Tracking deadlines

heather_lusk · ‎02-01-2021

For anyone who has lots of small projects, how do you keep track of your deadlines? Upwork only allows to-do lists for hourly clients and no tracking methods for milestones other than looking at individual contracts. Some of my clients are hourly and others are milestone based. I have several consistent clients but the work isn't always the same each week. So for instance I might have something do for clients A,B and C this week, next week it might be for C, D, E and F. And then A might throw something in at the last minute.

When I was a freelance writer for a newspaper I used Trello to track jobs, but that was for one client and was a great system. I don't think it will work as well for multiple clients if I want to get an idea of what a week might look like or know ahead of time what's due in the next day or two.

tlbp · ‎02-01-2021

Everyone has their own system. I list work on an Excel sheet and schedule tasks on Google Calendar. There are other task management apps you can try.

ladyelexia · ‎02-01-2021

I ask my clients to put the due dates on their milestones. It is pretty easy to keep track that way. Or you can literally write down your work on a day planner or weekly planner to keep yourself on track.

heather_lusk · ‎02-02-2021

Most of the milestones have due dates, but they're buried in all of the contracts. It would be nice if contracts could be sorted by due date.
I've started to use a dry erase board which is a good temporary solution. With kids schooling from home I've lost my office space, so something digital is preferred.

tlbp · ‎02-02-2021

Heather L wrote:
Most of the milestones have due dates, but they're buried in all of the contracts. It would be nice if contracts could be sorted by due date.
I've started to use a dry erase board which is a good temporary solution. With kids schooling from home I've lost my office space, so something digital is preferred.

A quick and easy way is to list every task and/or deadline on a spreadsheet and then sort them by date. I color code mine. So, tasks due this week are one color, planned but not assigned yet are another... I use the same spreadsheet to keep track of gross and net earnings which makes it easy for me to grab those numbers at tax time.