does This Context Require Connectivity?

If you are an adherent of the Getting Things Done productivity methodology, you have a tool in your kit to answer the question of “should I be online right now?” already. It’s called contexts. A context is used to describe the situation “tools, locations or people” that need to be available in order to complete the next action on a task list.

Fortunately, you can easily add contexts in your system that indicate your need to be online to complete them. Commonly used options include a simple “Online” context, or you can go further and divide them up by app “Online – Email” or “Online – Paymo” for example.

The good news is that steering clear of the Internet during your most productive hours doesn’t mean you can’t use Paymo. You can still track time without your browser open. Just make sure to download one of our desktop apps for Windows or Mac OS X, or our Dashboard widget. The widget can be downloaded by logging into your account, clicking on the Settings gear icon, and selecting Download Desktop App.

Here are a few tips for getting paid faster in the future. We stop short of discussing debt collectors, because by that stage it’s likely you’re chasing the last payment from a client you won’t work with again. These are tips for making gentle changes to get paid faster by a client you want to continue working with in the future.

Send smaller bills more frequently.

Sometimes smaller businesses balk when you send a bigger bill all at once given the effect it might have on cash flow. Instead of sending one monthly bill, you could try sending four weekly bills or two fortnightly bills. In some cases, such as with larger organizations who depend on many contractors, this may just irritate your client.

Even if the time between invoice submission and payment remains the same, since you are sending in more invoices on a faster timetable, you’ll be funnelled small amounts of money constantly instead of freaking out about the rent while you wait for that big monthly payment.

Maintain your relationship with the client.

It’s important to maintain your relationship with the client and keep them up-to-date with what you’re doing for them. If they know you’ve been on the job and you’ve developed a rapport with your client you’re much more likely to get paid faster than if you’ve developed an air of distance. It also helps to figure out who the financial controller is in larger organizations and get to know them so you can bypass the bureaucracy when needed.

Have a contract.

There are numerous benefits to having a contract that go far beyond the issue of payment, but a contract’s most useful feature is that it sets expectations in terms of payment, how payment will be done and how promptly it should be made. It also provides validation of the financial agreement in the event you need to pursue legal remedies to missed payments.

Charge interest.

A tried and true way to get your clients to pay before the deadline comes up is to include an interest charge in your terms. For each month the bill is late, you add a percentage on to the bill. Most of the time these rates are between 1 and 3 percent, but if you have a client who is perpetually late you could consider heftier penalties, though I’d not push it beyond 10%.

Give a specific deadline.

Don’t make the mistake of issuing an invoice that doesn’t have a deadline. “Please pay within 30 days” puts the reader of your invoice on a timer, whereas an invoice that’s simply payable on receipt doesn’t — even though it’s technically more urgent.

Use human terms.

Too many invoices use terms that sit somewhere between jargon and mathematical equations rather than personal communication. Remember that your bill will be paid by a human, not a robot. When you use readable sentences like “Please pay within 30 days” instead of “Net 30 + 3% interest/month overdue” you are more likely to get paid within 30 days.

It’s partially a connection thing — you empathize with other people, but not jargon, and it’s simply easier to read simpler sentences.

It’s not just the lack of expenses associated with word-of-mouth marketing that makes it so great. The conversion rates are higher, and you’re less likely to pick up the infamous crazy client.

Wondering how to increase the number of referrals you get? You’re in luck: here are ten tips that’ll boost your word-of-mouth contacts through the roof.

1. Always go above and beyond for your clients.

You get paid to do a job, and it goes without saying that you do it well. That’s a great foundation for getting referrals. But it doesn’t end there. Go one step above what you’re required to do for your clients, whether that’s putting in a couple of extra hours or exceeding quotas.

Things can be tight for freelancers and small businesses, leaving you with little extra time to put in extra hours or provide discounts, but try and locate one area of your business where you can sacrifice a little to keep clients happy and referrals inbound.

Under promise and over deliver.

2. Incentivize referrals.

It’s not uncommon to incentivize referrals and many freelancers and small business owners report marked increases in the number of referrals they receive after implementing one.

Typically, these incentives mean a discount for the client on the next one to six months of service you provide, and go as high as 10% (depending on the size of the contract the business generally deals with).

The incentive program should be developed in a way that makes the new work advantageous to your business even while the discount for the existing client applies — don’t structure things so that you lose money temporarily when you take on new clients through referral.

This works best if you’re not the only contractor of your type a company uses. If you provide all of a company’s web design services, they’ll probably recommend you anyway, but if you’re just one of a few hundred writers for a blog network that discount gives managers a real reason to recommend you.

3. Ask your clients outright.

Having a rough patch or on a drive for new business? Usually referrals are given when someone’s asking for a recommendation, but sometimes if you just ask your clients to let other businesses they’re friendly with know about you they’ll be willing to oblige.

The response rates on random shout outs are low, but because you were recommended by a party the recipient knows your credibility is greater than other cold techniques like direct mail and cold calling.

4. Get those business cards out there.

One of the first things we do when we start a new business is order business cards — it’s like a rite of passage. But for most of us, those cards end up in a drawer, or forgotten in a secret compartment of our wallet.

There’s a reason the business card became such a pillar of business practice. It’s the easiest way to share contact details and ensure there’s a reminder of you and your services in the possession of others who may serendipitously come across your details just when they need you or pass the card on to a more interested party.

The easier you make it for clients to pass on your details, the more they’ll recommend you to others.

5. Catch up with former clients.

Make sure you take time to get in touch with old clients every now and then. Don’t overdo it (once per year is a polite timeline) and be selective with your choices. If the client dropped you because you made some sort of Michael Scott-esque blunder you’re best leaving them off the list.

6. Make it easy to explain what you do.

It’s fine to have niches, but assigning yourself a title that is too niche-specific can be confusing. Never call yourself a social media expert (not even social media experts know what their job is) because those sort of descriptors kill referral opportunities when clients can succinctly explain the role.

Instead, use plain descriptors everyone understands, like Internet marketer, and you can mention that you specialize in social media marketing.

7. Make customer service a pillar of your business strategy.

Between equally matched professionals, the thing that sets businesses apart the most is customer service. Freelancers and small businesses looking to beat the competition can often make the most effective gains by focusing on this aspect.

While the freedom to work anywhere is one of the draws of a freelance life, the isolation can sometimes lead to viewing the client as the enemy — that pestering entity that always wants things changed at the last minute or looks for problems that aren’t really there.

A dedication to great customer service doesn’t just help you get referrals. It helps you stay sane by viewing your clients with a positive outlook and viewing great service to them as part of the package you sell. And cultivating sanity and a good, positive attitude to your work may be the greatest thing you can do for your referral rates.

8. Get feedback after project completion.

At the end of every project, gather feedback from the client. How happy were they with the result and your customer service throughout the process?

You can do this with a form through Wufoo or Formspring or an informal email. Either way, keep your questions brief — you don’t want to use up too much of your clients’ time, but you do want to find out where you could make changes that your client would notice and appreciate the most.

9. Identify your unique selling point and make it known.

Don’t be just another run of the mill writer or designer. Know what it is that sets you and your business apart from others — perhaps its your talent for writing case studies or your incredible mobile app interface design skills. Make it a part of your marketing message and include it in your pitches, on your website, and everywhere else so that those who recommend you know which strong points to talk up.

Many professionals fear that specializing in a niche will reduce the business they get, but if you do some reading you’ll find anyone who markets to a well-chosen niche does better than their generalist counterparts.

10. Spend time developing your professional networks.

Most of these ideas are tried and true methods that don’t require the use of any particular technology. But this tip is more important than ever, as more referrals are occurring online and via services like LinkedIn or even Facebook than ever before.

Spend time developing your professionally-oriented social network presences. Make sure you have one on LinkedIn that you regularly maintain. Facebook and Twitter are generally considered mandatory, but for most service businesses LinkedIn and Twitter are great places to start.

Don’t just keep your own details up to date. Share things that you find interesting even if they’re not from your site or blog, and participate in the ecosystem that makes sites like LinkedIn work by leaving recommendations for those you’ve worked with.

With these ten tips, you’re well prepared to increase referral rates and take on more business than ever before. But never forget that amazing work and great service is at the core of word-of-mouth marketing!

And while fudging such numbers may be profitable in the short-term, it’s no good for your long-term relationship with your client. Such things become obvious pretty quickly, and your reputation and integrity goes on the line. With the web, reputations linger longer than ever before.

But ensuring your invoices are dead accurate is only one of the useful ways that you can make use of time tracking apps. Sure, it’s the only intended usage, but that’s never stopped anyone from getting creative.

Motivation

When you need to complete a task and you’re facing a high level of mental resistance, setting a countdown is a great way to motivate yourself and get out of that rut.

You can give yourself a certain number of minutes to complete that task, start the count on your time tracker, and try and complete the task before the clock hits your target. This is a highly effective method that one implementation of it even has its own name — the Pomodoro Technique.

There’s software available specifically for this purpose, but you can use Paymo’s time-tracker to similar affect without dishing out for another app.

Introspection

If you’d like to take a closer look at the way you spend your time, start tracking everything you do. Taking a few minutes to surf the web? Track it. Having a quick coffee break? Track it. Whether it’s a business task or you’re doing something personal, track everything and keep specific records.

At the end of the day you can get a feel for where you’re misusing your time. By the end of the week, you’ll start to see some real trends. Even if you think you’re pretty efficient, you might be surprised by what the cold, hard facts reveal — and you might be even more surprised by how much productive time you can reclaim.

Price Optimization

You should be tracking the time you spend on every business task, regardless of whether you bill by the hour or by the project. Particularly when your business is new or you’re simply new to tracking your time, your price estimates can be way off base. Since your per-project pricing is probably based off an hourly estimate, you might find you are undercharging well below your ideal hourly rate when those projects routinely take longer to achieve.

Having a better understanding of how long each task you complete in your day to day work takes makes optimizing your estimates a much simpler job without the guesswork. Over time, your estimates will become better informed by reality and history until you get the art of estimating down to a science.

Estimate Overheads

Tracking time in order to improve your estimates for a job is one thing, but how do you factor in administrative work overheads?

Every business, freelance or otherwise, requires you to spend time keeping the books, working through your inbox and performing other tasks that don’t belong on any particular client’s invoice. But in order to spread the cost of these hours between all your clients fairly, you need to know how much of your time is going to be spent on those tasks.

Ensure that you don’t just track the tasks you complete for clients and get those administrative tasks recorded as well. After a few weeks, calculate how much your admin work costs you based on your ideal hourly rate compared to your billable hours, and alter your hourly rate to compensate.

We’d like to inform you about a special offer we’ve put together with our friends from Memonic

If you signup for a premium version of Memonic between the 8th of December 2010 and the 6th of January 2011 you get an additional 6 months premium membership PLUS a three month premium account for Paymo for up to ten users. Memonic will save you time as you Save the Essential, while Paymo will track your time, and help you with online billing & project management.

This limited time offer will bring you unlimited efficiency in 2011 – Buy now and give yourself and your colleagues the ultimate holiday tool!