Filling software gaps with a freelancer portal

CRMs are great when you use them to manage clients, but when you start using them to manage freelancers, you’re treading down the wrong path.

Antares, a consultancy that supports overseas non-profit organizations with training and project management, would typically use Capsule CRM to manage each case. That worked for the client side. However, given that each case had different freelancers working on it, they would also add them to the CRM to keep track of everything in one place.

Freelancers aren’t clients, and managing them requires a vastly different set of features from what Capsule offers.

Instead, Antares needed a separate portal that could work in alignment with Capsule. Thankfully, creating bespoke internal tools like these is our specialty at Tinkso. Antares was elated when they found they could get the job done in only 2 weeks.

Building out the platform

When we say we built a freelancer portal, it’s important to emphasize that this couldn’t be siloed from the rest of Antares' organization, it needed to be truly connected to each project.

Let’s start from the beginning. Every time Antares opens a new case with a client, they need to add freelancers to the project. So that was the first step. We needed to create a webhook with an automatic invite flow to get them to view the case within Antares’ custom dashboard. For new users, this flow includes account creation.

Then, through Antares’ dashboard, users can see a list of cases they’ve been assigned to along with the details. Once the freelancer gets to work on the project, they can record their sessions on the app. Then, the sessions sync with Antares’ CRM. This ensures that they record vital info about the task automatically and transparently.

After they’ve finished the case, the freelancer can close it and the status automatically updates in Antares’ CRM. A new workflow is triggered at this point to create an invoice based on the automated task logs as well as any additional CRM data as needed.

Giving Antares what they needed

While this new freelancer portal was transformational for Antares internally, it was hardly groundbreaking for us to build.

All we needed to do was ask a few precise questions about Antares’ administration processes, and we automated it almost entirely. Then, we build an intuitive dashboard to make it easy for freelancers to fill in the rest.

Since Antares didn’t want to change the CRM processes that they already had in place, it was our job to find the best way to fit the freelancer portal around them.

Many members of the Antares team are saving several hours per month. Best of all, they have no need for additional software because they’ve already gotten what they needed from the tool we built.