My top 5 organisational tips for running your voiceover business
Running any size of business, whether a one-person set-up or a large multinational, requires good organisation to run effectively.
As a voiceover artist you’ll likely be managing most aspects of your business (aside from the occasional outsourcing of audio engineering or accounting, for example) and trust me when I say, your life will be so much easier with good organisation in place!
From knowing the status of a project, to managing invoices and payments, to knowing what marketing is working, you need to be spinning a lot of plates and good organisation will keep those plates spinning for you (with just the occasional nudge needed!).
Here are my top 5 organisational tips that have helped me keep my voiceover business running efficiently over the last 8 years:
1. Track where your work is coming from each month on a simple spreadsheet. This way you can quickly review which pay2play websites are working (and therefore worth the subscription fees), you can keep track of your monthly earnings (and spot monthly/yearly trends) and review which clients are becoming repeat customers. I use an Excel spreadsheet and update it at the beginning of each month with the data from the previous month (number of auditions and jobs won, total income from work won and where each job came from).
This is the Excel tracker that I use. I have removed the details and fees earnt for the jobs won, but the rest is accurate.
2. Use a planning tool to keep track of the progress of each job, e.g., how many takes you have supplied, how many rounds of pickups have been delivered, if you’ve sent the invoice and if the payment has been made and when the job is closed. I use Microsoft Planner, but can also recommend Trello and Active Collab.
This is just one job on my Microsoft Planner, where you can see I’ve ticked off the scripts as they’ve been completed for this project and I know what tasks are still to be undertaken.
3. Use accounting software to manage your day-to-day bookkeeping, raise invoices, keep track of payments, taxes owed (e.g., VAT in the UK, if applicable to you) and view your profit. I use QuickBooks and have found it really easy to use. There’s a lot of choice out there for accounting software, so do your research and pick the right one for you!
Check out this video where I talk about using Quickbooks by clicking here
4. Set up a comprehensive online filing system to keep your recordings (and other business activity) in order and easy to find. I use Dropbox, which means I can access files anywhere and can also send my clients Dropbox links to access audio files (rather than trying to send big files over email).
I like to keep all of my voiceover work in one place, and find Dropbox is really easy to use.
5. Keep your auditions filed away week by week and month by month. This might sound a bit random, but by treating my auditions in the same way as my actual work, I have been able to keep track of how many I am doing a month (versus how much work I have won) and can easily find files when a client says, “We loved your audition, please just send that over as a Wav file.” Yes, that does sometimes happen, like this work for Hendricks Gin in the video below!.
