Automated fee management for freelancers

Automated fee management improves scheduling and payment of freelancers.

Reading time: 5 minutes

Freelancers and fees

Public broadcasting relies on support from freelancers. In contrast to permanent employees, freelancers work under fee-based contracts with direct project reference. In addition to hourly and daily bookings, long-term collaboration is also common.

Freelance media production

The requirements for efficient fee management are diverse. On the one hand, there may be several fee contracts for a self-employed person in different departments. The amount of the fee depends on the booked times, but it is not necessarily proportional. An average daily rate may be lower when booking a complete week than for only two days.

In addition, fees can also fluctuate depending on the department and activity. For example, the same employee may be paid more for a creative service than for an executive activity. The situation is even more complicated in the case of combined fees. For example, there are separate agreements for the transfer of copyrights.

On top of that, the freelancer’s status can of course also change in the case of continuous employment. The high planning costs in larger media companies therefore involve a lot of bureaucracy and paperwork. Orders and contracts are printed out and passed from hand to hand, and are time-consuming to enter and manage manually.

Automated fee management with CEITON

CEITON covers the automated fee management of freelancers starting with version 11.0 (fall 2019).

In CEITON, the fee amount, its validity and the hourly basis are recorded for each employee. Fees for freelancers are automatically calculated and settled as well as transferred to external systems. Legal regulations or collective labor agreements are automatically taken into account and checked by the system. CEITON notifies the planner when freelancers reach a critical employment limit. This way, false self-employment can be prevented.

Security and privacy

Since the amount of fees is confidential, access to the data is secured by a respectively strict distribution of rights. Only planners or editors with the appropriate rights to view, edit or change fees are allowed to do so.

Working with the CEITON fee management system

Various filter settings already help the planner when it comes to scheduling the freelancers:

• Overall view of employees and their fees is available, or

• only fees defined for the individual employee, or

• only fees for this department or activity, or

• the fees for which the start and end dates of the assignment are within the limits of validity are displayed etc.

By directly comparing all suitable freelancers, it is possible to quickly sort by cost factor, for example. Deviating fees, e.g. according to exploitation rights, can be easily planned and accounted for.

The freelancer then records the performed assignments in the CEITON module for digital time tracking in an uncomplicated and user-friendly way, either mobile or on the computer. In CEITON, billing is done according to the recorded fee and, if necessary, the payable amount is forwarded to a corresponding interface in financial accounting.

Pros of automated fee management:
  • Work processes without media discontinuity
    – all data in one system

  • High security and transparency

  • Control options and audit security

  • Easy adjustment of the conditions

  • Interfaces, e.g. to financial accounting

About the author Sarah Barnert

Sarah is a content manager at expertplace solutions, manages our social media accounts and writes about industry trends.