How many tools does it take you to get paid for one project?
by•
I counted mine for a recent freelance project:
A Google Doc for the proposal, exported to PDF
An e-sign tool for the contract
Drive and WeTransfer for files
WhatsApp for "any update?" messages
A spreadsheet invoice I rebuilt by hand
Three polite follow-ups before the payment came in
That's six tools and a lot of copy-pasting for one client.
Curious how others handle it:
What does your stack look like from proposal to payment?
Which step eats the most time? For me it's chasing payments.
Have you found a setup that ties it all together, or made peace with the chaos?
Freelancers, agencies and solo founders all welcome. Would love to steal your workflows.
19 views
Replies
I build an invoicing tool, so read this with that bias. When I mapped the same chain, the number of tools was not what cost the time. Retyping was: the proposal lines typed again into the invoice, the total typed again into the email, the bank details typed again into every follow up.
So the two joins I built first were those. A quote goes out with an accept button in the email, and once the client accepts it becomes the invoice with the same lines. And the invoice email carries its own pay by card button. That second one changes what a follow up is: it stops being a request for money and becomes the same link again, one click away, which is a much easier message to send and to answer.
What I have not solved is the chasing itself. There are no automatic reminders in it yet, and I still think the second message is a person job. The one thing that helps is knowing whether the invoice was opened at all before writing it, because not opened and opened but ignored need different messages.
Contracts and file transfer I left out completely. An e-sign tool and a shared folder do those jobs well. On your list I would go after the WhatsApp step first: when the email itself is the place to pay, most of the any update messages have nothing left to ask.