Project management as a freelancer: keeping an overview across multiple clients

Search for "project management for freelancers" and you get lists with Trello, ClickUp, Asana, Notion and Monday, usually with the same five features underneath: time tracking, project planning, invoicing, client management and reporting. Those lists are written as if a self-employed person works on one project and wants to bring structure to it. That is rarely the problem.

The problem for a self-employed person with multiple clients is not that a project is unclear. It is that you switch context five times a day and have to reload where you left off every single time. Project management software is software that tracks tasks, deadlines and progress; what a freelancer with multiple clients mainly needs is the answer to the question of what has to happen today, and for whom.

Does a freelancer need project management software?

Often not, and that is rarely written down. If you work on two or three assignments at a time with a steady rhythm, a notes app with a list per client is enough. You do not need a tool to collaborate, because there is nobody to collaborate with. You do not need reporting, because you are the reporting.

A tool only starts paying off the moment you recognise one of these:

• You start the day by asking which client would be angriest if you did nothing
• You find agreements by searching your mail instead of looking at a list
• You once promised a client something and only remembered when they brought it up
• You now work with a second freelancer and the two of you email each other tasks

If none of that sounds familiar, a tool saves you nothing. It only costs you the time to set it up.

What makes working for multiple clients different?

Working for several clients at once is a switching problem rather than a planning problem, and there are three things a tool built for internal teams does not solve by default.

Switching costs time, not the work itself. Every switch between Hokuspokus B.V. and Aurelius B.V. costs you a few minutes to read back in. A tool that solves this shows you per client what is going on, including the latest agreements, without digging through folders.

The client sees nothing. In an internal team everyone knows what is running. As a freelancer you have to actively show you are working, otherwise silence reads as doing nothing. That is exactly why many freelancers spend more time emailing updates than doing the work.

Everything is one person wide. If you drop out, everything stops. That is not a tool problem, but it does mean your agreements should live somewhere someone else could read them. A list in your head is not a backup.

What do the standard lists miss?

They miss two things consistently: they bundle features that solve different problems, and they ignore the link between your client list and your projects.

First, they lump time tracking, invoicing and project management together. That is convenient for the list, but it leads to the wrong choice. If what you mainly need is invoices and hours, pick accounting software with projects in it, not a project tool with an invoicing module bolted on. The question "what is my biggest problem" matters more than "which tool has the most checkmarks".

Second, they ignore the link between your client list and your projects. As a freelancer an assignment is almost always the result of a conversation you had earlier. When those two live in different tools, you retype everything. I wrote about that earlier in CRM for freelancers with multiple clients.

What should you look at if you do pick something?

Keep it short. Four questions are enough:

• Can I see what is running per client without opening a project first?
• Can a client follow along without me buying an extra licence?
• What happens to my data if I want to leave in a year?
• Can I set it up in an hour? If not, I am not going to use it.

That last one is the deciding factor in practice. A tool that takes an afternoon to set up rarely gets genuinely adopted by a self-employed person. The comparison of generic tools for people working with clients is in project management tools for agencies.

Where does Wecooking fit, and where does it not?

Wecooking is built around the idea that client, deal and project belong together. The project management shows you per client what is running, a won assignment becomes a project in one click, and your client can follow along through a client portal without you arranging anything extra. From 19 euros per month, everything included, currently free in beta.

Where it does not fit: there is no time tracking and no invoicing in it. If you are looking for exactly that combination package the lists recommend, Wecooking is not your answer and you are better off looking at something like Zoho One, Bonsai or accounting software with projects built in. Readers in the Netherlands and Belgium will also come across Teamleader and Gripp in that category. And if you work on two assignments with a client you speak every week, you probably need nothing at all.

Not sure whether your situation sits on the "just a list" side or the "I keep losing things" side? Trying it for free is faster than thinking about it for another month.