The gloom and doom of winter are supposedly behind us and we can look forward to warmer days and lighter nights. It’s a time that you may start planning your summer holiday or decide to get out in the garden and start on the jobs that you can’t do in winter.

Spring time gives you a new lease of life. Why not inject some of this feeling and enthusiasm into your freelance business.

In this article we give you our top 5 tips for sprucing up your freelance business for spring:

Sort out your invoices

One freelancer described invoicing as a ‘necessary evil’. They know they need to do it in order to get paid but they can find any excuse not to get it done.

Invoicing isn’t difficult but the way you are doing it maybe. If you are keeping track of invoices and finances using an excel spreadsheet, maybe its time to consider upgrading to a more seamless system. Cloud accountancy software now has the option for you to send out invoices automatically. Here at Cogent, we use FreeAgent, and we have had great feedback from freelancers who find using the system seamless.

Touch base with your accountant

The dreaded self-assessment is over for now. But, this doesn’t mean you should slink off your accountant’s radar.

Someone once said that your accountant should be your business’s best friend. Yet, many freelancers’ put off reaching out to their accountant. Why? They are not scary! Well, we aren’t!

Accountants are not just there to sort out your tax return’s they are also a source of important and helpful information. Importantly, for freelancer’s they can offer advice on how to run your business more tax efficiently.

Reconnect with contacts

If your business was booming in 2016, and it looks like it will be in 2017 as well. It’s still important for freelancers to keep their pipeline of your work flowing.

Who knows what might happen. For instance, your main client may have to cut back on budgets and this means cutting back on the number of hours they engage your services. If this happened, what impact would it have on your business and revenue?

Use spring as a time to send out a ‘what have you been up to?’ email to past clients and colleagues. And, speak to other freelancers to see they are up to. Or, spend some prospecting for new clients on social media.

Strive to keep your pipeline flowing to stop a revenue drought.

Update your portfolio

When you first started freelancing you would have been told by other freelancers that having a portfolio is essential. You would have probably gone off searching for examples of your work that you could showcase to potential clients.

As you become more established in your work, and you find clients through word of mouth recommendations, your portfolio can take a back seat and you might have become slack with keeping it up to date.

How long has it been since you looked at your portfolio? Do the examples you have on there reflect the type and quality of work you produce now?

If not, take a couple of hours to go through it and add new examples of your work.

Get some training

Spring is the time when new life is developed, put some new life into your freelance business by brushing up on your skills.

Even if your business is booming and you feel at the top of our game. There is always something you can be doing better or you could learn a new skill that you can offer as an extra service to your clients.

Maybe, you need some tips on how to stay motivated, or how to switch off and relax. These are things that freelancers are not very good at. Being a freelancer can consume your life, but thinking about work 24/7 is not good for the mind and body. Learning techniques that allow you to disconnect from your business could actually help it.

Is your freelance business looking for a new accountant? Speak to Cogent 020 952 2234 and find out how we can help you.