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Comment by Romateslax | Hacker News Reader

Hey hackers,

Roman here, maker of Portal

As a product designer myself I always felt that the whole freelancing process of sending proposals, collecting payments, transferring deliverables was way too convoluted and hideous.

So I got this ideas for Portal - a digital space for your freelance project that replaces PDF proposals and invoices, and allows you to easily collect payments, down payments, tips, run subscriptions and share large deliverables easily and in one place. There's a heavy focus on customization, so that you as a creative freelancer can express your skill and your taste.

I'm building Portal primary for creative professionals like me, but either way, whether you're one or not, I'd love to hear your opinion.

Also worth mentioning, the waitlist is there only to allow people request early access while I'm polishing the final details. The app itself will be available within the next couple of weeks :)

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Cool product. I signed up for the beta.

I've been freelancing since about 2014~. Here's a user story for you to throw on to your pile.

I'm most interested in the proposals / invoicing side of your features. My proposals are ad hoc and hinge predominately on human interactions. I'd be cool with adding some pretty design in the mix. My invoicing system currently is a nodejs script I wrote a decade ago that takes in JSON and generates a LaTeX -> pdf. My dream has been to extend it so I could track my hours with a foot pedal, but I've never gotten around to it. Cobbler's children have no shoes in full effect.

If you've got any way to make it easier for me to track time this would be a win.

"easily collect payments" is something I find undesirable in all the ways I can imagine you implementing it. I am very reluctant to let a non bank hold/proxy my payments. Maybe you're doing something different. More up front details might be better if you're finessing around having to be party to the transfers or know people's account numbers. Maybe this isn't a problem for other people, I'm just one user story.

"run subscriptions" caught my eye. I don't know what it means for me. It has my mind exploring how I would even sell a subscription. I guess something like a retainer / support agreement? There's a spark of something here from you teasing a way for me to expand my business. It's interesting!

"share large deliverables" this feature isn't really for me. I tend to share my deliverables with stakeholders via git or steam.

Still sounds like there's some value for me. I hope I'll get to try it out.

Hey there, thanks a lot for this comment! Indeed an interesting use case to add to my list :)

To comment on the points you mentioned: Great to hear you're looking for a proposal/invoice solution. Hour tracking is not currently built as a feature, as for now it's a web-based application and I have a feeling time tracking needs to be closer integrated into the system, so that it's quicker to access. So it has to be a desktop app imo, which I am exploring for the future. What will be available right away is an easy way to set an estimate in the proposal and then update the project with the actual hours when the project is complete. But this is great feedback and I'll do my best to cover your use case.

The whole idea with payments is to make it as easy as possible for the client to pay. I've experienced late payments multiple times myself, so a built-in solution with multiple payment options should be a no-brainer for the client. The payments are done using Stripe - they're the most reliable player on the market. As the client makes the payment, it goes directly to the freelancer. There're definitely many edge cases that I hope to cover during the beta phase.

I also believe subscriptions could be a popular feature. You could use it for retainers, as you mentioned, or run productized services, which are pretty popular these days. So offering fixed packages and fixed timelines. And the coolest thing is that the payments are collected automatically, so not you or the client need to worry about it.

Deliverables is just a cherry on top. I know it's not applicable for everyone but doesn't hurt to have it :)

Thanks again for this feedback and looking forward to hearing your thoughts again once you try it yourself!

Do you have any details on the underlying infrastructure? It looks like a useful product, but you're essentially asking me to blindly trust a new service with my entire livelihood.

I get that, it's always a challenge to trust a new product, especially when it comes to money. All the payments are done using stripe. Each user creates a connected Stripe account as part of the onboarding, accessible from Portal. When a payment is made, it goes directly to the user's Stripe account, and from there paid out to the selected bank account.

I'm aiming to build this as safe as possible, but that's why I'm planning to have a soft launch with the beta list to see if all the edge cases are covered.

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