Ever wanted to boost your productivity by using the best tools for freelancers?
These days it seems there are hundreds of tools available for us freelancers, which can be overwhelming. And we’re not talking about watching cat videos — we’re talking about software and apps to help you get organised and work faster. Check out this in-depth review to find out more:
Cushion
Designed to give freelancers a clearer view of their workload and availability, Cushion improves cash flow while offering strong invoicing and time tracking features.
Cushion promises “Peace of mind for freelancers,” providing beautiful UX and unique features to help you avoid taking on too much work. It’s easy to visualize future workload, earnings, expenses, and invoices, so freelancers can anticipate their financial situation ahead of time.
Where Cushion shines is as an app for freelancers to stay on top of their workload, improve cash flow, and find valuable balance. It’s also easy to track time and invoice clients with the app.
However, you’ll need to use another app to manage core accounting needs such as compiling expenses and income for the tax year. Cushion handily integrates with FreeAgent, FreshBooks, and Xero to enable this.
Cushion could be the best freelancer software for you if:
- You don’t need comprehensive accounting software right now, or you have another system that syncs with Cushion (FreshBooks, FreeAgent, or Xero)
- Your goal is to have a clearer view of your workload and avoid taking on too much work
FreshBooks
As a powerful all-in-one small solution for business accounting and invoicing, FreshBooks is a simple but mighty software choice for freelancers and entrepreneurs.
FreshBooks has a great all-around feature set while still being simple to use. For the $15/month Lite plan, you get unlimited customized invoices, expenses, time tracking, estimates, online card payments, and bank transfers. You also get insightful Tax Time reports.
With the Plus plan (from $25/month), you can add more automation to your freelance business, such as with scheduled late payment reminders, recurring invoices, and late fees. You can also access client retainers. The Premium plan is for growing businesses that need to manage up to 500 clients.
FreshBooks could be the best freelancer software for you if:
- You need time tracking functionality at a low price point
- You want unlimited invoices, estimates and card payments
- You prioritize simplicity and ease of use
AND.CO
AND.CO is a powerful all-in-one tool for freelancers to manage and grow their business. The platform was acquired by Fiverr in 2018.
AND.CO is an excellent fit for freelancers who are just getting started. Self-titled as “the one app to run your freelance business or studio,” over 300,000 businesses use AND.CO to send proposals, invoice clients, get paid, and manage their time, expenses, and tasks.
Once dubbed “free forever,” AND.CO changed tack and introduced paid plans after being acquired by Fiverr in 2018. You can still get started with its free plan, but this only supports one active client – which isn’t going to cut it for most freelance businesses.
For $18/month, you can manage unlimited clients, remove AND.CO branding, edit contracts, and pay 2.9% + 30 cents for online payments. You can also connect up to six bank accounts to keep track of when invoices have been paid.
AND.CO neatly integrates with your other favorite freelance apps, including Mailchimp, Spotify, and Stripe.
Extra tip: For extra value from AND.CO whether you’re a customer or not, listen to The Six Figure Freelancer audio course for free. AND.CO opens up the mic to top professionals who share their formulas for success in starting, growing, and maintaining six-figure freelance careers.
AND.CO could be the best freelancer software for you if:
- You want to manage unlimited clients
- You don’t need advanced accounting features
- You want a simple user-experience
Wave Accounting
Financial software that offers freelancers the most value at the lowest price point – you require exactly zero budget to get started.
Wave is a very popular tool for freelancers for good reason – it’s free. The financial software for entrepreneurs offers the core accounting, invoicing and receipt scanning features you need to make running your freelance business a breeze. You can pay-per-use for access to online payments if required.
Here’s a glimpse of the Wave integration with Stripe to track cash flow, profit and loss, and overdue invoices:
Wave could be the best freelancer software for you if:
- You have a limited budget and are looking for a free app to manage your freelance business
- Your focus is on invoicing, basic accounting, and receipt scanning
- You don’t need to track mileage, time, or inventory
Want to streamline your processes even more? A two-way data sync solution keeps data flowing freely to the right places in your small business, from your freelance management tool to your email marketing provider and CRM.
Harpoon App
Harpoon is a time management app that not only tracks your previous performance but also predicts your future performance and earnings.
One of its great features is the ability to set a yearly revenue goal. Set a goal that ensures that you are profitable and your expenses are covered.
You can use the Goal Calculator to calculate what this amount should be, based on your expenses and business goals.
Then, as you track your team’s performance over time, Harpoon will automatically forecast your future revenue, when it will come in, and how it stacks up against your goal.
Harpoon will also set monthly goals for you based on your yearly goal, and it will continually track your progress to see whether your performance is on par.
Sometimes, you will get paid late; if that happens, Harpoon will roll over your expected revenue to the next month.
You can also do this for individual projects. You can schedule different projects throughout the year on the calendar; Harpoon will predict the revenue of each project before you even start.
Harpoon will even calculate and recommend how many vacation days you should take each year, depending on your goals and current performance!
You can always adjust your goals manually.
Harpoon has a 14-day free trial. Plans start from $19/month and go up to $99/month.
Toggl
Toggl is a simple and free time-tracking software that many freelancers will find useful. It doesn’t have advanced features like invoice creation and tax calculations, but it is perfect for freelancers who just want to track how much time they are working on each project.
Tracking your time with Toggl is easy.
Simply create a project name. Then, clock in when you start and clock out when you finish.
You can set dollar or revenue amounts for each project or for each hour you work. This makes it easy to track how much money you are making over time for each project.
You will get extensive downloadable reports you can use to ensure you are sticking to your goals.
There is a Chrome extension and a mobile app which syncs with your main account. This way, you can track your time on the go.
Although Toggl is free, premium plans are available.
The Starter plan includes additional features such as billable rates, rounding, your company logo, project time estimates and alerts, the ability to further break down projects into sub-tasks, unlimited team members, and more.
The Premium plan adds features like email reminders, scheduled reports sent to your email, time audits, a project dashboard, and more.
Trello
Trello offers a fun and interactive way to manage projects and team members. It doesn’t even have to be for work – you can use it to manage side projects and even a family vacation.
Start by creating a board. On each board, you can create different lists.
On each list, you can add interactive, fun cards – these can be tasks that need to be worked on. Then, customize the cards and add due dates, comments, and more.
Cards can be organized based on their progress state – To Do, Doing, and Done.
You can remove tasks automatically by creating due-date commands, rule-based triggers, and more.
The great part about Trello is that it integrates with apps your team might already be using. This includes Evernote, Google Drive, Dropbox, and more.
Trello has mobile apps for Android and iOS to help you stay organized on the go.
As mentioned, Trello is free. However, there are premium plans as well, which start at $9.99/month.
Premium plans give you access to unlimited boards (as opposed to 10), board collections, 100+ app integrations, more or unlimited command runs, email notifications, advanced admin permissions, and much more.
Wrike
Wrike is perfect for freelancers as well as small businesses and enterprises. For each project, you can create a board where you organize tasks into lists.
For each task, you will see a progress status, and you can open up any task to add notes, assign team members, and more.
Your team members can send you projects for review. Whenever you get a new message or task, you will get a notification from your inbox.
There are a number of project templates you can use to make things a bit quicker.
Using the calendar, you can get a quick overview of the different projects you are working on, when they are due, and more.
In short, Wrike focuses on making your big picture easily viewable and accessible. You can collaborate with team members and keep things moving so you make more progress towards your goal.
For freelancers, you can create different projects and collaborate with clients or other freelancers you may be outsourcing tasks to.
Wrike has an interactive product tour you can use to get a feel for how it works.
For freelancers and small teams of up to five people, Wrike is free. However, there are additional, premium plans if you want to add team members or gain access to the full project management and collaboration tool suite.
Premium plans start at $9.80/month for each user.
ClockifyMe
ClockifyMe is free time tracking software for freelancers and small businesses. It is entirely free to use and lets you add as many clients or team members as you want.
Your Clockify account will sync information entered on any device. There is a website, a desktop app, and a mobile app.
By tracking how much time you are spending on each project or for each client, you can get an idea of how much you should really be charging them. If you find that it takes more time than you expected to complete a project, for example, consider raising your rates.
You can even break down projects into billable and non-billable activities (for example, phone calls or commuting). By including non-billable activities that are essential for completing the project, you can see how much your “real” hourly rate is.
Reports can be downloaded and forwarded to clients as proof of how much time you are spending.
RedBooth
Redbooth is a great time management software that lets you track whether you are keeping up with your goals or are lagging behind.
Using drag-and-drop Kanban boards, you can organize your projects and see or edit each of them at a glance. You can assign users, set due dates, add comments, and much more.
The Gantt charts let you view your project timelines quickly. You will also get detailed productivity reports that will delve deep into task status, time spent, performance, and more.
Redbooth integrates with Zoom, which allows you to hold live video conferences straight from your Redbooth account. You can have virtual meetings with clients or collaborators at any time.
You can set up new projects within minutes by choosing from the premade, customizable project management templates. You can also save your workspaces as templates to be used in the future.
Various templates exist for categories such as marketing, IT, sales, and more.
Redbooth is free to use, but you are limited to basic features, two workspaces, and 2GB of storage.
There are two premium plans: $9/month per user and $15/month per user. These give you additional features, unlimited workspaces, and more storage.
Conclusion
There are a lot of elements that go into managing a successful freelancing business and not many people focus on this part. Instead, they think all you need is an idea and the right designer to make it come alive. But this is far from the truth. Like any other business, freelancing requires proper planning and execution to get things done the right way. While there are many tools available online for freelancers such as invoice software or time tracking apps , you need to find the one that fits your workflow and has the features needed to help streamline your day-to-day operations. Knowing how important it can be, we’ve decided put together a list of the best business management tools for freelancers . Try these and reach new business