Working as a Freelancer? Here Are a Few Online Tools That Make Your Task Easy.

Freelancing is the latest trend in work culture. The flexibility and freedom that it offers, along with excellent earning potential, attract a lot of people to freelancing.

Unlike a traditional work environment, where the employees are required to put in 8-9 hours of work, freelancing offers a lot of flexibility. A freelancer can decide the time, place, and hours of work as per his convenience.

To be a successful freelancer, you need to put in a lot of effort in planning and organizing your work. Since you do not have anyone to guide you, you should stay on top of things to ensure that the work is finished on time.

Various online tools and apps are available that make your task of planning and organizing the work a lot easier. Let us have a look at a few of these tools and how it can help to simplify your task.

Task Management Tools

• Trello: Trello is a website that allows you to organize and plan multiple projects through various boards. You can create various lists on the board like tasks to do, tasks completed, etc. Each list can have multiple cards, which can be the work to do or any other task.The main advantage of Trello is that you can collaborate with others to complete the task. You can invite a person to do the task and assign work to him. The board can be kept public, private, or shared with team members.

• Notion: This is an all-in-one workplace where you can write, plan, collaborate, and organize your work. The notes and docs feature of the site lets you take down notes related to the work. The knowledge base of the tool helps you collaborate with the team and carry out your work.The tool has a task and project section similar to Trello, where the tasks of each person can be listed out and marked as complete when done. The spreadsheet and database keep a record of the workflow and serves the purpose of google sheets.

• Paymo: Paymo is a work management tool that lets you track your time, manage the task, and even collaborate with other team members. You can develop a multi-language invoice, add and track expenses, and even accept online payment for invoices. You can also integrate this tool with google apps, slack, and QuickBooks.

Invoicing and Accounting Tools

Managing the finances and keeping track of payment is not so easy, especially when you work for multiple clients at a time. Here are some accounting tools that makes your task easy

• Freshbooks: This is an expense tracker site that helps you keep track of your business expenses. Apart from this, you can also create professional-looking invoices and get paid on time. The time-tracking facility of the site lets you track the time you spend for each of the client or project. The accounting facility enables you to report your profit and loss accurately.

• Wavesapp: Wavesapp is a financial software that lets you manage your income and expense, create an invoice, and even scan receipts. The accounting software of the app keeps track of the payments, invoices, and even payroll. The invoice software helps you to create and send professional invoices and even keep track of recurring bills and advance payment.

Other Tools

• Buffer: If you are working as a freelancer in the digital marketing field, then the buffer will be of help to you. Buffer is a social media scheduling tool that lets you schedule posts to major social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. You can prepare social media posts, collaborate with your team, and schedule the post at the right time using this tool. You can also analyze social media performance and reply to conversations on social media using this tool.

• Bonsai: This is an all-in-one tool that helps you manage both your projects as well as accounting. Using this tool, you can craft well-structured proposals for projects, generate e-signed contracts, organize all files and documents of projects, and even track time. On the accounting front, you can create invoices, and can even have automatic payment reminders send on your behalf.

• co: This is yet another all-in-one app that lets you manage projects as well as your finance. The app has proposal templates that you can customize as per your requirement. The task management feature of this app lets you manage the various tasks, organize projects, and stay on track. You can develop custom invoices and accept payment online through this app. You can even get a report on your income and expense, which makes tax filing easy.

• Dropbox: Dropbox is a file management and storing tool that lets you store all the required files and images and share them with your clients. This tool makes team management and collaboration easier. The unique feature of Dropbox is that you can purchase additional storage space depending on your needs.

• Google Drive: This is another powerful file management tool used by freelancers. Since Google is widely used by all, file management using google Drive is rather easy. You can create documents, spreadsheets, and slides and store them in a folder. You can also share the files with others, thus making collaboration easy. It is also possible to purchase additional storage space if you have run out of the same.

• Grammarly: If you are working as a content writer or copywriter, then Grammarly is a handy tool. This tool pinpoints spelling and grammatical errors in your writing and helps you make the necessary corrections. It is also possible to check plagiarism using Grammarly.

• Fotor: If you are into designing or marketing, then developing beautiful and unique images is very important. Fotor helps you edit and design images as per your requirement. You can crop the size of the image, change the color, add stickers, and even insert text in the image. Fotor also has templates for social media posts that comes handy when you want to design images for social media.

For a freelancer, staying on top of work and finance is a difficult task. As you get more and more projects, the task becomes even tougher. The various online tools and apps help you to plan and organize work, and at the same time, manage your finance efficiently. All this makes your freelancing career easy to manage.