“just one last little edit...”

If your project folders look like this, we need to talk:

This is what a project looks like when feedback comes from 6 different people across email chains, Slack, and text. 

It's a mess…

And you're the one stuck managing it all.

Which is impossible to do when everyone's leaving feedback in different ways and sending notes whenever they feel like it.

This is a common occurrence for freelancers who don't have a system for feedback.

But when you do…

The problem: 

The feedback stage of your projects are unpredictable, unorganized, and can go on for weeks, setting back the project timeline, your own schedule, and your income. 

The benefit of solving it: 

Feedback comes in on-time, in one place, and in an organized way that you can actually execute on while keeping the project on time and on budget. 

Why what you’ve tried has failed: 

You’re trying to be flexible and easy to work with, but are actually allowing more chaos and delays in the project without having a clear process and system for effectively managing feedback. 

Here’s how to solve it: 

Develop your clear system for the feedback stage of your project: 

• How long will you give clients for feedback? (be specific or it will go on forever)

• How will they be expected to leave their feedback? (don’t let it be “via email”)

• What happens if feedback comes in late? (added fees, delayed project completion, etc.)

Have clear and specific guidelines for feedback in your Scope of Work doc with actual dates based on the timeline of the project (ex: “feedback is due on 12/1/25” not “feedback is due 2 weeks later”). 

You can develop your own system, or you can use a tool like Pastel that was legit built for this.

lets clients leave comments directly on the work itself, from a website, design file, PDF, or even video. 

You can build this system for yourself or use Pastel (which does all of this automatically), you need to have: 

→ All feedback in ONE PLACE, all comments are on the same file, so you (and everyone on their team) can see what needs to be changed and who said it.

→ Feedback can be left specifically on the deliverable, so you’re not getting “make the button on the main page more blue” in a random email chain or Slack DM, and instead can see exactly what button on which page. 

There are lots of tools that can do this, depending on your medium, but Pastel handles them ALL. 

→ You set clear deadlines for leaving feedback and consequences of missing the deadline so clients clearly understand when it’s due and have urgency to get it done on time.  

Then, at the start of every project you can tell your clients exactly when they get the draft, how long they have to review, and how they will leave that feedback: 

With this clarity in your feedback process, projects that used to drag for weeks now wrap on-time and on-budget. 

And you can actually plan your schedule without having to worry about project timelines going to sh*t!

Try Pastel for free and see how it makes feedback so much easier on your next project. It works on pretty much everything → live websites, designs, PDFs, even video.

Best, 
Jamie