Newbie and Just starting out! need advice please :)

A lot of us are actually full-time freelancers with no "day job" at all, I worked in admin before teaching myself web development but it wasn't exactly stimulating, went freelance as soon as I'd saved up a bit and was feeling brave.

It's always recommended to get a business bank account if you're serious about growing the business. It's much less effort to keep track of your finances for tax time and you're not running the risk of violating the terms of your personal account, not to mention it looks a lot more professional if you have clients who pay by direct transfer (no Paypal fees, yay!). A lot of business accounts are available free for x months too so you can give it a try without a monthly fee or such nonsense.

That said, if the terms of your personal account are fine with business use and you don't care about slightly more admin, you should be fine :)

Personally I don't keep paper copies of invoices etc because I think it's a waste of paper. They're saved on my PC, laptop, backed up on a hard drive as well as online for good measure! That should cover everything except a zombie apocalypse in which case I'll be too busy beheading things to worry about admin.

Oh yes, and welcome fellow Northerner!

I don't have a separate bank account for my freelance business but I do keep very good records of my income and expenses, and this is something I highly recommend you do to.

Keep all your receipts, send out detailed invoices to clients and keep good records of what was paid and when, and you'll be fine. It does depend on how organised you are of course, but once you have a system in place it's pretty easy! Good luck! 🙂

My own feeling is that it's better to have a separate bank account through which all your business-related payments can go - makes it so much easier with the tax return. As a sole trader, you're quite entitled to use a personal bank account for this - I do - unless you're going to want to take out loans and things like that.

Many years ago I freelanced for a while and just used my personal account. Never again. It just became a mine field. I've found it much easier to get a separate account and only use that for business related things.

I also got an ISA and with every payment I put a percentage away in there to save for Tax and accountants fees. I've read that as a Freelancer you don't need a proper Business Account and all its extra fees. I just got a current account from Halifax and told the woman what it was for just to be on the safe side and it was fine.

Yes, if you do have any money going spare, make sure you put it away where it's gaining interest so you can pay your tax bill when the time comes.