Working life
The majority of respondents (67%) work from home whilst the majority of the remainder either work on-site with clients or at a dedicated office.
| Work place | Count | % |
|---|
| From home | 378 | 67.86 |
| Dedicated office | 109 | 19.57 |
| Co-working space | 29 | 5.21 |
| Client office | 27 | 4.85 |
| Coffee shop | 4 | 0.72 |
| Other | 10 | 1.80 |
The clear majority of freelancers worked 5 days a week. However over a quarter worked 6 days a week. So much for the four day week! This pattern is shared when we look at number of hours worked a day. Over half of respondents worked between 8 and 10 hours a day with 10% of respondents working over 10 hours a day.
| Days worked | Count | % |
|---|
| 5 days a week | 307 | 56.23 |
| 7 days a week | 29 | 5.31 |
| Less than 5 days a week | 64 | 11.72 |
| 6 days a week | 146 | 26.74 |
| Hours worked | Count | % |
|---|
| 5–7 hours | 184 | 33.52 |
| 8–10 hours | 294 | 53.55 |
| More than 10 hours | 51 | 9.29 |
| Less than 4 hours | 20 | 3.64 |
Clients and Projects
Over 40% of freelancers only worked on 1 or 2 projects at any time with a quarter working on between 3 and 4 projects. The majority also had relatively short projects with over half lasting less than a month and 34% between 1 and 3 months long.
This gives a picture of focused work on smaller projects, as reflected in last week’s post where 40% of respondents worked on projects worth less than £2,000.
| Who work with? | Count | % |
|---|
| directly with clients | 224 | 40.00 |
| in partnership with other freelancers | 122 | 21.79 |
| subcontracting for agencies | 285 | 50.89 |
| Concurrent projects | Count | % |
|---|
| 1–2 projects | 235 | 41.96 |
| 4+ projects | 74 | 13.21 |
| 2–4 projects | 154 | 27.50 |
| Only 1 project at a time | 97 | 17.32 |
| Length of project | Count | % |
|---|
| < 1 month | 285 | 50.35 |
| 1–3 months | 195 | 34.45 |
| 3–6 months | 47 | 8.30 |
| 6–12 months | 26 | 4.59 |
| > 12 months | 13 | 2.30 |
Business and Accounting
In terms of legal composition half of respondents worked as a sole-trader, with almost half trading as a Limited Company.
| Trading as | Count | % |
|---|
| Sole-Trader | 290 | 51.97 |
| Limited Company | 253 | 45.34 |
| Partnership/LLP | 12 | 2.15 |
| sole trader part of LLP with other freelancers | 1 | 0.18 |
| Not a registered company | 1 | 0.18 |
| Not yet registered | 1 | 0.18 |
When it comes to accounting, over a third are self-accounting whilst 28% use a local accountant and 21% use an online service (although the wording of this question is probably fairly ambiguous).
| Accounting | Count | % |
|---|
| I’m self-accounting | 203 | 36.38 |
| I use a local accountant | 160 | 28.67 |
| I use an online service | 119 | 21.33 |
| I use a remote accountant | 76 | 13.62 |
Once more the clear majority of respondents who use accounting software use Freeagent with 60% of freelancers. 10% used Xero with the remainder spread between Crunch, Freshbooks and Harvest.
| Software | Count | % |
|---|
| Freeagent | 182 | 60.26 |
| Xero | 30 | 9.93 |
| Crunch | 23 | 7.62 |
| Freshbooks | 22 | 7.28 |
| Spreadsheets | 16 | 5.30 |
| Harvest | 13 | 4.30 |
| Billings | 8 | 2.65 |
| Wave | 8 | 2.65 |
