[smackay]

Freelancing jobs, especially the better ones, like any relationship are fundamentally built on good communication and trust. It's pretty hard to replicate this with technology, except where it make the process of getting the necessary paperwork filled out and the day to day exchange of information easier.

Your survey is mainly about invoicing. In my experience that's a solved problem at least when dealing with smaller companies. In the freelancing gigs I have had over the past 10 years I either sent a PDF by mail, or committed it to a repository (10/10 for geek cred for WebFaction) or used an online timesheet program. Payment was made via bank transfer within a few hours and rarely more than a couple of days. Even in relationships with very large companies based in abroad (i.e. USA, I'm in Portgual) once the necessary paperwork was sent to get the information into the billing system the process was smooth.

Where I have experienced problems it was with slightly sketchy organisations and no amount of technology is going to solve that, other than an automated lawyer or strongman service.

The unsolved "problems" with freelancing are getting companies to feel sufficiently confident to do more of it and getting some kind of community to keep freelancers fresh. The ability to allow groups of individuals to organize themselves so that they can competently deal with companies on a peer to peer basis would also be pretty useful.

[aframe]

Completely agree with your thoughts around building a community.

Thanks for your input.