Spoiler alert: Freelancer doesn’t manage its activities alone! In addition to satisfying his customers, he must find new customers, manage his schedule, issue invoices, track payments, control his cash flow and communicate on his activity. Fortunately, technology exists to make life easier for entrepreneurs.
To better organize your work, explore our Top 12 Best Tools for Freelancers ,
1. Invoice.net
We start with the battle vein: invoicing! For a freelancer without any prerequisites, they can quickly become a headache. Especially if you have a lot of customers…
Facture.net is a 100% free tool that allows you to create professionally designed quotes and invoices. You enter important information and the tool takes care of generating exportable documents in multiple formats.
but that’s not all ! This solution integrates CRM functions that allow you to save and track your opportunities. Perfect to keep an eye on during your prospecting campaigns!
In addition, Facture.net gives you an overview of the financial status of your business, the growth of turnover and the number of new customers generated every month.
Thanks to a clean and intuitive interface, you can easily find your customers’ contact details, invoices (paid or to be paid), quotes, etc.
In short: Facture.net gives you all the features you need for commercial management of your company!
2. Hour Rate.com
Before invoicing your services, you must first define the rates for your mission. In this case, for beginner freelancers, it can be difficult to calculate their hourly rate. That’s where RateHourly.com comes in!
Direct and intuitive, this site helps you set your hourly rate according to the desired remuneration in just a few clicks. To calculate this, the tool asks you for information such as:
- your expenses (excluding taxes);
- your legal status;
- your work ;
- Number of hours billed per week;
- How many weeks off do you want to take?
Jump! Your hourly rate appears in seconds. Simple and efficient!
3. Cahierdescharges.com
It is not always easy to understand what the customer wants. When defining your services framework, to fully meet its needs, one document is required: the specification.
To do this, you can use the Cahierdescharges.com platform. It lists models for different types of service: writing, translation, print project, website creation, logo or graphic design, strategy development, and more.
Thus you can completely define the parameters of your mission to ensure customer satisfaction.
4. Google Calendar
We deal with managing your time as a freelancer! With so many daily tasks that await you, you should organize yourself as much as possible.
Based on the cloud, the famous Google Calendar helps you organize your days. You can create your to-do list, include your weekly assignments, and note down your appointments. Its main asset? Offer alerts so you don’t forget anything.
Google Calendar also allows you to schedule a free Google Meet with your customers and partners. Perfect if you have regular videoconferencing. Plus, when you receive an event by email, Google Calendar automatically adds it to your schedule. It also provides a notification 30 minutes before the appointment.
Very intuitive, you can display daily, weekly or monthly schedules according to your needs.
Read also: 6 Best Agenda & Calendar Apps for iOS and Android
5.Google Drive
To store your documents and other files in the cloud, consider Google Drive. This tool frees up to 15GB of space.
Belonging to the Google Suite, it integrates with Google Docs, Google Sheets or Google Slides. It is even more practical to have a free and adequate office suite for basic office work!
Equipped with collaborative features, Google Drive gives you the possibility to work together on the same document without any loss. Everything is recorded in real time. You can also share large files with your customers or partners through a single link.
Lastly, this tool comes in handy for freelancers who are constantly on the move and need to access their files remotely.
Read also: Cloud: 7 alternatives to Google Drive for storing and sharing your data
6.Pose:
You have to manage multiple projects, involving multiple partners? Asana is the ideal tool for managing your massive missions, managing a team, and meeting deadlines.
The platform works thanks to the tables partitioned by project or client. Within the dashboard, you can break down your main mission into different tasks with due dates. If necessary, email reminders can be set to avoid falling behind.
For transparency, it is possible to share your table with the client, so that he can follow the completion of his project in real time. Similarly, if you are collaborating with other freelancers on a project, Asana helps you coordinate everyone’s work.
This tool is primarily intended for webmasters, developers and IT service providers.
7. Trello
Trello is another project management tool. Simpler than Asana, it is useful for freelancers who need to collaborate with their clients remotely.
Easy to use, it allows you to quickly create workflows for a simplified organization that revolves around 3 elements: a board, lists, and cards.
To allow customers to follow the progress of the mission, you can add labels such as “in progress”, “to be verified” or “ok”. It is also a way to monitor the progress of tasks assigned to your team members.
Trello can also serve as a CRM and content calendar thanks to possible integration with Hootsuite, Evernote, Zoho, Microsoft Teams or Salesforce.
It is the perfect tool for writers, translators, community managers or content managers.
Also read: 6 Best Platforms To Find Freelancers
8. Slack
Looking for a tool to centralize communication and management with your customers? Slack is the tool for you. If you work with other freelancers or an agency, you can use it with your team as well.
By creating rooms and channels, you separate your interlocutors into groups to better manage their activity. The tool integrates with other platforms such as Google Drive, Google Calendar, Trello, Asana, Salesforce, HubSpot, Twitter, Teams… which allows you to create connections and automated flows between your various services.
This integrated solution is a real time and productivity saver in the daily management of customer relationships!
Read also: 11 Powerful Alternatives to Slack
9. This is Norbert
Voila Norbert presents itself as a search engine for email addresses. You enter a company name and website and Norbert takes care of delivering the decision maker’s email to you. It is an ideal tool to remove the secretary hurdle or strengthen your B2B prospecting file.
Voila Norbert turns it into a CRM and allows you to program and send emails to newly found prospects. You can also segment the addresses to better qualify your new contacts and launch personalized campaigns.
In addition to emails from business leaders, the tool helps you find important influencers and bloggers in a given industry. Always useful if you provide influencer marketing services or want to network online.
10. Prospero
When you’ve found your prospects (with or without Norbert!), Prospero helps you create compelling offers. The tool allows you to quickly create professional looking offers to convince your potential customers.
It has many models to customize with your logo and your services. You fill in information related to the price, the missions to be performed and the time to be completed. The tool then generates a proposal based on your answers.
Prospero also provides data on the performance of your proposal. You can follow:
- When your offer is opened;
- how many times it has been opened;
- Time passed by reading this.
And if the customer wins with your offer, in one click, you turn it into an invoice!
11.rescue time
To ensure your productivity as a freelancer, you need to control your time. Especially if you charge by the hour.
RescueTime records your daily activity. It is able to measure the time spent on each website, application or social network. It allows two things:
- Discover sources of distraction that hinder your productivity;
- Know the time spent by the customer, especially if you use specific sites or applications for each of them.
Based on this data, RescueTime offers the option to block apps and sites that might distract you while you work.
12. Timeney
If RescueTime helps you take control of your productivity, Timeney allows you to keep track of how many hours have been spent completing a project. It is a perfect tool to better manage billed time and improve your future quotes.
Very easy to use, just save a project and perform various tasks. Timeneye is then responsible for monitoring the time spent on their production. The tool also offers a feature that allows you to time your phone calls.
Do you collaborate with multiple people on a mission? The application also records the time spent by your employees on their tasks.
After tracking, you have a comprehensive report detailing the time taken to work on the project, the different phases, and the hours your team has logged. You can find out which time-consuming missions require different organization, or review your budget for future projects.
conclusion
By becoming a freelancer, you opt for solo management of your business. With these tools, you can grow your customer base while managing the administrative tasks needed to run your business!
Looking for Freelance Jobs? Marketing, Writing, Development, Management… Many missions are waiting for you at Codeur.com!