What is a client brief?

When you hire someone to work with you on a project, it makes everything easier if they clearly understand what you want to achieve. If the person you’re working with doesn’t understand the project and doesn’t ask questions, they may struggle to complete the work to a satisfactory standard. To prevent this, consider writing a client brief for them. 

This article will explain what a client brief is and guide you through writing a client brief. The topics we’ll cover include:

• What is a client brief?
• How do I write a client brief?
• How can Countingup help me invoice clients once I complete a brief? 

A client brief acts as a blueprint for anyone working for your business. You, as the client, will want to make sure everyone is on the same page regarding your project. The client brief you write should ensure that the person or agency you hire knows not only what you want to do, but how you want them to do it.

Client briefs are often short and mostly contain overviews of topics instead of in-depth descriptions. This is so the people you’re working with can feel comfortable asking questions and making their own decisions. A project might change hugely halfway through, and having a very strict brief might limit creativity. 

If you’re a small business hiring a larger or more experienced company, remember to reach out to them if you’re struggling with what to include in your client brief. If they’ve received a lot of client briefs, they’ll know what they should look like and should be happy to help you put all the relevant information about the project into one document. 

Client briefs are unique to each business and each project, but a thorough client brief should contain at least a few of these sections to be effective:

• Overview of your business
• Project challenges and objectives
• Overall strategy
• Resources available
• Competitors and target market

A client brief will usually include a general description of the client company. When you write your briefs, include the most relevant points of your company history, your company values, and your long-term business strategy in this section. 

It’s also essential to describe your company brand in this section so that whoever you’ve hired understands how your business approaches problems.

This is where you’ll outline the main purpose of your project. Be sure to list the main challenges you expect to face during the project, so whoever you hire isn’t surprised by sudden difficulties. 

Try to describe what you hope to accomplish by completing the project, and the benefits you hope it will bring to your company. This will help you measure the success of your project once your hired team finishes working. 

This section will explain how you want your hired team to approach the project. This section can be tricky, as being too strict in your guidelines means the team can’t be as creative. On the other hand, not being clear enough might mean the people you hire aren’t sure how to complete the project, which will lead to your objective not being achieved.

A good way to complete this section is to provide a basic overview of your project strategy while reinforcing your company’s branding. By outlining how your company does things in general and how to complete this specific project, you should get a finished product that achieves your objectives and falls within your company values. 

Any project requires resources to complete, and this section will list all of the resources available to your company. It may be that your hired team has resources of their own — their access to resources may even be why you hired them — but you should still describe the list of equipment and facilities that are available for the project.

This section should also outline the project budget. Budgeting is very important for businesses, as it prevents overspending and stops financial issues appearing during future projects. Consider all the potential costs your hired team might face, and be sure to include extra money for unexpected difficulties.

This section gives the people you hire a better idea of the industry your business operates in. You should list your main competitors in this section and describe the kind of customer that falls within your target market. Your target market is the group of customers that you aim your marketing and products towards. Making a hired team aware of this is vital if they are to achieve the goals you’ve set.

This article focuses on you being the one writing a client brief, but it may be that you more frequently receive briefs than have to write them. In this instance, understanding the brief you’re given should be relatively simple. Read all the information it includes carefully to make sure you know what the client wants, and don’t be afraid to ask the client questions. If something is missing from the brief, they’ll be just as interested in filling the blanks as you are.

Once the work is complete, you’ll have to create an invoice and send it so you can get paid for your work. This is much easier if you use financial management software. For instance, the Countingup app enables your to create customised invoices in seconds. 

Countingup is the business current account with built-in accounting software that allows you to manage all your financial data in one place. With features like automatic expense categorisation, receipt capture tools, tax estimates, and cash flow insights, you can confidently keep on top of your business finances wherever you are. 

You can also share your bookkeeping with your accountant instantly without worrying about duplication errors, data lags or inaccuracies. Seamless, simple, and straightforward! 

Find out more here.