Chapter 30. Automating Client Updates as a Freelance Developer

If you have limited freelancing experience, it may surprise you to discover that a significant portion of a developer's day is spent detailing the work performed for that day. In this chapter, I'm going to walk through automating client updates so that you can be as efficient as possible.

Importance of daily updates

Before diving into how we can automate updates to clients, let's discuss what a proper update is and what it entails. An update is a message sent to a client, usually every day or at least every day that you're working on the client's project. The days are long gone where clients would hire a freelancer and the developer would disappear for a few months until they brought back a finished product.

Nowadays, clients want to have a transparent view of the work performed. This is especially true if a client is paying you on an hourly basis. This makes sense because if you hired someone...