Hugs from Toronto!

~ Dmitry

Keeping records of translation projects and finances

Translation, as any other kind of business, is not only about just doing your job well. Apart from translating, every freelancer or agency needs to do a lot of administration work like:

• Keeping the database of clients, contact, prices and agreements
• If working with a team, coordinate the translation projects, communicate and control the deadlines
• Store the files received from and sent to clients or other translators
• Invoice the clients and control the payments (and paying to translators if you are not alone)
• Create some reports to get the full picture of how your business is progressing

All these activities are very distractive, but they need to be done if you do not want to get lost in your projects and finances. And as keeping it all in your mind is not an option, you need to record this information somewhere.

Freelancers and agencies use different tools for that, e.g. Excel/Google spreadsheets, email, file managers, invoice generators and many additional tools. The problem is that these tools are not linked to each other, so you have to synchronize information in many different files, and as we are all humans, it sometimes leads to mistakes and loss of time. So such generic tools are better than nothing, but still they take too much time and attention to work with.

There are also industry-specific tools (business-oriented TMSs) which are unifying all above. You can google them easily if you want to discover a full list, while in this article we will focus on Protemos, a fresh system for freelancers and agencies.

Introduction

Protemos is an online cloud-based system, so you don’t need to install anything on your computer, you just go to https://protemos.com/, click SING UP, and you have your account in a couple of minutes.

You’ll need to select the type of account: Freelance or Enterprise. The difference is that in Freelance account is intended for translators who do all the work themselves, while Enterprise will suit the teams and translation agencies. And Freelance version is free of charge.

The wizard will ask you to fill in some basic values (your languages, specializations, units payment methods etc.), and then you’ll be able to start.

Clients and vendors

Next you’ll need to create clients or import them from Excel. In Enterprise version, you’ll also need to create vendor accounts for your translators in order to coordinate their work. For every client or vendor, you may enter contact information, record the price, and upload related documents like contracts, instructions etc.

Project management

When you have clients in your database, you may enter the projects for them. For every project, you may enter the details like name, deadline, client etc., upload related files, and record the amounts to be paid by your client.

Jobs for translators

In Enterprise version, you may also create jobs for your translators, set the deadlines and assign files for them, enter how much you are going to pay, and issue POs. Your translators get and deliver the files through the system, and Protemos notifies you and translators about different stages of the job, so don’t even have to use email for that.

Invoices

You may also create invoices to your clients. The system will generate invoice file and you’ll be able to send the invoice in a single click directly from the system. In Enterprise version, your translators may invoice you or wait until you create invoices for them.

Payments

When you receive the payment from client or send payment to your translator, you record them into the system and link the payment with the corresponding invoice. This way you can easily track which invoices were paid.

Filters, alerts and reports

You can filter records by various criteria, so you can easily find any kind of records: projects, jobs, invoices, payments etc. You may hide the records you don’t need.

Also, the system notifies you about overdue projects and invoices to make sure you don’t forget to take actions.

Reports feature lets you see your monthly finances in general, by individual clients, and for each project manager (if you are not the only manager).

Integrations

Protemos is integrated with SmartCAT tool, so if you’re using both systems, you don’t need to create the same project in 2 systems manually. You just need to create the project in Protemos and then quickly create a copy of it for SmartCAT.

In future versions, more integrations will be added, and that will build ecosystem around Protemos.

More info

The above is just a very short overview of features, you may find more info on Protemos wiki page.  You may watch video tutorial to see some features in action.  And you may contact Protemos team to ask questions or suggest the new features for the tool.