Time-Saving Apps For Freelance Workers

A regular employee is paid on the basis of the working hours set by company but freelancers are mostly paid according to the time they spend on the project. However, if freelancers don’t have a tool or mechanism in place for measuring their working hours, then they end up getting underpaid.

Here is a list of time-saving tools especially helpful for freelancers to help keep a track of their time spent on a project and billing their clients accordingly. So read on to know about each tool in detail to see which one fits your needs the best.

FreshBooks

FreshBooks has completely transformed the way in which web design and development teams and freelancers are able to deal with their business accounting needs and responsibilities. If this sounds a lot like your own situation, and you feel invoicing and expense reporting is taking up too much of your time, you might consider giving this cloud-based accounting app a try.

You can try FreshBooks for 30 days at no charge.

You’ll find that creating and sending invoices can be ridiculously easy. There’s no formatting required, nor are there formulas to deal with; and you can add your own brand color(s) and logo if you wish. You can also arrange to receive payments online. It takes but a couple of clicks to do so, and your clients will love it.

Other FreshBooks features include a dashboard where you can see how the accounting side of your business is doing, plus expense and time tracking functions, and the use of FreshBooks’s mobile app to take pictures of receipts and load them directly into the system.

Memory by Timely

Memory by Timely will track everything you’ve worked one, including every file, every website visited or app you’ve used, and present it all in a beautifully-organized timeline. Substandard time tracking processes, or a complete lack of time tracking, can cost companies vast amounts of money. The reason? People simply forget what they worked on, and for how long.

It’s important, even for small businesses and freelancers, that billable hours don’t get lost in the shuffle. Just consider the time it takes for a worker to manually fill out a time sheet. That’s a few non-billable minutes every day, but for a large company it can add up to many non-billable hours a month. With Memory by Timely, you can show your clients exactly what they are paying for, which is what they want to see. Plus, this app also shows how project teams spend the project’s budget.

Futuramo Time Tracker

With Futuramo Time Tracker, you can say goodbye to having to guess how many hours your pet project consumed this month or wrongly estimating a project’s planned completion date. This cloud-based time-tracking app, which is suitable for individuals as well as large teams, features advanced statistics software that provides insights into your own or your team’s daily work habits. Knowing how time is being spent is one of the keys to improving future time and cost estimates.

You can track time by client, by project, or by date range. Time can be tracked automatically or manually; and if you’ve neglected to track a past event, you can enter the information manually. Tracking multiple projects at once is not a problem either.

Best of all, Futuramo Time Tracker free for up to 3 users.

Avaza

Avaza’s total business management software package was designed with creative agencies in mind. Its features include professional invoicing, flexible project billing and budgeting support, task management, and collaboration. Managing staff expenses is easier than ever, thanks to the Avaza Expenses feature; while Avaza Timesheets provides all the time tracking, billing, and reporting information you need.

With Avaza, you can integrate with more than 500 apps that can help you to better run your business. You can sign up for free, and no credit card is required.

Timing

Timing automatically tracks everything you do on your Mac. It comes with pre-defined tracking categories; but if you want to add new ones, meetings or phone calls for instance, simply add them and they will be tracked as well. You can track as many projects as you want, the dashboard shows you what you’ve done and where you’ve been the most productive, and you can export the data to create invoices.

Timing is a native Mac time tracker that you can try for free for 14 days simply by downloading it.

Elorus

Elorus is an online billing and invoicing application that’s free to use for professionals dealing with up to 3 clients or suppliers per month. The number of invoices you send to each client is not an issue. You can do so at no charge.

A popular and impressive feature of this app is its private client portal. You can invite one or more clients to view their transaction history, download invoices, and make payments online. Elorus provides an ideal invoicing solution for freelancers and small businesses and agencies.

ClickTime

ClickTime helps you keep your project on budget by providing you with the tools needed to manage project costs together with custom time tracking solutions and its interactive resource planning dashboard. You can also track project activities and manage expenses while away from the office with ClickTime’s free mobile companion apps.

Three plans are available, each with a 30-day free trial.

Paymo

Paymo helps you manage your projects from the conceptual stage through delivery. It automates planning, task and resource scheduling, and task assignment. Paymo also tracks work time, issues invoices when work is completed, and generates reports you’ll find helpful for monitoring performance and for future planning activities.

Mobile apps are available that allow you to monitor activity or make changes while on the go.

Free Invoice Generator

If preparing invoices has become a hassle, or is taking up an excessive amount of your time, give Free Invoice Generator a try. Simply enter your data, and you’ll receive a professional-looking invoice in PDF format in your email and ready to forward to your client — at no charge. Free Invoice Generator is a Hiveage product, and you can visit the website for information regarding their advanced client management features.

Trigger

If you want more functionality than just a basic time tracking tool, try Trigger. With Trigger you can track time, manage projects, collaborate with your design team, produce management reports, invoice (direct to Xero), and much more. Trigger helps you combine data for companies, projects, tasks, target hours, logged hours, average hours per employee and so on. You also have the option to invite clients into Trigger (for free) for greater transparency and easier reporting.

Summary

Now you have the ins and outs of best time tracking, invoicing and project management tools. It might be challenging to make a choice, considering the quality of all presented apps. You could conceivably make a second-best choice, but definitely not a poor one.

Take advantage of the free trial offers! It will help you settle on the best possible solution to fit your needs.

Enjoy!

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