Your Freelance Business Review Checklist

Not surprisingly, the end of the year is an ideal time to review your small business operation for the past twelve months and gear up for Q1 of the new year.

However, it’s not just the end of the year that is a good time to review your business; you can, and should, give your business a periodic review at any time. Being proactive in regularly reviewing your business and ensuring you are on track with your freelancer goals is a great habit to develop.

Here are 4 areas to cover and questions to consider asking when reviewing your freelance business.

1. Procedures

Now is a good time to review which systems and processes in your business need improvement, outsourcing, or removal. For example, your review may reveal glitches in your current client onboarding process that need improvement; perhaps a client proposal template needs revising, or you’ve noticed you’ve missed a step in your offboarding process and need to ask for client referrals at this stage.

Do you need any new tools to help you better function, streamline processes, stay competitive, and, of course, save money? Can you switch to the free version of the tools you currently use, or do you require more functionality, so you need to upgrade?

2. Finances and accounting

Are you on track with your financial goals? Did you make a healthy profit this year, or did the end results leave room for improvement? Where and when were finances tight? Why was this, and what actions can you take to change it for the better?

How’s your business banking? Could you get a better deal elsewhere? Does your bank do everything you need it to do, or does it unnecessarily hinder you in some way?

What about payments coming in? For example, did you experience late payment of your invoices? Or payments going out? Were any vendors paid late, and did you incur any late fees as a result? Were there any excesses or unexpected costs you hadn’t budgeted for? Likewise, are there any expenses you could reduce?

3. Clients and customers

Clients are the lifeblood of freelance businesses, so it’s important you work with the right ones, who pay on time and are easy to work with. In your review, it’s helpful to identify which clients you enjoyed working with during the review period, which ones weren’t quite the right fit, and why that was the case.

Another aspect of a client review is whether you need to consider adding additional services to your offer to cover client needs, or if you need to create and launch a product.

Did marketing hit the mark and attract the right clients? Were your small business marketing efforts effective, or were the majority of your clients word of mouth or client referrals?

Likewise, depending on the review outcome, is there a case for you to change your definition of your ideal client (or customer), or do you need to pivot?

4. Time out and self-care

Another often overlooked but important area to review is self-care and getting quality time away from your business. For example, what happened when you took time off? Did everything run smoothly, or do you need to better plan ahead, automate workflows, hire freelance help or outsource some of your work when you take time off?

Or maybe you didn’t take enough quality time off this year, and have been burning the candle at both ends?

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At the end of the day, reviews are about discovering what worked and what didn’t in your business during the period, what unexpected things happened, and what lessons you can learn from them.

Naturally, the above questions don’t cover every eventuality or area, and they are not specific to any one business. However, they have hopefully given you some food for thought regarding potential questions and areas to consider when reviewing your small business, so you continue to thrive.