CRM for Freelancers

As a freelancer, you are the sales team, the project manager, the accountant, and the delivery team all in one. You need a lightweight system that tracks your client relationships, manages proposals, logs your time, and handles invoicing — without the overhead of enterprise software.

Configuration recipe. This page is a guide to configuring HARi as a freelancer’s hub. It is not a one-click install — the entities, fields and workflows below are ones you build on top of the core CRM and Billing solutions.

Freelancer CRM challenges

• Wearing every hat — you don’t have time for complex CRM setup; it needs to work immediately
• Proposal tracking — knowing which proposals are pending and following up at the right time
• Time tracking — accurate time logs are essential for billing and understanding your true hourly rate
• Cash flow visibility — knowing what’s been invoiced, what’s been paid, and what’s overdue

How HARi handles this

The CRM solution gives you Companies and Contacts; the Billing solution adds Invoices. Add Proposal, Project, and Time Entry entities yourself, and use Workflows to chase proposals and overdue invoices automatically.

Entities and fields to set up

• Clients (Companies) — business name, industry, billing address, payment terms, lifetime value
• Contacts — name, email, phone, role (primary contact, accounts payable)
• Proposals — linked to Client, project description, quoted amount, status (Draft / Sent / Accepted / Declined), valid until date
• Projects — linked to Client and Proposal, description, start date, deadline, status, budget
• Time Entries — linked to Project, date, hours, description, billable flag
• Invoices — linked to Project, line items from time entries, total amount, status (Draft / Sent / Paid / Overdue)

Suggested workflows

Configure these in Settings > Workflows:

1. Proposal follow-up — 3 days after sending a proposal, remind you to follow up if no response
2. Project kickoff — when a proposal is accepted, automatically create a project with default tasks
3. Weekly time summary — every Friday, send yourself a summary of hours logged this week
4. Invoice reminder — when an invoice is 7 days overdue, send a polite payment reminder to the client
5. Project wrap-up — when a project is marked complete, create a final invoice with all unbilled time entries

Key dashboard widgets

• Active projects and their status
• Hours logged this week / month
• Revenue this month vs. target
• Outstanding invoices
• Proposals pending response

Get started

1. Sign up for a free HARi account and install the CRM and Billing solutions from Settings > Solutions.
2. In Settings > Schema, add custom entities for Proposal, Project, and Time Entry with the fields above.
3. Configure the suggested workflows in Settings > Workflows.
4. Build a personal dashboard from Dashboards with the suggested widgets.