If you’re a business owner, whether in manufacturing, advertising, or anything in between, you know that running a company comes with a vast and daunting workload. According to Failory, 90 percent of startups don’t make it. To avoid this fate, you have to devote attention to many areas of focus: marketing, sales, customer service, and payroll, to name a few. Here are a few tips.
How To Get Help
Freelancers can offer assistance in all areas of your business. If you’re considering working with one or have already done so, you’re not alone. DDIY cites statistics indicating that businesses are looking to freelancers more every year, and more and more people are engaging in freelancing for income.
Freelancers can be helpful to your business in a number of ways:
- Assistance on demand: There are a wide variety of tasks you can outsource to freelancers. From graphic design to virtual assistant to social media services, these days you can hire an expert almost immediately.
- Skipping paperwork: While freelancers need to complete a Form 1099, you don’t have to provide them with benefits packages, salaries, training, or office space.
- Saving time and money: Freelancers don’t require the same commitment or payroll taxes as full-time employees.
- Getting exactly what you need: A freelancer’s services can be custom tailored to your business needs.
Clearly, as twago notes, there are major perks to using freelancers to help run your business. Here are some tips on how to find and interview the right people, and how to understand the payroll requirements of compensating a freelancer.
How To Hire
A good place to start your search for a freelancer is within your network. Friends and colleagues in your industry or neighboring business owners may be able to recommend freelancers who have done great work for them, which could save you time getting to the right person.
You can also use freelance work sites to post a job description. You’ll probably get a large number of applicants this way, including people you know right away aren’t a good fit. However, if you have the patience and time to sift through the applications, chances are you’ll find the help you need.
The next stage of hiring is to interview your candidates. Part of this process should include a review of the freelancer’s portfolio or, better yet, a paid test assignment. By giving candidates a set of instructions and a deadline, you can evaluate whether they’re reliable and capable of doing quality work.
How To Pay
Once you’ve found the right freelancers and begun paying them, you must make sure these workers can be classified as independent contractors, not employees.
This is crucial because the payroll requirements for freelancers are different from regular employees. If it’s determined that your freelancer should actually be classified as an employee, you may be penalized for failing to pay those payroll taxes. Look for software that makes life easier like a payroll service that will help you with organizing your workers and records. Payroll software will allow you to automate the processes of paying employees and calculating and filing taxes.
Another strategy is to generate an invoice to track each freelancer’s time worked. This is easy to do with a cloud invoicing tool online. All you have to do is fill in the necessary information. Having it on hand will make life easier come tax time.
Independent contractors are a vital part of many successful businesses. With a decisive hiring process and a solid grasp of labor laws, you can make your business more efficient—and maybe even find time to relax—by hiring freelancers to get things done.
