10 time-saving apps for freelancers

A regular employee is paid based on the working hours set by the company, but freelancers are paid mainly according to the time they spend on the project. However, if freelancers don’t have a tool or mechanism to measure their working hours, they end up being underpaid.

Here’s a list of time-saving tools especially useful for freelancers to help keep track of the time they spend on a project and bill their clients accordingly. So read on to learn about each tool in detail and see which one best suits your needs.

FreshBooks

FreshBooks has completely transformed the way web design and development teams and freelancers can tackle their business accounting needs and responsibilities. If this sounds a lot like your own situation, and you feel that billing and expense reports are 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 free of charge.

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

Other FreshBooks features include a dashboard where you can see how your accounting side is doing, time and expense tracking features, and use of the FreshBooks mobile app to take photos of receipts and upload them directly to the system.

Timely Memory

Memory by Timely will keep track of everything you’ve worked on, including every file, every website you’ve visited or apps you’ve used, and present it all in a beautifully organized timeline. Poor time tracking processes, or no time tracking at all, can cost companies large amounts of money. The reason? People just 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 per month. With Memory by Timely, you can show your customers exactly what they are paying for, which is what they want to see. Additionally, this app also shows how project teams spend the project budget.

Futuramo Time Tracker

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

You can track time by client, by project, or by date range. Time can be tracked automatically or manually; and if you have forgotten to track a past event, you can enter the information manually. Tracking multiple projects at once is also no problem.

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

advance

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

With Avaza, you can integrate with over 500 applications that can help you run your business better. You can register for free and no credit card is required.

Moment

Timing automatically tracks everything you do on your Mac. It comes with predefined tracking categories; but if you want to add new ones, meetings or phone calls for example, just add them and they will be tracked too. You can track as many projects as you like, the dashboard shows you what you’ve done and where you’ve been 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 by simply downloading it.

Elorus

Elorus is a free to use online billing and billing application for professionals who deal with up to 3 clients or vendors per month. The number of invoices you send to each client is not a problem. You can do it free of charge.

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

click time

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

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

payment

Paymo helps you manage your projects from concept stage to delivery. Automate planning, task and resource scheduling, and task assignment. Paymo also tracks labor time, issues invoices when work is completed, and generates reports that are useful for monitoring performance and future planning activities.

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

Free Invoice Generator

If preparing invoices has become a hassle or is taking up an inordinate amount of time, give Free Invoice Generator a try. Simply enter your details and you’ll receive a professional-looking invoice in PDF format in your email, ready to forward to your customer, free of charge. Free Invoice Generator is a Hiveage product, and you can visit the website to learn about its advanced customer management features.

generate

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

Summary

Now you have the ins and outs of the best time tracking, billing, and project management tools. It can be a challenge to make a decision, considering the quality of all the applications submitted. You could possibly make a second best choice, but definitely not a bad one.

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