Running it
A sheet, a notes file, and a backup
Every additional tool is a thing to maintain and a place to lose something.
Guides on Running it: The admin that turns income into a trade
A single person doing rating work needs three things that are not the platform: a spreadsheet for numbers, a plain text file for templates and rubrics, and a backup of both. That is the complete list, and it stays complete considerably longer than people expect.
Every tool you add is a subscription to maintain, a login to lose, a place a client file can end up, and a thing to migrate when it shuts down. At one person and a few hundred jobs a year, none of them return that.
The three
The sheet. One row per job: date, buyer reference, format, fee, platform fee, minutes, note. This is the input to your tax position, your effective rate and every pricing decision you will make - the daily loop that keeps it current is what makes it worth having at all.
The notes file. Your rubric, your standard scope wording, your reply templates, your handover message. Plain text, one file, searchable. The rubric you reuse lives here and is the single highest-leverage document you own.
The backup. Of those two files and nothing else. Client material is deliberately excluded, for reasons covered in the backup post. The NCSC's guide for small organisations suggests two backups, one online and one on a storage device, and checking you know how to restore them.
Prefer formats that open without a subscription in five years: a spreadsheet file rather than a database, plain text rather than a proprietary note format.
What people add, and what it costs
| Tool | The pitch | Why it does not pay yet |
|---|---|---|
| CRM | Track buyers and pipeline | The platform already holds the thread; you have tens of buyers, not thousands |
| Invoicing software | Professional invoices | Most platform jobs never need an invoice at all |
| Scheduling app | Buyers book their own slots | Adds a second calendar to keep in sync with the platform's |
| Project management board | See all jobs at once | Your job list is the platform's job list |
| Separate cloud storage | Access anywhere | An additional place client files persist without your knowledge |
The last one is the actively harmful entry. Convenience storage is the most common route by which submitted material ends up somewhere unintended, which is why what you hold about buyers argues for fewer locations rather than better ones.
Invoicing is the one that eventually becomes real, and the trigger is a buyer or a jurisdiction requiring it rather than a preference for tidiness - when you actually need an invoice sets that threshold.
What is worth spending on
Not software. The things that measurably change output are the ones that touch the work itself: a microphone if you sell audio, adequate lighting if you sell video, a second screen if you write while reading a submission.
Anything that promises to organise you does not show up anywhere, because organisation was never the constraint - the argument about equipment that is genuinely required draws the same line from the other side.
Test any candidate tool against one question: which of the seven fields in your sheet does it improve? If the honest answer is none, it is a preference.
When to add something
Add a tool when the same manual step has annoyed you three times and takes more than five minutes each time.
Do not add one because your volume grew; volume mostly makes the sheet longer.
The same restraint applies on the production side. Buyers do not pay for the sophistication of your setup, and the published comparisons of gear that changes an output versus gear that changes nothing are a reasonable proxy for the distinction. Where any part of your work is scoring rather than describing, the tools built for consistent scoring are worth knowing about mainly so you can be clear about what yours does differently, and the same is true of the published accuracy claims of automated assessment - the number a buyer is comparing you against.
The platform side of the toolset is already provided and already paid for through the commission, which is worth remembering before duplicating any of it; what that commission covers for judges is set out on Rate Cock's judges page.