5+6 tools for a light entrepreneur – are you using these?
Light entrepreneurship! An old friend to many, a new face for others. What does a light entrepreneur need to get started?
The answer is simple: you only need a tax card, a social security number and an email address to begin working as a light entrepreneur.
However, continuing to run your business will be easier when you know how to use all the available tools.
Even though light entrepreneurship is characterized by independent work and entrepreneurial conventions, a light entrepreneur does not have to do everything on their own. An invoicing service will take care of bureaucracy and paying wages, and there are also many useful tools that help in other areas of light entrepreneurship.
Not everyone needs everything, but it’s good to be aware of what’s on offer, so put on your imaginary utility belt and be ready to have the most useful tools of light entrepreneurship within arms reach!
The most important tools for a light entrepreneur:
- Tax card
Every light entrepreneur must have a tax card. There are many different types of tax cards for different types of work, but in practice, the tax card has only one purpose: to tell the employer the withholding rate that they must pay to the tax authorities from your pay. You can find the guide for picking the right tax card here. - Salary calculator
A salary calculator is perhaps the most important tool for a light entrepreneur’s operation. With a salary calculator, you can get a concrete picture of the elements between which your invoiced sum is divided and the proportional weight of different costs. Because of this, a salary calculator will also help you with pricing. Luckily, you won’t have to think about pricing on your own – you can also make use of our free pricing guide. - Receipts and keeping them
If you want to be reimbursed for some expenses, you should, of course, keep the receipts for them. You can add receipts to your invoice form electronically. They can be added as either images or in a PDF format. It’s a good idea to take a picture of a receipt when you purchase something. For this purpose, you can use something like Evernote, a free application whose internal camera features automatically lighten and crop your picture to make it easy to read. - Guides
Do you need advice on marketing your work, acquiring clients, social security or pricing? We offer several courses and guides to help our users. The guides will give you pointed advice whenever you need it. See all the guides and start developing your business here. - FAQ database
You can use our FAQ database to find answers to all the most common questions, whether you’re thinking about taxes, YEL, salary, insurances or light entrepreneurship in different life stages. See all frequently asked questions here and you will soon be an expert!
As a registered light entrepreneur, you will also gain access to:
- Assignment agreement and quotation templates
Got your first gig? Great! You should begin by making sure you also have a written contract. This way, you can easily avoid potentially confusing situations. If you don’t have a gig yet, you might need a quotation template. Thankfully, you won’t have to make either one from scratch. You can find a free assignment agreement template in your control panel’s documents section and a quotation template in the benefits section. - Cash receipt notebook
If your operation requires accepting hard cash, you can order a cash receipt notebook. With the notebook, you can receive cash without having to create and pay for an invoice for the receipt. Order a cash receipt notebook from our customer service after you’ve become a registered user. - Proof of assignment
A proof of assignment is an easy way to demonstrate the time you have spent working as a light entrepreneur to authorities and other relevant parties. The proof of assignment shows that you have been using our service and therefore employing yourself with it. The data in the proof of assignment might also be interesting for personal use. Download the proof of assignment to your computer directly from your own profile or print it if necessary. - Team invoicing
Sometimes you might work on a gig together with a colleague, which is when team invoicing is easiest for both the light entrepreneur and the person receiving the invoice. One of the people working on the gig creates the invoice and reports each person’s share of the invoice amount. The client will receive only one invoice for the service that they purchased and each person involved gets their amount of the salary directly. Click team invoicing in the invoices section. - Benefits
Light entrepreneurs enjoy a constantly updated catalogue of community benefits on UKKO.fi. The benefits include, for example, cheaper car rentals, cheaper stays at hotels, training benefits, first-aid training and much more. You can find a list of all available benefits from your control panel.
I hope this list has been helpful!
Do you want to know more about light entrepreneurship, being self-employed or UKKO.fi´s invoice service for freelancers? Then click on the word you want to read more about.