Where do you stand?
Most financial tools for freelancers are built around one question: what happened? They count invoices, sort expenses, and produce overviews of the year behind you. That has its place. Looking back is how you learn.
But a freelancer rarely gets to stand still. There is always a next decision. Whether to take the project. Whether to raise your rate. Whether you can afford a quiet month. These are questions about what comes next, and last year's overview cannot answer them.
Peil is built around a different question: how do I stand right now, and where is this heading? It shows how your net effective rate is developing, what your billability is doing, and whether your reserves are keeping pace with your income. It shows what changes the moment you say yes to that new project.
The meaning of peil
The Netherlands has a deep-rooted relationship with water. We have shaped our whole landscape around it, with polders, dikes and water management. And it begins with measuring, because to measure is to know. Take the NAP, the Normaal Amsterdams Peil: a modest, sober reading of the water level. You read a figure off it. You see whether it is rising or falling.
We measure the water not out of panic, but in order to build. The level decides how deep the foundation piles must go before they reach solid sand, and how high a dike must stand to hold back a storm. And the measuring never stops: pumping stations hold the level steady day and night, quietly and continuously, so no one has to scramble when the weather turns.
That is how we make the situation legible today, so we can act and stay protected when the storms and the high water come.
A peiling is also a sounding: a measurement to fix your position and choose a course from it. And peil houden means keeping at level what would otherwise slowly sink.
All of these meanings sit at the core of our philosophy. Peil is your financial orientation. It reads the level and reports it plainly. No colour-coded verdict on your behaviour, no needless alarm. That clarity lets you strengthen your foundation for the lean months, and at the same time gives you the assurance to recognize your own worth and state it without doubt.
Everything feeds the measurement
This is what sets Peil apart. The measurement is not something you fill in on the side. It rises out of the work itself.
Log an hour, draft an invoice, send it, chase it, mark it paid. None of that is only record-keeping. Each act is a reading. Your level updates. The hour you just logged moves your billability. The invoice you just sent changes what is on its way to you. The payment that just landed lifts your reserves.
That is why Peil holds the doing and the knowing together. The timesheet and the invoicing are where the water enters. The dashboard is the gauge that reads it. They are one instrument: you work, and the level you work against stays in view the whole time.
Action and orientation are the same motion. Knowing where you stand cannot be separated from the work that puts you there.
Soft and vigilant
Finances can be unsettling. That is understandable, because real things are at stake: your mortgage, your pension, your sense of security.
Peil does not stoke that unease, and it does not paper over reality either. We believe in a philosophy of soft vigilance: presenting the facts in a way that prompts action. We give you honest context, not a blinking red verdict.
A freelancer who simply reads that a reserve will last three more months can calmly make a plan. A freelancer who sees a warning icon just gets stressed. Peil gives you exactly the information you need, in a tone that refuses to dramatize.
One honest number
The net effective rate is the number Peil is built around. Revenue, your rate, profit: each says something, but none of them tells you what an hour of your work is actually worth. The NER does. It is what remains per worked hour after tax, after costs, after correcting for the hours you never get to bill.
That number can be confronting. Sometimes it is half of what you thought you earned. It is also the only number that lets you compare honestly: against a salary in employment, against last year, against the goals you set for yourself.
The calculation is genuinely involved. Peil does it for you, including the self-employed deduction, the SME profit exemption, the ZVW contribution and the tax brackets, and it shows how each element contributes. No black box. No flattering rounding. The point is to make your value legible, so you can decide with confidence and stand behind your rate when it counts.
Where we draw the line
Peil is deliberate about where it stops. It is the place where you run the money side of your freelance business and stay oriented while you do it. It is not your bookkeeper.
So there is no sorting of transactions into ledger accounts, which is bookkeeping rather than orientation. No payroll. No sprawl of integrations to maintain every week. That kind of work pulls attention toward recording the past, when the work Peil cares about is knowing your position and deciding what comes next.
What you get instead is one instrument that stays sharp: where you stand today, where you are heading, and what each decision does to that.
About us
Peil is built by Jeroen Kortekaas and Ioanna Fourtouna.
Jeroen is a freelance designer and developer in Amsterdam. He started Peil because he wanted to reason clearly about what his work was really worth, once tax, costs and non-billable hours had been taken out. He was after one honest number, and the confidence to justify his rates and defend his financial position.
Ioanna specializes in community-led growth and brings experience in user acquisition and community building for freelancers and the self-employed. She makes sure Peil reaches the people who benefit most.
Together they want to give others exactly that: the confidence to know what your own work is truly worth.