# About the freelancer with many clients example

**URL:** <https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/t/about-the-freelancer-with-many-clients-example/1556>\
**Category:** System expansion\
**Created:** [June 10, 2024, 11:29am UTC](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/t/about-the-freelancer-with-many-clients-example/1556 "2024-06-10T11:29:47Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
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**Author:** ![dylanjr](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/278dde/32.png) [@dylanjr](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/u/dylanjr)\
**Post date:** [June 10, 2024, 1:48pm UTC](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/t/about-the-freelancer-with-many-clients-example/1556/2 "2024-06-10T13:48:10Z")

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Here’s an interesting thread [The Freelancer system](https://forum.johnnydecimal.com/t/the-freelancer-system/905/7) discussing this problem. Check out the video Johnny posted in response if you have time.

I have my own version of this problem. I won’t go into too much detail, but here’s some advice: forget about the SYS.AC.ID numbers. I’ve found using ‘YYYY-MM-DD’ is useful for titles, and I sort projects into folders by year (‘YYYY’).

> [@Vnoel](#):
>
> = 2600/10/10/100

> [@Vnoel](#):
>
> what do you do with those 10,000 possible folders per client?

Yes, that’s way too many folders to functionally manage.

It might help to take a step back and think about what it is you need to organize as a freelancer. Consider “How many clients do I expect to have each year?” and “How many ‘projects’ can I expect per client?”. You probably don’t need as many folders as you think.

At scale, a database becomes helpful. The website and workbook hint at using databases, but in this case, I would definitely consider using one to manage project and client metadata. A good database will provide more functionality than a folder structure can.

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