Advice on being freelance wanted?

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I've recently given up a job as a permanent member of staff at one company to do the same job on a freelance basis for a variety of companies. Haven't managed to do do any research into setting myself up as freelancer yet and wondering if any of you ladies would have any words of wisdom that might make my transition easier?! I promise I'm not being lazy I've just got a rather full plate at the minute - I know, I know doesn't everybody but any useful nougats of information that you might want to share would be much appreciated! Thank you.

I was just thinking about this after someone posted that they were shocked a clown was charging 120 quid an hour. I don't think that's at all unreasonable for someone self-employed who, by definition, has pretty limited hours in which to work.

My husband set up his own company, so effectively went freelance. My number one piece of advice would be do your sums very carefully. Make sure that your hourly rate covers every single thing you were getting as a staff member: paid holiday (both vacation time and bank holidays), pension contributions, the cost of an accountant to do your tax if you were formerly PAYE, London weighting, health insurance, computers and software, work space, etc.

Definitely get an accountant. Doing your own tax is an activity for masochists.

The first thing you need to do is to register with the inland revenue as self-employed, and thus start paying self employed NI (only about a tenner a month).

You need to get an idea of your annual turnover (turnover not profit) to work out whether you need to VAT register or not. Depending what sort of equipment you need for your work, it may be beneficial to register even if you don't need to.

What line of work is it, as this will make a diff to other advice really?

Absolutely do get an accountant!

Factor in people being rubbish at paying you on time - I love being self-employed but our finances are all over the place as my clients are soooo bad at paying on time, despite threats/bribes etc! And factor in quiet periods over Chrismtas etc, if you're not working you're not earning!

It's great though - I work from home and I just e-mail my hours through for that week to each client. Wanted to get my hair cut at 3pm last Friday, took a 2 hour lunchbreak between 2-4pm and then worked into the evening!

Thank you everyone for all your advice - it's much appreciated. Can'tsleepwon'tsleep (great user name by the way!) I work in the media - does that make any difference?
Thanks again everyone.