Presumptions and mistakes are an integral part of any career. It is how you learn and how you thrive in your professional career. However, you can save yourself a lot of trouble and efforts if you just know the common mistakes that contractors make as well as the best ways to avoid them. This is precisely what this blog post aims to do for all contractors out there.
We share with you the top 6 contractor mistakes that you must avoid at all costs so that your contracting career is every bit as amazing as you envisioned it to be!
1. Not Offering A Tailored Proposal
As a contractor, it is vital for you to provide a thorough proposal to your prospective clients. Your CV, as well as your proposal, needs to be tailored as per the requirements stated by the clients. If you customise your proposal well that showcases your knowledge about their company too, you are more likely to land a project. It instil more confidence in your clients when they see that you, as a contractor, know about their work. Moreover, you must be extremely prepared when you have your first call or meeting with them so that you know all about their project and you can show them how your skills would work out super well for their company. Generic proposals will not succeed in attracting their attention.
2. Being Too Picky About Projects
Although it is important for you to like the projects that you are working on, you should not be too picky about them. If you reject too many projects, it will not just adversely affect your overall income but will also give you a bad name in the market. Therefore, you must strive to strike a balance as a contractor and reject projects only if they seem absolutely challenging to accomplish. In short, you must try to work on almost all the projects that you can complete within the timeline and with your best possible efforts.
3. Not Thorough with Keeping Records
Record-keeping is one of the most tedious tasks when you are handling too many projects as a contractor. Yet, it is one of the essential things that can help you go a long way in your career. You must be very thorough with record-keeping and try to be as detailed as possible. If you are meticulous about it from the beginning of your career, you will face no hassles when it would come to auditing or filing your taxes. Moreover, record-keeping also comes in handy when you have been working as a contractor for a few years. It is always good to have a thorough record that you can go back to even after 5-6 years and after having handled several projects.
4. Not Being Up-to-date with Latest Trends
As a contractor, you not only need to be up-to-date with the latest job trends in contracting but also government rules and regulations. There can be changes in these regulations now and then, so being updated with these regulations is the only way to ensure compliance. You must be a part of all the critical forums and groups where these changes are discussed often. In addition to that, you must also keep track of all the news related to your sector.
5. Doing All the Work Yourself
This is another very prevalent mistake made by contractors widely. More often than not, contractors feel that they can take up the task of an accountant as well and although some contractors might be qualified enough to take up this monumental task, not everyone can handle the pressure or the work that comes with it. Therefore, instead of trying to handle all the work by yourself, it is essential to outsource the work to a professional if you think there is some scope of getting your accounts messed up. The art of delegation is necessary so that you take up only the work you can genuinely handle and leave the rest to the experts.
6. Not Having a Thorough Contract
It is a common mistake made by freelancers or contractors when they start working without a foolproof signed contract in place with an agency. It is vital to ensure that the agency and/or the client have shared all the terms of the contract with you in writing and that you have been made aware of all the details on paper instead of just taking their word for it. Remember that relying on a verbal agreement can be foolhardy and therefore, trust only the signed written word in front of you.
Final Words
If you are looking for some impressive contractor accounting services or are looking for some good old advice, get in touch with Target Accounting.