Notion Project Manager for Freelancers and Small Businesses 📚

This Notion template is the perfect way to keep track of past, present, and future bookings. An ideal way to offload information into a visually accessible and approachable database so you're no longer second-guessing.

If you're working with First Holds, Second Holds, inquiries, direct-to-client work, studio bookings, or all simultaneously, this template can help you organize your work life. Back when I started freelancing, I used to leave everything in my email inbox. I would navigate around, reaching past emails to figure out dates I had agreed on, inquiries pending, and even rates that were now outdated. Switching to a Notion database was the beginning of the end of my mess. After more than a year of tweaking and experimenting with this template, I feel that it has reached a point where it's useful to be presented publicly and ready to be enjoyed by other freelancers :). If you're working with multiple rates for different clients and currencies worldwide, things will get even better.

The way it is structured, this template flows in the same order as your projects, top-to-bottom from an initial inquiry or hold to a completed and paid-for project/booking. There are multiple custom formulas that will indicate status tags to make sure you're not falling behind on an inquiry, automatically convert all EUR, USD, and GBP into a single currency, calculate a project bill based on the number of working days of a booking and keep track of your history with different clients.

There are two databases that are linked to each other:

• a Clients & Studios database, and a Projects database. The Clients & Studios one serves the purpose of logging the studios and clients you work for, including properties for your point of contact, website, rate, region, and the currency they use.
• the Projects database is the main database, and will also link with the Clients & Studios to automatically present the right information for each project. As you move from a "Hold" status to "Ongoing" and "Completed", different views offer relevant information for each section.
  

Lastly, just a note: If you're working with multiple currencies, there's a caveat. Because exchange rates vary daily –and especially this past year– these final numbers are an approximation. Personally, I set them up with a bit of margin so I always end up seeing a little more on my account than my template is showing (rather than the other way around!). I still use a different tool for my accounting that has real, accurate numbers after conversion.

Otherwise, if you're using this template with a single currency, the numbers and calculations should be 1:1 accurate and a fair representation of the numbers.

I asked some friends to test this for me for 6+ months while I made adjustments and tweaks. This is what they wrote for me, including their own accolade...

"Since I started using the template keeping track of my holds, projects, and invoices has become a no-brainer. Definitely a must-have if you're your own producer, this will half the amount of effort you need to make to keep your schedules tidy up, I got it for free because I'm a friend of the creator (opinion 100% real though) but if I hadn't, I'd buy it without blinking."

- Gonzalo Miranda, 3D Art Director (Freelance)

"I've had the chance to use this Notion Template as my project management tool since the beginning of 2022 and I already can't live without it anymore. It's super convenient to use but also has all the features I need. It's the best way to know about all the dates & numbers around your (freelance) business. Also, the free version of Notion + this template is still way cheaper as a one time fee over a monthly subscription for similar tools."

- Linus Zoll, 3D Designer (Freelance)

"I was hesitant to try yet ANOTHER tool. It took me a couple hours to get used to the notion interface as I hadn't used notion a lot before this. BUT, let me tell you something, once I got the hang of things. This template changes everything. First holds, second holds, booking requests, invoices due, etc. It handles it all and it's really really simple to use. 100% recommend."

- Paul Esteves, Self-Proclaimed Prophet of Houdini (his words)