Last week was half term holidays so I was only working minimally and stopped altogether at Thursday lunchtime. This means that firstly I’ve had three days off and feel quite refreshed and ready for full-on work tomorrow and secondly that I spent some time this evening seeing what e-mails I’d missed and planning ahead for the next couple of weeks.
Unusually I’ve got a few jobs with long deadlines. Often I’m permanently busy but with no work booked for more than two days in advance. I’ve entered everything into TO3000 but am irritated that it doesn’t let you show how long the job is on the Main Projects page. The columns are customisable but only from a selection provided: Code, Project name, Client name, Deadline, Flag (I use these) and Date assigned, Completed and Client PM (I don’t see the need for those). But no length or volume option. When you’ve got several projects overlapping, it would be useful to be able to see at a glance whether each one is 12,000 words long or 350. I have customised the columns in the Client Jobs view to show volume so maybe I need to use that as my main view instead, but then I’d lose the Flags in seven cool colours that I use to show whether the job is at the draft, rewrite or proofreading stage.
I am happy with TO3000, and it seems much better designed for the lone freelancer than Translator’s Office Manager, which I also tested when I was looking for something to replace the translation management software my husband designed ten years ago, which sadly won’t run on anything later than Access 97, but there are always things you’d like to tweak. And the less said about TO3000’s Schedule of Projects calendar the better.
Look, it does the invoicing. Be grateful.