YellowWork has released a calendar specifically for managing freelance work. It’s packed with features that support both companies and freelancers, from the sharing of availability to the confirmation of bookings. It also connects to YellowWork’s Time-tracking app and is essential for creating automated Contracts, Invoices and Timesheets.
Standard calendars, such as Apple and Google Calendars, are designed for planning meeting and events. Up until now, they have also been used by talent managers and freelancers, along with spreadsheets and email, for sharing, confirming and organising freelancer bookings. These basic systems, however, are inadequate for managing the complexity and flexibility of temporary work.
The YellowWork Calendar supports many types of freelancer bookings, such as flexible time with an hourly rate, location work with a daily rate and project deadlines with a total cost. Moreover, freelancer bookings also contain a variety of details that are subject to ongoing change, including dates, hours, equipment, location, rates, expenses, discount and tax.
Former BBC Panorama production co-ordinator, Sarah Vickers, explained that she could spend “up to eight hours per week liaising with her freelancers on matters relating to upcoming and ongoing bookings”. Delays in obtaining availability and rates are often caused by busy, in-demand freelancers being hard-to-reach by phone and email, a problem that also affects freelancers by missing opportunities.
One of the features that sets YellowWork apart from other calendar systems is its ability recognise when freelancers are available by analysing the bookings in their Calendar. This enables freelancers to easily share their availability with their offline clients and talent managers to accurately view which of their freelancers have availability and send booking invitations to their Calendars. It is only the availability that is displayed (bookings are private).
By remotely accessing their company’s Calendar, Talent managers can also collaborate with their colleagues throughout the booking, management and payment process.
Combined with a Smart Booking Process and Time-tracking, YellowWork harnesses a rich source of data, enabling it to also fully automate the creation of Contracts, Invoices and Timesheets, and even payments.
Furthermore, YellowWork’s Calendar can be synced with Apple and Google Calendars, enabling booking previews to be displayed, alongside meetings and events, in an every-day calendar.
Understanding FreelanceDiary bookings
YellowWork enables talent manager or freelancers to add bookings to their own private Calendar. It also allows them to invite their client or freelancer to view and confirm a booking that they have added. Furthermore, YellowWork enables clients to make direct bookings for freelancers, either through the ‘Book a Freelancer’, ‘Share Availability’ and ‘Book Me’ features (articles coming soon).
When the client and freelancer are connected, both can view, edit and confirm the ongoing booking easily.
There are two booking statuses: Pending (purple) and Confirmed (green).
When you add a booking to your Calendar, it adds a ‘Pending’ booking by default, while providing the option to invite your client or freelancer (either offline or already a user) to confirm. When they confirm, the status automatically changes from ‘Pending’ to ‘Confirmed’. You can also change the status manually by moving the toggle at the bottom of the booking.
There is also a yellow Invitation booking that a freelancer receives when a client sends a booking through the platform. For more details, please see the Smart Booking Process article.
A booking has four tiles. Selecting the top left coloured tile will display the main booking information (such as the dates), the bottom left tile displays your client’s or freelancer’s details, the bottom right tile shows the job locations and the top right tile provides details about a specific date.
When a booking changes to ‘Confirmed’, the freelancer’s Calendar automatically changes the correlating dates to ‘unavailable’, which can be changed back by the freelancer if necessary.
Adding a Booking
To add a booking to your Calendar, go to ‘Calendar’ in the menu, click on any date and then click ‘Add Booking’, or tap the ‘+’ icon in the bottom right hand corner of the app.
At the top of the ‘Add Booking’ overlay, you can select whether it’s a booking that you’re adding or a holiday. You can also select whether you are the client or freelancer in this booking. By default, it will be display the account that you selected upon joining or changed at the top of the ‘Settings’ page.
Please note: It is important that you have the correct Client/Freelancer setting selected; If ‘Client’ is selected, you will be required to connect your Company page to the booking, a step that may block freelancers from proceeding.
Below the Client/Freelancer toggle, you can select whether the booking is for specific dates or requires a Time-tracker to track the time flexibly. Please see the Smart Booking Process for more info.
In the following steps, you can change the hours and add the role, job info and location.
You can also invite your client or freelancer to view and confirm the booking details. If this option is checked, they will receive an email with a link that enables them to view the booking without logging in. After they confirm the booking details, the booking will turn green and update to ‘Confirmed’. Both can then manage the ongoing booking effectively by adding expenses and making changes.
You can also change the booking status manually by moving the toggle that is found below the rates.
Once your booking has been added, an Automated Contract, Automated Invoice and Automated Timesheet can now be created from it.
Editing a booking
To edit a ‘Pending’ or ‘Confirmed’ booking, select on the top left purple or green tile in the booking that you want to edit. The booking will then expand to display the full booking details.
Then select the pencil icon in the top right corner of the expanded section (displayed in the image below).
Your booking will now be in edit mode, enabling you to change any of the job details. Please remember to save the changes at the bottom of the booking.
Please note: When editing a booking that is connected to your freelancer or client, they will be made aware of any changes that you make and will have the opportunity to respond by accepting or declining the changes. To learn more, please see our article on the Smart Booking Process.
