How it works

One project, from first email to paid.

Here is a real project in FreeSlate: a brand identity for Vesper Wines. Follow it through eight steps, from the first email to the final payment.

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An enquiry arrives

A wine importer emails asking about a new brand identity. Add them to Leads with an estimated value and a follow-up date, and FreeSlate reminds you if it goes quiet.

Leads live in their own pipeline, so the dashboard only fills with real projects once someone says yes.

They say yes

Press Convert to project. The project starts at the Brief stage with the client, fee and deadline filled in, and appears on your dashboard, calendar and time tracker.

Every project follows the same six stages, and each stage suggests what to do next.

Write the brief

FreeSlate starts the brief from a template for brand work. Fill in the background, goals, audience, direction, deliverables and terms, including how many revision rounds are included and what extra rounds cost.

Keep the client's own words next to yours. It settles a lot of arguments later.

Both of you sign it

Sign as the designer, then press Get client link and send it by email or message. Your client reads the brief in their browser, then signs, comments or asks for changes. Their browser gives them a short receipt code to send back. Paste it into FreeSlate with Add receipt: it checks the receipt matches this exact brief and marks it signed.

The brief travels inside the link itself, so it is never stored on a server, and your client needs no account. Change a signed brief and it becomes a new version for both of you to sign again.

The client signing page: type your name and approve the brief

What your client sees

Set the direction

Move to Concept. Collect references, images and colours on the project's mood board and share the direction before you open your design software.

Feedback, revisions and scope

Each round of changes is counted against the brief. When the client asks for one more round, or a set of social templates that was never in scope, log it as an amendment with its fee. Client Red Flags gathers anything that needs a conversation.

The numbers are on screen when you need to say "that one is extra".

A red flag: over the revision limit, past the deadline and over budget

The numbers, right when you need them

Deliver and get paid

Hand over the final files, move to Invoice and send it in your currency with tax worked out. If it goes past the due date, it turns red on your dashboard and a polite reminder is one tap away.

Overdue turns red on its own

See the bigger picture

Every paid invoice feeds your Revenue page: six months of earnings against your target, what is still owed, and how much to set aside for tax.

Every morning

Then it all comes together on one screen.

Open FreeSlate and the dashboard tells you what needs you today: overdue invoices, deadlines, follow-ups and budgets, most urgent first.

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Spend your time on the design, not the admin.

FreeSlate is in final testing. Join early access and we'll tell you the moment it's ready.

FreeSlate. The Free is for freelance: a paid app for freelance designers, bought once.