Maintain the independence and creativity you've cultivated as a freelancer while also centralizing your schedule and communication with your client base.

Start with structure

ClickUp utilizes a unique Hierarchy structure to ensure that every action item in your workflow has a clear purpose. There are several possibilities for how you could build your Hierarchy as a freelancer, but here are the most popular:

Workspace

Your ClickUp Workspace represents your overarching organization and serves as the overall container for your different workflows. We recommend creating one Workspace to manage all of your freelancing gigs, as that's the best way to maintain an overview of everything you're working on. 

Spaces

Spaces are at the very top of the ClickUp Hierarchy and are the first organizational level you encounter within your Workspace. Name your Space Professional work to manage all of your different gigs. This is an ideal way to have a clear overview of what you’re working on at a given time. You can even add a separate Space if you want to manage personal goals and tasks separately.

If you work extensively with clients, create a Space to hold all your client work.

Folders

Here we'll name our Folder Freelancer to categorize and manage our gigs easily.

Then, create a List for each of your clients. Use List colors for each List so you can easily tell your clients apart.

As an alternative, if you complete more than one project for each of your clients, you can create a Folder for each client, and a List for each project that you do for that client.

Lists

If you use one Folder to organize your freelance work, then create separate Lists to represent your different clients.

You could also create different Lists for the different types of work that you do for your clients - the choice is up to you!

Tasks

Now you’ll be able to get down to the specifics by creating tasks. Tasks represent the concrete action items you’ll need to complete for your clients.

Use filters to show tasks by due date, so you can create a view of all tasks that you have due each week!

The best thing about tasks is that they can be completely customized depending on how you want to meet your productivity goals!

If you need to share information with a client, you are able to make Folders, Lists, and tasks private to determine who can see them.

Collaboration with Clients

Working with clients on the platform? We have multiple collaboration options for you!

Guests

Add guests to specific Folders, Lists, and tasks that you would like them to interact with. When you are on a ClickUp paid plan, you receive a limited number of permission-controlled guests for each full member in the Workspace.

That way, you can invite your clients into your Workspace, and collaborate in real time on your projects! Best of all, when you invite your clients as a guest in your Workspace, you can keep all of your communication in one place, using task comments and Chat view.

Learn more about guests here.

Public Sharing

Taking a more hands-off approach with your clients, but want to keep them apprised of the progress of their projects? Share a public link to your views in ClickUp!

Once you've built out a view in ClickUp, you can share a public, view-only link to that view you've created in ClickUp! From that link, clients will be able to see tasks and Custom views in that view, and even open tasks to see the information inside each of those tasks.

Learn more about Public Sharing options here.

Important Features and Integrations

Custom Fields: Create a unique task field to manage client contact information, dates, budgets, or really anything you can imagine.

List Colors and Labels: Customize List colors with text labels to use colors as statuses, tags, or anything that helps you stay organized. 

Only Workspace admins can adjust colors and labels for your Workspace.

Time Tracking: Keep track of hours worked so you can get paid! Our integrations with Clockify and Timely even include free invoicing tools so you can send your client a total for hours spent on a task.

Tags: The beauty of tags is that they can capture information about a task that is not always evident in your Hierarchy structure. Tags can provide much-needed clarity for freelance workflows since these tasks involve both diligent preparation and spontaneous creative thinking.

Calendar View: Visualize imminent start and due dates in ClickUp's Calendar view. Drag and drop unscheduled tasks to add due dates.

You can even sync your ClickUp tasks directly to your Google Calendar for viewing on the go! Any changes made to these tasks from Google Calendar will also be reflected in ClickUp. Even add national holidays to your Calendar view.

Chat View: There's no need to use a separate chat tool to talk to your clients. With Chat view, you can communicate with clients in the app to make sure nothing slips through the cracks.

Checklists: Keep track of important simple action items within each task that you're working on. You can even save a checklist as a template to reuse in other tasks!

Dashboards: Use the time tracking cards to visualize the time spent on tasks as well as tasks completed within a specified period of time, or even generate a timesheet. You can even export your reports to share with clients outside of ClickUp.

With the Simple layout, Legacy Reporting features have been replaced by Dashboard cards. Reporting is still available with other layouts. Click here for more information on changing your Workspace layout.