Client, meetings, projects, tasks, finances, invoices.
These are just some of the things
we as freelancers
need to manage on a day to day basis.
And without the right systems in place,
this can quickly become overwhelming.
Which is why I created this Notion
dashboard, specifically designed for freelancers,
which you can find as the first link
in the description.
This dashboard also comes
with a virtual assistant page
containing 100 personalized Notion
AI prompts to help you create better offers,
generate more leads, and make more money.
This video will be a walkthrough
on how to use this dashboard as well as show
you how to adapt it to your own life.
And so, without further ado, let's get started.
Let me first give you a quick overview.
At the top, you have a navigation bar
using the new Notion buttons
that will quickly take you to wherever
you want to be inside of the dashboard.
Then on the left
you have a clock widget,
a line graph showing your monthly profits
throughout the year,
a quick note section,
your meetings database,
and then all of your individual pages.
Then on the right you have your projects,
your tasks for each project as well as a calendar
view showing both your tasks and upcoming meetings.
Before we get into the system itself
let me first show you
the virtual assistant page.
Whenever you need ideas, help, or inspiration
in regards to creating good offers, lead generation,
growing your agency or digital marketing,
you can refer back to your virtual assistant
and use one of the 100 personalized AI prompts.
Simply click
inside of one of these sections
and click generate to get some new ideas.
When you're done with the prompt and want to reset it,
don’t delete the whole block,
just delete the content inside.
And in order to add your own prompt block,
simply type in forward slash
custom and select the AI block.
For this video I'm not going to be going
through each of these 100 AI prompts
as this is something that you can explore
and play around with on your own.
Now let's get back to the dashboard.
We're going to start off
inside of the client's page,
which contains your CRM and meetings database.
Each client can have multiple projects
and each project can have multiple tasks.
So before you create any projects or tasks,
you want to add a new client to your pipeline.
First, they’re going to be a lead,
then you'll have an interview
and then they move to being a client.
Now there's also a status for very important clients,
as well as if you're on hold
or if you've lost a client.
When you click inside of the client,
there are a bunch of properties that we can add.
The first one is the status,
then the company relation, which we'll get to later.
And then we have the process properties.
We can add the price of the client's project,
or if you have an hourly contract
set up through Upwork,
then you can add your hourly rate
and the amount of hours per week
to get the monthly amount.
This monthly amount will display on your CRM.
So if you have a project based price,
then just hide
the monthly amount in the properties tab
and then just show the project price property.
The other properties we can add
is when we've last contacted the client,
which communication method
we're using, a link to their profile,
their email and phone number
as well as an archive checkbox
which will remove the client from your CRM database.
Now at the bottom
you'll see
you have a simple notes
section where you can add
important notes about each client
and you also have the relation properties.
One for meetings and one for your projects.
If we go back to the CRM,
you'll see you have a company section
where you can add the client's company,
link it to your client,
select the industry they're in, add a location,
the website link, as well as a logo,
which will show up in the gallery view.
At the bottom of the page.
You have a meeting section
where you can create new meetings,
adding the date as well as include time,
so you can add a reminder
and get a notification on your phone.
And then you can also add the meeting link
and passcode
as well as a link to
the meeting client or a project.
You'll also see at the bottom
it generated a section
where you can add questions, notes
and the meeting agenda.
All of your meetings
will show up on the calendar to the right
so you can get a visual overview
of all your upcoming meetings.
Now, if we go back into our client,
you'll see the company is now added and at the bottom
is a section for all our meetings that we got
with this client.
Now let's move on to the next page,
which is for the projects and tasks.
Here you'll see we have a view
showing the status of each project,
a view of the projects grouped by the client,
which is also the same as the one on the dashboard.
We have a calendar view and also a table view.
So let's go ahead and create the new project
and link it to our client.
Underneath the project section,
we have a task database,
we have a view for today's tasks,
a view for tasks after today,
a view showing all your task
grouped according to the project
and also a view showing all the completed tasks.
When we add new tasks and link them to our project.
You'll see the project's progress bar
updating as well as when we complete them.
Now for each task we also have a priority matrix.
So depending on if you select low, medium or high,
effort and impact,
it will display the importance of the task
and sort of tasks accordingly.
So low effort and high impact
tasks needs to be done first,
and high effort and low impact tasks
need to be done last.
In this project's page.
You also have a calendar to schedule
and move your tasks around,
as well as another meeting section at the bottom.
But this time it's grouped
according to a specific project instead of a client.
Now let's go back to the dashboard.
In the project section
you'll see all of your tasks for each client.
Your task database showing all the tasks
you need to do for today,
as well as a board view of your tasks
grouped to the project and a table view.
Your tasks will also show up on the calendar,
which also contains a second view for your meetings
with the meetings
database on the left showing all of the meetings.
And that's pretty much
how you use this dashboard
to manage your clients meetings, projects and tasks.
Now let's move on to the individual pages,
starting with the finance tracker.
I already made a full video dedicated
to this finance tracker,
which you can find through the card
above or in the description below.
So for this video,
I’m just going to do a quick overview on how to use it,
but if you want to know how it works
and how to add your own line chart,
then I recommend checking out that video
and using the timestamps to skip around.
So to start off at the top,
you have a summary section
showing your total income expenses
and profit for the year,
as well as a line graph
visualizing your profit
for each month throughout the year.
Then you have the finance section
where you can quickly add
new income or expenses,
add the amount linked to an income or expense source,
as well as link it to a bank account.
The finance tracker has two views
for quickly adding a new income
or expense for the day,
two views for both your income and expenses
grouped according to the month,
showing the total at the top,
as well as a monthly view
containing both your income and expenses
also grouped according to the month
but this time showing your total profit for each.
Underneath the finance tracker
you have your different bank accounts,
which both have a bank
balance that will update automatically
as you add new income or expenses.
And if you click inside a bank account,
you can add the starting amount,
which is the amount
you currently have in your bank account.
Then you have the subscription tracker.
Here you can add a new subscription
link it to a bank account,
add the amount and billing type,
which will update the monthly
and yearly formulas at the bottom.
And then you can also add the type of subscription
and the renewal date.
And then also don't forget to add an icon.
On the right
you'll see your subscription calendar
showing all the subscriptions due for the month,
and when a subscription is due,
simply extend the renewal date ahead with one month.
And just note that each time a subscription is due,
you have to manually add it
as an expense to your finance.
And then lastly, at the bottom of the page
you have your different income and expense sources,
which will show the total amount for each of them.
Again, the link to the finance tracker
video can be found in the description
and will also be inside of this page
when you grab this dashboard.
Now for the last few pages,
first of which is the invoices page.
Pretty simple.
You can create a new invoice and change its status.
You can link it to a client,
add the amount due
and the due date,
which will calculate the summary formula.
And then you can also archive the invoices
to make them disappear from your database views.
You'll see inside the invoice
is another page
which contains the actual invoice
where you can go and add the invoice number, the date,
your details, the clients details,
the services rendered
and your bank details at the bottom.
Once the invoice is filled out,
you want to click on the page menu
and export it as a PDF,
which will end up looking something like this.
Now, if you want to make changes
to the invoice template,
then just click the dropdown next to new, click on edit
and make the necessary changes
inside the template button.
Moving on, we have a notebook page,
which is pretty straightforward.
You have your notebooks at the top
and each notebook
can contain multiple notes
which you can use to keep important information.
Super simple but quite useful.
Now for the last page in the navigation bar,
we have the library.
Here you can add
links, resources, your portfolio,
onboarding pages, loom videos,
and whatever else you might need
to share with your clients
or just need in order to run your freelancing gig.
Now if we go back to the dashboard,
you'll see there is one extra page
which is for your phone.
On your phone
you want to add a Notion widget to this page
and whenever you are on the go
and need to quickly write something down,
you can just pull up this page,
use the button to add a new note
and it will automatically sync
your notes to your dashboard
so when you're at computer again,
you can just organize it into your notebook
or turn it into a task.
And there you go.
Now you know how to manage your life as a freelancer
using this Notion dashboard,
which can be found
as the first link in the description.
Thank you for watching.
And be sure to check out this next video
showing you how to use and set up the
finance tracker covered in this video.