Without further ado, here are the 5 tools every freelancer should know about in 2020. Regardless, these tools are extremely helpful for you to scale your freelance career. If you are a freelancer, there are some key tools you should use to get your business off the ground and thriving.Even before Covid-19 happened, working as a freelancer or an independent contractor has been steadily growing in the United States. Some of these tools you may already know about and some you may never even heard of. As per the study, 71% of Americans claim the amount of work they obtained online increased over the past year. In a 2017 study done by Upwork and Freelancers Union, 57.3 million Americans freelanced that year. That is an astonishing 36% of the workers in the U.S. It is all possible due to the development of technology.
It is arguably the most popular cloud storage and file synchronization solution on the market.
#1: Google Drive Cloud
Computing has absolutely changed the business world. You get a staggering 15GB of free storage. The heavy hitter in the storage and document space is Google Drive. The cloud is an extremely cost-effective way of organizing documents, storing them online, collaborating, and synchronizing teams to be on the same track. It has made documents effortlessly accessible and shared between businesses, employees, and clients. There are a plethora of benefits the online storage place has such as a very user-friendly layout, Microsoft documents seamless integration, share files, collaborate, and you can access the documents from anywhere in the world. Try it out.
This tool helps you automate the process of tracking write-offs. Keeper Tax is a software that will help you do that by automatically finding tax-write offs among your purchases.
#2: Keeper Tax
If you are a freelancer, you are required to file taxes as a business owner. As a business owner, you do have the luxury of writing off business expenses to lower your taxes. It does this by scanning your bank and credit card statements for tax-deductible expenses. That means you have to pay taxes on the income you earned that year as you are paid without the income being taxed. Most freelancers are severely underprepared for the responsibility of paying for their taxes later. So essentially, at the end of the year, you’ll owe money.
Invoicely offers a free plan that allows for unlimited invoices for an unlimited number of customers. It is a free app that allows small business owners to make and send invoices, estimates, track time, expenses as well as accept online payments.
#3: Invoicely
As a freelancer, you have to be on top of how you get paid. After all, if you are constantly getting late payments or even not paid at all, it can really hurt the growth of your business. Having well-kept invoices are key to track how much money was paid and outstanding debt. Sales invoices are vitally important to keep records of the sale. All this information will make your accountant’s life a lot easier. In order to avoid that problem, you Invoicely.
Invoicely offers a free plan that allows for unlimited invoices for an unlimited number of customers. A popular project management tool for freelancers is Trello. You can fit an awfully lot of information in each card and they are all shareable. Those cards can be tasks, projects, notes, shared files, or anything else that helps you build a personal workflow.
#4: Trello
When you have your own business, it is completely your responsibility to be organized and well sorted out. For freelancers, the workboard can act as a simple to-do list with a great interface to manage the tasks. All this information will make your accountant’s life a lot easier. Having well-kept invoices are key to track how much money was paid and outstanding debt. With Trello, you can use it to organize “cards” into lists. Sales invoices are vitally important to keep records of the sale. Best of all, it is absolutely free to try out. Overall, it an amazing tool for project management. Essentially, it is a high-tech online corkboard.
#5: Last Pass
Last pass is a freemium password manager that stores encrypted passwords online. Save a ton of time by instantly logging into sites and having the convenience of never having to try to remember or mistype your passwords. LastPass can manage all of your logins. The tool saves your passwords and gives you secure access from every computer and mobile device. Last Pass Being a freelancer can be stressful enough. Wasting your time and getting frustrated because you can’t remember all of your passwords for various sites or online tools you use should be the last thing on you would have to worry about.
