The four documents a job actually needs

The admin side of commissioned work has a reputation as an ogre, and it is wrong. It takes four documents and one address. Everything else is optional, and a fair amount of the rest is actively harmful.

This article is the map. Each part points at the subject in detail, because none of them summarises honestly in a paragraph.

1. The quote: what you will do, and what it costs

It answers one question, and it is not the price: what is included.

Everybody puts the price in. What is almost always missing, and costs the most, is how many rounds of feedback are included and what the next one costs. A quote that says nothing about rounds is a quote that gets argued about on the third round, which is to say once you have already done the work.

• What a freelance quote needs
• How many rounds of feedback to plan for, and how to write it down
• Getting a quote approved remotely, without e-signature software

What breaks without it: the scope argument, six weeks later, with no referee.

2. The brief: what the client tells you, and which then stops moving

The only one of the four the client fills in, and the most important of them. See the end of this article.

Two properties make it useful, and the second is the neglected one: it is complete, because it asks the boring questions nobody raises unprompted; and it is frozen, because it is the only version you can reread in six weeks without having to take anybody's word for anything.

• The eight blocks that come up in every trade
• What a brief form needs, trade by trade
• The questions to ask, trade by trade

What breaks without it: you start on what was said on the phone, and "we agreed that" becomes a conversation where you are both honestly certain of different things.

3. The delivery: an address, not a send

The whole distinction is in those two words, and it is invisible on the day the files go out.

An expiring link makes the delivery an event. Six months later there is nothing left to look at, so the client writes, and you spend forty minutes working out which version went.

• Delivering files to a client without WeTransfer
• A client comes back six months later and wants their files again

What breaks without it: the "could you resend" email, indefinitely, for every client and every job.

4. The invoice, and the order the money arrives in

The document is simple; what matters is when it arrives.

One rule carries nearly all of it: the balance is due at the moment the client collects their work, never after. An invoice issued after delivery has no leverage behind it, and that is where nine out of ten late payments come from.

• Deposit, balance, delivery: the order to ask for money in
• An unpaid invoice: the three chases, and what comes after

What breaks without it: the money arrives after the work, so it arrives late, so sometimes it does not arrive.

And one address: the place the client looks

Not a document, but the thing that removes half your incoming messages.

A good deal of what a client writes is not a request, it is a check: "where are we at?" means "tell me this is normal". Somewhere they can look on their own removes that half, and it is not a weekly report, which would be a fifth job.

• What your client cannot see, and why they keep asking where things stand
• Where every job stands, without a spreadsheet

What not to add

This is the useful half of the article, because this is where people make life hard for themselves.

A CRM. Unless you run real outbound sales, you have clients, not opportunities. A list of clients with their details is enough, and an empty CRM becomes obvious within three weeks.

A project management tool. A five-column board that has to be kept up to date is a second job, and it is the one skipped when the day is busy. Which is to say always.

A contract for every job. In most cases an accepted quote is one. A separate contract earns its place on a substantial amount, an unusual ownership clause or an ongoing commitment, not on an eight-hundred-pound job.

A weekly report. The fifth job. It lasts three weeks, and stopping it is more noticeable than never having started.

E-signature software, by default. It has a real domain, and it is not the ordinary job: every step between the yes and the start costs you some of the yeses.

Time tracking, if you bill fixed price. It is very useful for a different reason, which is knowing your own estimating gap, and that is the subject of how long a job actually takes. But it is not one of the job's documents.

The one-hour setup

All of this is written once. Concretely, this week:

1. Write your questions, properly, for your most frequent service. It is the only long task on this list and the one that pays back most often.
2. Make a quote template that already contains the rounds of feedback and the price of an extra one.
3. Decide the order of the money: how much on order, when the rest. Once, not per job.
4. Decide where a delivery lives, and make it somewhere that still exists in a year.

Then you never do it again. That is the point of a template: the cost is paid once and the saving is monthly.

If you only fix one thing

The brief. Without hesitation, and for a structural reason rather than a preference: it sits upstream of the other three.

An incomplete brief makes the quote wrong, since you are pricing what you assume. It makes the delivery wrong, since you deliver what you understood. And it makes the invoice arguable, since the client compares what they received against what was in their head rather than against what they wrote.

The other three repair symptoms. That one is upstream of everything.

And a form does not quite do it, for a reason that shows up on your third job: a form is not a job.

Frequently asked questions

What documents does a freelance job actually need?

Four: a quote saying what is included, a brief filled in by the client and then frozen, a delivery that is an address rather than a send, and an invoice whose balance falls due at handover. Plus somewhere the client can look on their own.

Do you need a contract as well as a quote?

Rarely. An accepted quote is one in most cases. A separate contract earns its place on a substantial amount, an unusual ownership clause or an ongoing commitment, not on an eight-hundred-pound job.

Does a freelancer need a CRM?

Unless you run real outbound sales, no: you have clients, not opportunities. A list with contact details is enough, and an empty CRM becomes obvious within three weeks.

Where should you start if you have nothing set up?

With the brief, because it sits upstream of the other three documents. An incomplete brief makes the quote wrong, the delivery wrong and the invoice arguable. The other three repair symptoms.

How long does setting all this up take?

About an hour, once: write your questions for your most frequent service, make a quote template containing the rounds of feedback, decide the order of the money, and decide where a delivery lives. After that it does not need doing again.