Time management and invoicing software for freelancers

Overview

Working as a freelancer instructor, it is often hard enough to manage your diary let alone having to keep track of which classes need to be invoiced. As an experienced instructor herself, our client, My Class Depot, spotted an opportunity to simplify the way freelancers do their administration and so improve their efficiency. Together with her, we designed and developed a responsive web app which enables freelancers to regain control of their classes and finances. Reminding them where they need to be next, prompting for class numbers and automatically generating and sending the relevant invoices at the month end.

Functions

To improve the productivity of instructors, regardless of industry, we equipped the web-based platform with the following features:

• My profile – to save all the necessary personal information, including public liability insurance and first aid certificates, providing easy synchronisation with Google Calendar and PayPal accounts
• Venues – to add and store details of each venue where classes take place, including the address, contact details and billing cycle
• Classes – to add and store details of each class, including the day, time, teaching venue, type of class and pricing
• Scheduling – to schedule upcoming classes and synchronise the events with Google calendar
• Notifications – to set up pop-up class-reminder notifications; instructors also receive reminders to update their documents and class attendance figures
• Invoicing – invoices are generated automatically at the end of each billing cycle and sent as PDFs to the designated contact at each venue and the freelancer instructor

Benefits

With our intuitive and easy-to-use solution, freelancer instructors gain the following:

• Better control – instructors can view past, present and future classes at each teaching venue in a convenient format which can be synchronised with Google calendar
• Accurate invoicing – automatically submits invoices directly to the teaching venue at the end of the billing cycle, with a copy to the instructor, ensuring correct and prompt payment for the classes taught
• Renewal reminders – generates automated reminders as public liability insurance and first aid certificates come up for renewal

Success story

Our client is a yoga teacher who was looking for a way to make working as a freelancer easier but couldn’t find any existing solutions that would do everything she wanted. So she decided to take things into her own hands and asked us to help her to create the system that she really wanted – quick and simple for freelancers to keep on top of their finances for work they have done. Now our powerful web-based platform is being used by more and more freelancers, especially fitness professionals, all over the UK.

Project facts

• Team – Developers 3 (Backend dev 2, Frontend 1), Designer 1, QA 1, BA 1, PM 1
• Project management – Scrum for production and Kanban for maintenance
• Technology – ASP.NET MVC, ITexsharp, AngularJS, CSS