I'm blessed of late with clients who pay very promptly. Early, for the most part! But that doesn't mean that I shouldn't keep on top of things. To this end, I made sure and to set up a project management and invoice/billing tool so that I could easily create invoices through it, mark them as paid through it, and more importantly be reminded when the invoice came due.

For the first time yesterday I got a reminder that an invoice was overdue. I looked and sure enough, it hadn't been paid, though it was for a client that tends to be early time after time.  -- Read more

Ask a dozen freelancers what business tools they use, and odds are you'll get a dozen different answers. Personally, I've used everything from just a text file, to spreadsheets, to just a paper notebook. Depending on the kind of work you do, any one of these may be sufficient. However, this method doesn't scale when your business grows past a certain point--meaning that one day, if things are going well, you're going to look at your system and and realize that you actually have no idea of if you sent invoices to certain people, or when you sent them, and whether they've paid, and whether you got in touch with Shirley last week. -- Read more