There are numerous reasons for one to choose freelancing as a career option. But is it that easy to continue as a happy freelancer? Having a high-level knowledge of writing, designing, financing is not just enough to make money. It is true that freelancing avoids pathetic issues like sitting in front of an offensive boss, hectic time schedules, long travel hours etc. But there are little issue freelancers need to face irrespective of what industry they are in.
Some of the common issues that freelancers struggle with are:
- Time management
- Invoices
- Accounting
- Portfolio
- Project Management
- Publishing
- Emailing
Freelancing has amazing advantages over 9 to 5 jobs such as:
- Earn extra income – Earn for what you have worked; the more you work, the more you earn
- Flexible schedules – No need to wake up early because you need to rush to the office
- Privilege to choose own clients – Not a boring boss again
- Take breaks whenever you like – Work only when you are ready
There are plenty of amazing tools to manage your projects, work, time, earnings, taxes and clients. Here are the 10 best tools useful for freelancers.
Trello
Organizing tasks is important else you are going to land on your boring job again. It is a bitter truth that some fresh freelancers go back to their ordinary job leaving an amazing and extraordinary career path. This all happens just due to lack of knowledge in organizing projects according to their priority.
Trello is the best-recommended software that allows you to handle any difficult task with ease. It allows you to work with different clients and also helps you stay organized even when you go on vacation. Trello has numerous customizable yet organizable features. The well-organized unique cards and board system helps you assign each card for each project.
This is a user-friendly platform that has a robot to boost your productivity. Get triggers if you miss any rules, and receive calendar commands, due date notifications, custom card and board buttons. Also, enjoy power-up options that let you set time for custom cards, connect and sync with boards, Dropbox access, track and analyze work progress with Kanban Analytics by Nave, Litmus to attach emails, calendar to manage timelines and a lot more.
The pricing starts from $9.99 per user per month with a free trial for one month.
Freshbooks
If you are a small freelancing business, invoicing and following up are the tasks that make you juggle. Freshbooks makes you paid faster by making the business automated. Work on what you love, write quality content to earn more as Freshbooks manages your invoices. The mobile app is also available which lets you send invoices anytime. Also, know when your client pays you and track your expenses wherever you are – that means running a business from anywhere.
Freshbooks costs between $15 and $50 per month for all plans including features like invoicing, time tracking and payment processing.
Indy
Freelancing is a popular practice among most professional individuals. Freelancers work separately on freelancing platforms to get related work and earn passive income. Indy is one of the leading freelancing tools for freelancers, consultants, side-hustlers and contractors. Get projects or work that fit your skills, experience and get paid for hard work at Indy.
Declutter every process. Subscribing to several freelancing websites to get a related job and earn money can be time-consuming and expensive. Indy is here to help you. Start for free, create an account and handle your workspace from the Indy dashboard. Access tasks, projects, contacts, invoices, files and more within a few simple clicks.
Indy digital workspace offers both productivity tools and organizational elements to keep the work smooth. The happiest thing is, Indy does everything for you. Indy’s CRM allows you to keep all the contacts in one place. The team Indy will organize everything from invoices to other documents on every contact page. Also, managing the project here is simple too, just select the project and the rest will be handled by Indy.
Indy promises for freelancers out there
- Zero-fee platform, all money is yours!!! Indy will never cut the money from your earnings.
- Complete freedom while setting the price, Indy will not force you to reduce your prices.
- Get rid of unfair charges, Indy will never charge you for their service.
- You can easily manage and maintain relationships with clients.
- You’re the boss!!! Enjoy complete freedom, work as you wish. Indy will never suggest or recommend how to complete your task.
“Indy Pro Bundle” can be the perfect plan for experienced individuals. Freelancers can upgrade the plan at $12 per month and get unlimited access to tools. It includes invoices, contracts, proposals, time tracks, calendars, chats and more. And with the Free plan, you’ll always have access to all the basic tools you need to manage your business.
Do you have the ability to work extra hours? Yes!!! Create an account at Indy right away. Indy can be a suitable platform for all freelancers to get the job from the top 10 useful tools for freelancers.
Cushion
Cushion has a slogan called peace of mind for freelancers which itself says it all. Freelancers have a plethora of tasks to perform along with the completion of assigned projects. Grabbing the projects from clients and organizing them according to schedules are major tasks. Managing them with a messy mind will, in turn, out too worst. So, using the app Cushion sets you to administer your chores with awesome perfection. What exactly is Cushion? Cushion is a well-designed tool that lets you plan your projects months ahead and also lets you view your plan of the entire year. It automatically detects your availability and checks if you are overbooked. Thus, you are having work for every day or every month instead of staying jobless after a few months.
This tool works on setting a budget for you. It allows you to set a monthly target, reminds if you have reached the budget or if you have reached more than your goal. The experts of Cushion knows that late invoices will not let you sleep or take a break. Therefore they designed the tool in such a way that it allows you to send and track your invoices. Notifications of late invoices are placed on top, you can simply nudge clients to remind of pay. Cushion lets you integrate with your existing tools like Harvest, Freshbooks, Xero and FreeAgent to import or export the data instead of switching into the tool completely.
It charges $8 to $18 per month with a free trial for the first month.
Proposify
Maintaining a high-quality relation with clients in terms of documentation consumes a lot of time for freelancers who are in short of time already. Proposify is proposal software that lets you create, send and track your proposals. It also offers you an option to e-sign confirmed proposals and agreements. There are plenty of templates available for you to customize and send your clients. Proposify empowers you to create proposals and contracts directly in Salesforce, keeping your data in sync.
The pricing starts at $19 per user, per month.
Sprout Social
Sprout Social is an independent software for people who want to reach their audience on social media. It helps you manage multiple accounts on a single platform. You can find influencers, know what’s top of mind of your audience with Sprout Social.
The Smart Inbox helps you manage messages on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram with a single social inbox. It allows you to view conversation history, contact views, message completion, comment moderation. Sprout Social helps you access custom inbox views. On a whole, it manages you to plan and publish content effortlessly.
The pricing for Sprout Social for standard plan starts at $99 per month per user. It costs $149 per month for additional features for profession plan.
Toggl
Knowing what consumes your most of the time is essential to plan your tasks. Toggl is a time-tracking tool that helps you achieve high productivity avoiding the wastage of time consumed for planning. This software automatically tracks the time according to the previous task, notifies the idle time with just one click. Filter your time tracking data and view the information when you need it with the smart Toggl. Also, assign reasonable rates to your tasks and compare if you are fully paid for your work. Data gets synced between mobile and the desktop where you can simply start the timer on the phone and stop it in your desktop.
Toggl charges $9 per month per user with a free trial for one month.
Coconut
Coconut is one such software that manages your business finances. It is one of the must-have tools for freelancers or self-employed to organize payments and tax returns at one place. Let Coconut take care of your bills and payments, it never let you move to and fro between different apps or spreadsheets. It makes your payments easy from various banks like Starling, Lloyds, Barclays etc. Coconut estimates the amount of tax you owe and saves you from unexpected bills in the year-end. It manages your expenses and notifies with a snap of receipts say, fuel or power bills.
Coconut experts help you with useful tips and ways for maximizing your savings on your tax bill. There are also numerous impressive templates available for you to customize and send professional invoices to your clients.
The pricing starts at £0 per month if you are just starting out. It charges £5 per month for full-time banking and accounting plans.
MailChimp
If you are into marketing, you must be smart enough to make your audience get engaged with your content. Only when you know your audience well, you can make them fall in love with your product. Mailchimp is an all-in-one marketing platform that gathers all the data to make your job easier. You can build your website, find new customers, build amazing relationships, and boost sales with the available deeper insights.
Research says, email marketing results in $52 ROI for every one dollar spent. It is one of the most powerful marketing techniques to convert into sales. MailChimp offers high-quality mail templates to send your clients or audience to grow your business. Apart from this, it has signup forms like embedded or pop-up forms for new contacts, allows you to create landing pages and helps you find new fans and post ads.
MailChimp offers must-have features for mail senders for a price starting from $9 per month. It offers a basic edition for start-up businesses for free.
Qwilr
Design your business documents in an easier, faster and more beautiful way with Qwilr. It helps you create proposals your clients will love, give your team access and scale marketing documents. Build your blocks that can be reused, share them with a link, and get them accepted and paid in a single flow. Qwilr also protects your documents with passwords, time and view limits. Get notifications instantly for follow-ups via SMS, email and Slack. This tool lets you track your sales or marketing data and notifies when your document is viewed.
The pricing varies from $0 to $89 per month for the business plan.
Dropbox
Dropbox is an important tool that is beyond file storage. It helps you manage everything in one place with different tools. Create and share your cloud content from Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, Office files or Dropbox Paper. It helps you access all your data from anywhere and anytime. This tool allows you to collaborate with other tools like Zoom and Slack. Get suggested files and folders on top that reduces your stress of searching.
The billing starts at $15 per month per user for secure storage of 5TB. Give it a try for 30 days for free.
