Freelance Groundwork — Solo Business System

This sits between an expensive all-in-one SaaS and a pile of half-finished spreadsheets. It’s for one person running the whole thing.

The workbook has seven tabs.

A rate calculator that starts from the life you want to fund — tax, holiday, sick days, pension, the admin and sales half of the week — and works back to a day rate. There’s a sensitivity table so you can see how the number moves.

A light client list: status, what you agreed, last contact, next action. Overdue ones turn red.

A scope tracker with the agreed scope in one line and hours budgeted against hours used. It goes amber at 80% and red past 100%.

A money dashboard that pulls together invoiced, paid and expenses, works out the tax to set aside, and keeps a running tax pot.

An invoices tab where the status and days-to-pay are calculated, so the chase list writes itself. And an expenses tab, sorted by category for your accountant.

It comes with a playbook — nine short chapters on setting a rate and talking about price, filtering leads, holding the line on scope, getting paid (with the actual chase emails written out), keeping the tax pot honest, and when to end a client relationship.

What you get: one .xlsx workbook plus a PDF playbook. Works in Excel, Google Sheets or Numbers. No login, no monthly fee. Not tax, legal or accounting advice.