For Freelance Interpreters
The hidden tax of running an interpreting practice is not the interpreting.
Most days that end an interpreted assignment, the work isn’t over. There’s the agency cheat sheet to consult — what was Stratus’s weeknight rate again? Was that booking under the medical agreement or the legal one? Did the cancellation happen inside the 24-hour window? There’s the spreadsheet to update. There’s the calendar to reconcile with three agency portals. There’s the proforma to type up if you want to get paid this month.
This is the tax. It runs to several hours a week for working interpreters. It compounds across agencies. It does not appear in your billable hours.
What this is
The Freelancer Tool is a single platform built to do that work for you. You set up an agreement once per client — agency or direct — with its rate schedule, minimums, increment rule, mileage policy, and cancellation terms. From then on, every booking that runs against that agreement bills itself correctly. When the job ends, the proforma drafts itself. When you bundle proformas into an invoice, the payment terms come from the agreement. When payment lands, reconciliation happens automatically — and if an agency underpays by $42.50, the system flags it before you would have noticed.
It is not FreshBooks with a different color scheme. The math underneath understands what interpreters are paid for, in the units they’re paid in, against the rules each client actually uses.
What it knows that other tools don't
Modalities.On-site interpreting, VRI, OPI, and CART each bill differently. OPI is per-minute, often rounded oddly. VRI links to a video URL that often isn’t sent until ten minutes before the call. On-site adds mileage above a threshold. The system handles each modality natively rather than asking you to shoehorn it into a generic “service” abstraction.
Rate layers.Weekday, weeknight, weekend, overnight — most agreements use at least three. A booking that crosses a layer boundary (a 5–7 PM medical interpretation) gets split correctly. You don’t do the math.
Minimums and increments. Two-hour minimums with 15-minute increments after are standard. A 2 hour 7 minute booking bills as 2.25 hours. The system enforces the rule per agreement, so the same booking under two different clients can bill two different ways.
Cancellations. Inside the cancellation window, the agreement bills full fee. Outside, no charge. The window is per-agreement. The system knows which clock to start.
Verification of attendance. The slip the consumer signs at the end of an assignment is captured digitally, attached to the booking, and surfaces in the invoice as proof.
Who it's for
Independent professional interpreters running their own practice — ASL first, spoken-language and translation next. You contract directly with hospitals, schools, courts, agencies, sometimes private clients. You file a 1099 with the IRS, not a W-2. You’d rather spend Sunday with your family than with your spreadsheet.
If you have an Agency Cheat Sheet open right now in another tab, this is for you.
In early access. We’ll write when it opens.
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