Are you a freelancer? There are many benefits to going into business for yourself, but it also means a lot more planning and organization. You are entirely responsible for your livelihood – and that’s not just doing the work and delivering results. You’ll also be responsible for billing, scheduling, project management, client management, and business development.
If you want to make all of these responsibilities a bit easier to manage, then you should consider adopting some digital tools. Most IT support companies these days will attest to the fact that incorporating the right digital tools will make managing your work a lot more efficient. If you are freelancing, you should consider the following tools to help you:
- Mint
Finances are a big aspect of freelancing. You are responsible for managing your accounts; and you might be using multiple bank accounts and cards to manage your business expenses. With Mint, you can easily integrate data from all of your bank accounts so that you can see a complete summary of your finances. This is the best way to manage budgets and expenses as a freelancer.
- Freshbooks
When you are a freelancer, you are responsible for filing your own tax returns, which means you need to be able to keep very good financial records. This is where Freshbooks helps you. It makes accounting very simple, even for someone with no professional experience of accounting – in fact, many tech organization that provides IT support financial services companies use will tell you that Freshbooks is used by many professional accounting firms.
- Harvest
Managing multiple clients and projects can be a challenge, but not with Harvest. This service allows you to track your time across multiple projects. You can create clients, projects, and even individual tasks. The app helps you see a bird’s eye view of how your time is being used.
- Trello
To do lists and task organization is critical for productivity. With Trello, you can create highly detailed task lists.
For instance, you can create daily and weekly tasks. Each task can have a card attached to it, containing further details. This app is completely free, and has web, desktop, and mobile applications available.
- Slack
Instant messaging has established itself as a critical form of communication in the 21st century. There are plenty of options out there which you may have used for personal correspondence; but the best solution for freelancers is arguably Slack. This is much more than a messaging app, but instant messages does sit at the core of its functionality. The cool thing about Slack is that it integrates with more than 75 online services, including Google Drive, Twitter, Trello, and many more.
- Gmail
It goes without saying that email is essential to all businesses, let alone freelancing. Gmail is arguably one of the best email clients available. It’s strength lies with its configurability.
The ability to create unlimited folders and labels to organize your emails makes keeping on top of email communications a breeze. Gmail is available across web, desktop and mobile applications.
- Google Drive
File sharing and management is critical for freelancers. With multiple clients and projects, you will have a lot of files, and you will need to keep them well organized. Google Drive is one of the most well-known and reliable public cloud storage services available. If you’re already using products like Gmail, the integration with Google Drive will be very useful to you.
- Google Calendar
A healthy freelancing business will mean that you have multiple clients, as well as collaborators, and other correspondences. This means you probably have meetings and various other events scheduled every week. Google Calendar is the ideal solution to keep on top of your schedule. It is a Cloud-based solution that allows you to create as many calendars as you want, and even integrate them with other apps that you use.
- WordPress
If you’re a freelancer, then it is a great idea to have your own website. It is a good way to demonstrate your skills and professionalism. You might use a website as a dynamic resume that displays your work and experience. WordPress is one of the most versatile web building and hosting solutions out there; the possibilities with WordPress are only limited by your imagination and experience, so there is always plenty to explore and develop with the platform.
