Greater than 5 minutes, my friend!
Is your project management workflow better/worse than mine?
You can’t run away from admin work.
You just can’t.
It will hunt you down now matter how hard you try to hide or run away from it.
But that’s OK, because admin work is part of the job you do.
Almost every business owner has to deal with a bunch of admin work on a daily basis: we create quotes for potential clients, we prepare projects for translation, we create and send invoices and do many other things.
Some of us love it, some of us hate it.
But, alas, this is something that we all have to do (unless you hire an assistant).
Me? Well, I have somewhat complicated relationship with admin work. I guess we can call it “love/hate relationship”.
Sometimes I enjoy doing it, other times don’t (especially when I have to log those tiny(ish) projects that have only couple dozens of words in them).
I also feel like my project management workflow could use some improvement.
That’s why I’m writing this blog post.
I’d like to share my project management workflow with you.
You’ll see my process from start to finish, plus I encourage you to share your own workflow in the comments.
I think this could be a very useful exercise for all of us.
Perhaps you’ll see my bottlenecks and I’ll see yours.
Plus, those who’re just starting out might pick up a few things from those who have been doing this for a while.
My Project Management Workflow
I have a feeling that every single translator has a different workflow.
So I won’t be trying to give advice or tell you how to manage things.
I think it’s more of an individual choice how to tackle those admin tasks.
I’ve been constantly refining my workflow for the past few years and I keep refining it.
My idea of a the project management workflow is that it has to minimize your time and effort and make it easy for you to focus on fun things like the actual translation.
But first I’d like to point out that I have two workflows:
- For new clients.
- For existing clients.
Let’s start with the first one.
Project Management Workflow for New Clients
So, I just got a new potential client.
Somehow the stars have aligned in the right order and they found me. Even better, they want to work with me and just send me an email, requesting my quote. Cue happy dance.
This is a pretty standard situation for many of us, freelance folks, who work with clients.
What is my first step?
I need to create a record for that (potential) client.
I use TO3000 for project management.
It’s not ideal, and according to this forum thread a lot of translators hate it, but I somehow managed to tame it and now I use it for all my projects.
If you have better Project Management solutions for translators, please, share them in the comments.
Once I’ve created a New Client in TO3000 (takes a minute or so if you complete all the fields), I’m ready to move to my next step: preparing a quote document.
Again, I use the software to prepare this quote and then generate a PDF file for it.
Once that PDF file has been generated I send it over to my (potential) client for review and approval.
Preparing a quote normally takes about 5 minutes or so (depending on the complexity of the document I’m dealing with).
Sometimes it might take more time if I’m dealing with a funny format where figuring out a word count is not that easy.
But most of my current clients send files in editable formats, so I guess, I’m lucky to have them 🙂
Once the client approves my quote I move to the next step: Project Creation (after another round of happy dancing, of course!)
I use same software to create a project. It takes less than a minute to convert your quote into a project.
I also create a folder on my PC for my new client.
From now on, all the files and projects will be kept in this folder.
My client folders have the following structure: /client name/month/date of the project
The project folder has 2 folders in them: Source and Target.
I keep client files in the Source folder and my translations in the Target folder.
After I’ve created a folder for my client and my new project and logged that project in TO3000 I generate an invoice.
Sometimes I send my invoices instantly, sometimes I accumulate them and send the combined invoice at the end of the month.
It all depends on the client.
The creation of client and project folders, and logging the project in my software (with invoice) takes about 5 minutes or so.
Once the project management work is done I move to the fun part: translating and proofreading my files.
Once translation is ready I save it to my Target folder and send the files to my client.
I also log the project in a spreadsheet file that I use to keep track of my word counts.
These are all of my projects with total word counts for each and every project (no matter how big or small).
I also use it as a resume of sorts. I figured the best way to show my clients what kind of work I do, is by keeping track of all my projects.
As you can see, I do a lot of video game localization 🙂
I also have a lot of recurring projects with batches of small updates every month.
I also write short description of projects so that people could get a better idea of what kind of projects I work with.
This step only takes 1 minute or so.
So, overall, I spend about 12 minutes for admin work when I’m approached by a new client.
What about the existing clients?
Well, things are a bit simpler here.
First of all, I don’t have to create a quote each and every time for them.
I have pretty much figured out payment terms with all of my existing clients and they know what to expect in terms of translation costs.
Sometimes they do ask for a quote, of course, especially if it’s a direct client who don’t understand how to estimate the cost.
In that case I prepare a quote document, but most of the time I just send them an email with a cost breakdown and short explanation without any PDF attached.
Since I already have the record and the folder for this client, all I really have to do is to create a project and an invoice in my software.
After that I translate and proofread the document and send it over to my client (while logging it in my spreadsheet).
Basically, my admin work for existing clients take around 6-7 minutes per project.
What Does Your Project Management Workflow Look Like?
They say sharing is caring. 🙂
I wonder what does your project management workflow look like? Is it better than mine? Is it worse?
Feel free to share it in the comments!
I’ll be more than happy to read about all the tools and techniques you use to minimize your effort and of course all the #ProTips are always welcome!
Don’t forget to invite others to join our conversation and let’s see who has the most efficient project management workflow 🙂
[clickToTweet tweet=”Hey translators! Is your project management workflow better or worse? Let’s find out! #xl8 #t9n” quote=”Hey translators! Is your project management workflow better or worse? Let’s find out! #xl8 #t9n”]
Tea Dietterich 
Maeva Cifuentes 
Olesya Zaytseva 
Hi Dmitry,
Thank you for sharing your workflow :-).
Answering your question on Twitter, I should say that administration is really taking me a lot of time since it’s my role to check what the PMs do. So, if I don’t only describe what the PMs here do, but what I do myself, it follows this scenario in most cases:
We receive a request – from a new or existing client. One PM analyses the request and asks me questions, if any – like the process to follow for specific requests, the rates to apply for new tasks or language pairs, the best resources to use if they don’t know, etc. This might already take me a lot of time for big new projects, especially if the client is brand new too ;-). Afterwards, the PM prepares a quotation and most of the time a planning (or simply calculate the best deadline to propose) and I check those in depth. If the project is launched, I’m usually in cc: of all emails exchanged with the clients and the PM only copies me on the important emails with the teams. At the end of the month, all PMs prepare the POs for the subcontractors, normally grouping them by end-clients. I check all POs before sending them. Most PMs also prepare their invoices and I check them all, but sometimes, I issue a few myself, for instance when clients ask us to invoice directly through their own online invoicing system. In parallel to this, every 2 weeks, I check the invoices received from the subcontractors, comparing them to the issued POs to make sure they match. And I pay them. I also check that clients have paid the invoices we sent them and I send reminders to late payers. All in all, I think this takes me between 50 and 100 hours per month, depending on the amount of jobs of course (and I also hate those tiny ones which eat up so much time LOL), the types of projects, but also on the amount of mistakes made here and there ;-))).
As you can see, our workflow is quite close to yours, although my own job is checking all those steps, and I can tell you that I often find issues, on all sides ;-).
My point is therefore to underline how important it is to carefully check everything, especially on the administration aspect. When you receive a PO – double-check it. When you issue an invoice – double-check it or ask someone to do it. And then, always check very carefully (and regularly) not only that your clients paid you but also that they paid the right amount ;-).
Thanks, Nancy! Wow! That’s quite workflow you got in there! Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is an agency workflow, right? How many people do you have on your team? (PMs, translators, proofreaders, etc.) Have you tried using some sort of project management software to simplify your work? I think there are several options out there for agencies although I never tried them myself (only from a translator side).
Hi Dmitry,
Yes, we have automatized many tasks and it works well. However, using tools doesn’t mean there won’t be some human mistakes here and there ;-). I’m probably checking too much but can’t refrain from doing it LOL ;-). I need to have the feeling that I know what’s happening on all projects and accounts ahah ;-).
Yes, we are working as an agency, but probably not a typical one. All PMs are freelancers, working from home. Currently, they are 9, but most of them work for other clients, either as PMs, translators, revisers or even technical experts and teachers. We work with a partner agency for most technical tasks + several freelancers and PMs (or even myself) also do some technical tasks themselves. Regarding translators, we work with freelancers for translation (+ revision and QA) into French, Dutch and English. Again, sometimes, PMs do part of it themselves, like the QA or (less frequently) the revision. For the other languages, we work with local agencies or groups of freelancers, most of them having been the same for years.
Quite fun in fact!! 😉 I use to think that this leads to less pressure than in a standard company, but who knows… 😉
You definitely know more about workflow automation and project management than I do, haha! I wonder what tasks have you automated? Do you use some publicly available tools or had to build one just for your needs?
In the company where I previously worked, we used various software that had been developed for project management. I always had this feeling that people were actually spending quite a lot of time using those. It was great for reporting but for the everyday work of the PMs, it seemed to take too much time.
When I started on my own, I wanted something very flexible – and quick to use. I explained to an IT expert who used to work with me what I wanted and he developed something in Excel which I found great as it was complete and extremely flexible. Now, this was 15 years ago and at that time, good TPM tools didn’t really exist. Moreover, to say the truth, I never imagined I would work with so many persons so I really asked for something that suited me. There are now good tools on the market, but on our side, we have continued improving our own and it’s hard now to change.
Tasks like PO generation, gross margin calculation or reporting are automated. We also automatized several processes in terminology management, especially to manage/fix multilingual glossaries and some kinds of file preparations.
I am clearly an admin nerd, as I love hearing about other people’s project management systems. Mine is a little different. I work with a partner (I handle Spanish into English, she handles English into Spanish) and we do lots of mutual proofing and editing and so on, so we need a shareable system. Ours is based on a Google sheet which contains an overview of all jobs (we have other spreadsheets that deal with the sometimes complex Argentine tax system and payments between us), then we use shared folders in Google Drive to store all the files we’re working on. Unlike you, we organise our folders by unique project number (which is defined on the overview sheet) as we often have several projects for the same client going on at the same time. We have a strict protocol for file naming and folder naming, which corresponds to our workflow (i.e. there is a folder for the originals, a folder for the draft translations, one for proofed files and so on). We manage this workflow, i.e. who should be doing what at any given time, using Asana, which is a freemium cross-platform project management app. This has been a real boon for others because it has basically eliminated email between us. All comments and queries are directly tied to each project/task: there’s a tagging and commenting system which is akin to the way these work on social media. We also use Toggl to track our time on each project, and each task type within that project, again following a strict naming protocol to make all this easy to visualize and cross-reference. We can then use those times summaries to see how much we’re making per hour, how many billable versus non-billable hours we are working, etc. of course, it’s a work in progress, but it has streamlined our admin time hugely. We work exclusively with direct clients but average only about 15% nonbillable hours, which I think is pretty good. I’m curious to hear about anyone else’s system.
Hey Victoria,
Great system! Even though it sounds a bit complicated when you describe it, I believe it’s very streamlined and actually helpful. I’m still in the process of streamlining my own system, but I have one great advantage: my business is just me and it’s much easier for me to manage everything. Although if I ever have to bring other people on board it might be a challenge to teach them how everything works.
In my client folders by the way, I have folders for months, which include folders for projects named by due date, e.g. 31.05.2016 – is a folder for project that is due at 31st o May , 2016. That folder in turn has 2 folders: source and target (sometimes another one – reference, for any materials client have sent me). Since my clients rarely sent me multiple projects at once that are all due at the same date, such system works well for and helps me visualize when everything is due.
I’m also thinking of using Dropbox in the future, so I could give my clients access to their folders without the need to send files over email back and forth.
Yes, it can be a bit complex at times, but we have been trying to document how we do things. After all, they say that one of the differences between owning a job and owning a business is scalability and processes: I think that most translators feel that, at least as far as the translating part of our business goes, that we are unique and irreplaceable… That no one but us could do the job. Well, that may be true for the translation side (maybe) but I am totally convinced that I am not the only person in the world who could handle my admin. So as well as making everything clear, time-saving, and easy for us to execute in the present, one of the reasons behind establishing protocols for processes is that we hope one day for someone else to be able to handle all the admin and we can just lounge around drinking craft beer. I mean translating. I have actually also been looking into an all-in-one platform like 17 hats but I’m not convinced it is worth the investment yet.
“one of the reasons behind establishing protocols for processes is that we hope one day for someone else to be able to handle all the admin and we can just lounge around drinking craft beer” – haha as much as I enjoy craft beer, I don’t think this will ever happen to me, as I’ll be bored in a matter of minutes if not seconds 🙂
Managing a business is fun even when it feels like a drag. 17 hats look interesting, as a matter of fact I’ve been thinking of building my own app for project management that is tailored to all the specifics of an online freelance translation business (I even started building a prototype) 🙂
That is a seriously good idea! Let me know when you need beta testers!
I will, although it might take a while. I’m stretched too thin as it is, but let’s see what the next year will bring.