Version # 1.02
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This the freelancing dashboard I've leveraged to help me flourish as a freelancer. Since I joined Airtable in 2016, I've been updating and improving this dashboard and i_t's inspired by the concepts in the book I've written called Path Of The Freelancer: An Actionable Guide To Flourishing In Freelancing. http://www.pathofthefreelancer.com_
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If you'd like to intentionally operate your freelancing work like a business, using the concepts of the book, this is the tool to help you take control and move forward.
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The dashboard view is designed to provide a in-progress snapshot of the most important numbers as the year progresses and ends. It also acts as a great view for comparing the progress and regress of multiple years.
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Manual Actions (Yearly)
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All of the numbers in each column will automatically populate after doing this.
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The tracking table is where we log the numbers for each month. It allows to keep a pulse on our freelancing business, it populates the dashboard view numbers and it allows us to view the data in different ways so we can make wise decisions.
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At the end of every month, I'll jump in here and update all the numbers across the board. I could have someone do this for me, but I like doing it myself so I can be aware of the information as I input it in. It forces my awareness.
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Manual Actions (Monthly)
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The payroll view helps me to know how much to pay myself and how when I run payroll. All the numbers are automatically calculated except the amount in the bank, the amount we want to keep in the bank and the amount of expenses we personally need reimbursement for. As an S Corp, I take some of my income as a salary(55%) and some as a dividend (45%). You may have to adjust these percentages in the formula or remove one if you don't need it.
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Manual Actions (Monthly)
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This view helps track our paid hour activity and allows us to see our progress and regress. It also shows earned income, the water tower (cash flow) amount, and our surplus money so we can easily correlate our activity to dollars.
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Manual Actions (Monthly)
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The projects table is designed for us to manage our freelancing operations actions. This is not intended to manage our clients projects. They would have a separate Airtable Base for their projects and tasks. What are the projects I've got going on to move my freelancing business forward? What are the tasks I need to sustain on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual basis?
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This is the primary view for my internal projects and is built upon the IDEMA framework (see about IDEMA below). When I started my freelancing business, I had more projects in Ideate, Discover, and Execute. As I've established a more stable freelancing business, I now mostly have actions under Maintain.
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Manual Actions (Daily/Weekly/Monthly/Annually)
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The grid view provides more control for setting up the project data and allows me to create a specific order so I can easily reset the order of maintain actions when they get out of whack or I get behind on my tasks. If you prefer a grid view to Kanban, simply use it instead.
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The people tab is our dashboard for our clients, their projects, our prospects and our contact database. It's setup in a way to make it as easy as possible to take care of our customer while also shaking the bushes for new work.
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This main dashboard is my primary place of operations for getting client work done and move prospects forward. The contacts are grouped and ordered by status. This goes from Urgent active clients down to strangers.
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This allows me to see all data for all contacts as some information is shielded in the main dashboard.
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This is a gallery view of active clients. It allows me to see their faces and have more of a personal touch with who I am working with.
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In this gallery view, I can quickly see who the rainmakers (People who refer paid work our way) are as a way to help me followup and touch base with them regularly.
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This view taps into the services table to calculate how much passive income we'll earn monthly and how much income we'll earn from ongoing client work.
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This view allows us to see and grade our active clients according to the Sweet Spot definition in Path Of The Freelancer. Ultimately we only want to work with Sweet Spot clients.
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This view is used for Zapier and by checking the field box, it will send a private email from me using a template I've defined inviting the contact to be a part of my list. If they respond yes, I'll check the box to add them to Mailchimp.
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This view is tied to Zapier so we can, with a click of a checkbox field, add them to our Mailchimp list.
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The services table allows us to log our historic and currently active service offerings. It also allows us to track our pricing and is used in the people table for calculating some of the income numbers. This view also allows us at a glance to see what clients are using each of the different services.
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The companies tab allows us to track the different companies we're involved with and which people are associated with them.
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**Freelancing Is Difficult. Are You Ready For This Rewarding Challenge? **After the shut down of [his marketing firm](http://www.noodleheadmarketing.com/ "Marketing Company Story"), [Jason Montoya](http://www.pathofthefreelancer.com/author "Jason Montoya") unexpectedly had numerous business owners and non-profit leaders requesting his help to solve their organization's communication problems. Facing numerous challenges as a new freelancer, he quickly integrated his business insights to move through the many familiar obstacles he faced. He then began sharing with other freelancers a framework of **eight vital achievements **that took him to a state of personal and vocational flourishing. Behind the cover of Path Of The Freelancer, he dives into these mile markers, unveils a blueprint and shares personal stories to help guide and equip other freelancers in their difficult but rewarding journey.
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Buy the book on Amazon at
https://www.amazon.com/Path-Freelancer-Actionable-Flourish-Freelancing/dp/1540735419/
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Or, learn more at
http://www.pathofthefreelancer.com/
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_Do you have questions or want help setting up this template base up for your freelancing business? http://www.pathofthefreelancer.com/contact_
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Learn more about IDEMA on Medium.
https://medium.com/@IDEMA/idema-a-framework-for-capturing-sustaining-ideas-91cc811d917
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_You can get to know me and follow my personal blog at http://www.jasonscottmontoya.com_