FreshBooks: Mudita Shekhawat

Mudita Shekhawat

Business Development Representative at FreshBooks

https://www.freshbooks.com

FreshBooks

Mudita Shekhawat is a business development representative at FreshBooks. FreshBooks is a invoice and accounting software that is easy to use. It helps keep track of client lists, keep track of time spent on projects and one's expenses. What I found interesting about FreshBooks that it is indeed easy to navigate when going through the process of creating an invoice and various other options. I tend to stray away from anything that has to do with accounting, and funny thing is my friend is studying accounting as well. Hearing from him about his program, he states that it is quite a difficult study and seeing how easy FreshBook is was definitely surprising to me. Another interesting fact that Shekhawat mentions is that, not only business owners use it, but creative people use it as well.

Applicable to All Types of Users

With the mention of creative people using FreshBooks as well, it brought back previous teachings during my Visual and Creative Arts program. Professors have mentioned life after studies and how one needs to constantly keep track of their expenses, such as money spent on materials for different mediums. Another aspect that they mentioned is to always keep track of time spent on projects. Overall, it was an interesting fact to learn from Shekhawat that creative people use this software to manage their expenses, time and their clients as it brought back what was taught before from my previous program. As an artist, one can be very passionate about their work they are creating. Shekhawat mentions that there should be a good in-between of the accounting side, as well as being passionate about one's work. 

Project Management & Project Scope

Project management is definitely needed to manage one's time when working on a client's work. Knowing how much time a work can be done and being able to be paid in time. Learning about FreshBooks, though very briefly, it helped me learn that it is good to be passionate and constantly design, but it is good to also manage expenses and time spent doing the work. In other words, Shekhawat tells us to have a good balance between the two. Given this advice, I agree with her, as one needs to get paid for their work after all, and it would help to keep track of the accounting side of projects. 

Shekhawat showed a diagram depicting about the project scope to further help us understand it visually. She mentions how some aspects may change depending on the project. An example she propose is having an everyday school project and the due date is next week. She tells us to think about how much one spends on that particular work and since the due date is next week, one would need to scale down their project scope, not spending a lot of expenses on the project itself and of course being able to manage their time. Another aspect to think about is the value of the project. For example, comparing a project for a sports team vs. doing a project for a wedding. Those are two very different values when compared and one would need more management and expenses spent than the other. With this information of learning about the value, Shekhawat mentions to charge by value than by time. Based on the scenario she has given us, I agree with her on that point. As certain works require different needs from the clients and one should know those needs in order to have a successful project. Going back to her talk about project scope, it is understandable to know how flexible each management for each project is. With different expectations from projects, expresses different values to the work itself.

Final Thoughts

Mudita Shekhawat's presentation was overall a very informative talk. Definitely different from other talks as it focuses more on the accounting side of projects than the designs or coding aspects. During the demo, I was able to explore the website and try the quick scenario she presented in her talk. It was  nice to experience how easy the software is to use. It was also interesting to see the amount of things that we have to think about on the accounting side. It can be quite overwhelming! Keeping track of one's clients, your expenses, time spent on projects and not to forget to create an invoice. On top of that, we have to work on the project itself! With FreshBooks, based on our little demo that Shekhawat presented to us, it was definitely helpful to know softwares like this exist, to keep track of the accounting side of projects.

Useful Links:

https://ca.linkedin.com/in/mudita-shekhawat-43067836 - Mudita Shekhawat's LinkedIn