Suggestions wanted for tracking freelancers/contractors (similar to CRM)

Jessica Weiss

Does anyone have a sheet setup they like for tracking contacts with freelance or temporary employees? Something similar to a CRM system but kind of in reverse.

Some context: we're a small design and animation studio, and we frequently have to scale up with temporary staff for larger projects. So a typical "contact cycle" would be:

• Determine needs/allocation (i.e., 4 animators full-time for 4 weeks)
• Contact various folks we've worked with previously to see if they're available for the time period in question.
• Track their responses (yes, no, part of the time, etc.)
• Confirm current hourly rate and confirm booking for the project.

I'm poking around with various CRM templates but also wanted to ask here in case anyone had implemented something similar and had suggestions. Thanks!

Darren Mullen

@Jessica Weiss I've done similar in Smartsheet, but I don't have a template. Is there a reason you are looking for a template vs creating it yourself?

What you are looking to track looks pretty simple, so getting a template would probably over complicate it especially if you are trying to customize the template. Use templates as a source of inspiration for features and formatting, but to create what you want, it's usually better just to create exactly what you want from scratch.

Jessica Weiss

I was looking at templates for inspiration, as you mentioned. I don't necessarily need a template that fits the bill but looking at my original post I can see how it could come across that way. I thought maybe a contact/touch list would be the best option but I played around with that and now I'm back to having each person have their own entry so the contact history stays in the Conversation part of their row I guess. One of my pain points in figuring this out is I'm not sure how best to organize "here's who we're contacting for this job, here's their current reponse" sort of thing - my head keeps going to tags but that's not a Smartsheet option.