Project Management Tools For Freelancers
Keeping track of clients, planning your day, and knowing what work you still have left to do is a constant struggle for most freelancers. On top of that there are so many different resources out there on how to optimize your schedule. One quick and simple way to stay organized is by using a proven project or task management software. The tools below are especially helpful for freelancers.
17hats is a business management platform. It helps automate the entire business process for individual freelancers and small businesses by providing tools to manage operations such as scheduling, billing, and meetings.
1Password is a password managament software. It provides a place for you to store all of your passwords, software licenses, and other sensitive information in a virtual vault that is locked with a PBKDF2-guarded master password.
AND.CO is a suite of productivity tools specifically designed to help freelancers run their business. While AND.CO isn't full accounting software, you'll find typical accounting features like invoicing, expense tracking, time tracking, and project management. The purpose of AND.CO is to help independent contractors with business mangagement tasks so they can spend more time on what they do best.
Asana is a web and mobile application designed to help you organize, track, and manage your work. New tasks that clients assign to you and tasks that you email to x@mail.asana.com come automatically appear in the New Tasks section of your dashboard where you can plan your work tasks.
Ballpark is software for time-tracking, invoicing, and CRM management. The tool was built by and for small businesses so it's specifically designed to help you grow your business.
Basecamp is project management software that lets you break up your work into separate projects. Each project contains everything related to that project including the people involved, discussions, documents, files, tasks, and important dates.
Specifically designed to help independent contractors manage business needs, Bonsai lets you customize your own invoicing system. The tool is geared toward helping you automate all of the back-office bits and pieces so you can focus on creating trust with your clients.
Calendly is easy-to-use scheduling software that helps you save time, accelerate sales, and improve service quality. It eliminates the old-school way of using email and phone tags for scheduling appointments by using shared calendar functionality.
ClientSpot is an online project management tool. Its purpose is to help busy freelancers and small businesses keep track of what's happening with their projects including current status, who's working on what, and when it's due.
Comindwork is a project management tool. It lets you create workspaces and freely share those workspaces with your co-workers, customers, or other freelancers.
Content Snare is a content-gathering tool that helps freelancers and small businesses gather website and marketing content from their clients. Content Snare eliminates the laborious and time-consuming task of copying and pasting content from multiple sources.
CoSchedule is a suite of project management software products to help you get organized and deliver projects on time. For freelancers who thrive with automated scheduling tools, CoSchedule is a great option.
Based in Germany, Cultured Code is a personal task manager that helps you achieve your goals. It's a to-do app that helps you get things done by providing aesthetically pleasing, easy-access, robust tools that help you power through your to-do list. The app runs on Mac, iPhone, Apple Watch, and iPad.
Dropbox is a file-hosting service that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, and client software. Dropbox does follow and sync changes made to files quicker than Google Drive.
Evernote is a time-tested, web-based app that lets you capture, store, and synchronize notes across multiple devices. You can even use audio and video technology as part of your note-taking regimen. The free version offers unlimited storage with up to 60MB per month.
Freedcamp is a web, mobile, and desktop project management and collaboration system for teams. Team members have access to multiple productivity, scheduling, collaboration, tracking, and project management applications via Freedcamp's dashboard. Core features are free.
FunctionFox is a cloud-based time-tracking and project-management application built for creative professionals. It provides timesheets, estimates, scheduling, task assignment, and reporting. The FunctionFox platform helps you stay on top of your entire project lifecycle so you can stay on track and reduce communication breakdowns with your clients.
Google Drive is a file storage and synchronization service. Google Drive allows you to store files on their servers, synchronize files across devices, and share files.
Google Keep is a note taking and checklist app for browsers and Android devices. The app focuses on simplicity and syncs your notes across all devices so your notes are always with you.
Harlow is an all in one suite of tools specifically designed with freelancers in mind. They offer project management tools, proposal software, invoicing, time tracking, and more. They are on a mission to help freelancers spend more time doing what they love, and less time stressing about mind numbing operations.
Hubstaff provides staff monitoring through time tracking software. Hubstaff is an ardent advocate of remote work and provides tools to help freelancers manage the business of being independent (e.g., time-tracking, invoicing, payroll, etc.)
Kanban Tool is software for visual project management. The tool let you use visual boards to manage your projects by moving your tasks around the board.
MeisterTask is an intuitive online task management tool for teams. Like Trello, it uses moveable project boards to organize and prioritize project milestones. Although it's geared toward team collaboration, MeisterTask can also be used by individual consultants to organize project goals and priorities.
Mind42 is free mind-mapping time-management and project organization software that allows you to visualize your thinking using the proven mind mapping method. Mind mapping uses a special form of a structured diagram to visually organize information. You can use it to create todo lists, brainstorm ideas, organize events, etc.
MindMeister allows freelancers to take notes and record their ideas in physical space. This allows you to mind map and draw connections between concepts simply and quickly. From there you can collaborate with others or share with clients for their input.
Momenteo is free quote and invoicing software. It allows freelancers to manage clients, invoices, and expenses to provide a clear picture of their financial health.
The purpose of MyLifeOrganized is to help you plan your time so that you can accomplish your most important goals as quickly and thoroughly as possible. The tool does this by guiding you toward prioritizing your tasks and then generating an ordered to-do list based on your priorities. From a freelancer's perspective, prioritizing your tasks could potentially help your business grow more efficiently.
Pancake is an app for online invoicing, project management, time tracking and proposals. You pay for the software once (no monthly fees), install it on your own server, and spend your time working on what you do best instead of worrying about business tasks.
Paymo is an online project management app. It's functionality is mainly geared toward small and medium businesses from industries like web design and development, creative agencies, software and IT services, marketing and social media, and business consultants.
Redbooth is a web-based workplace collaboration tool and communication platform. It lets you drag-and-drop your project items onto Kanban boards to sort, tag, and organize your tasks for better team collaboration.
Remember the Milk is a smart to-do app for busy freelancers. The tool automatically synchs all of your devices so you don't have to remember which device has the most recent list. Even better, it can be seamlessly integrated with multiple Google tools including your gmail inbox.
SimplifyThis is an online scheduling and booking tool. The software is loaded with features to help you simplify and streamline your scheduling, invoicing, billing, and grow your freelance business.
Todoist combines traditional to-do list software with task management features. That means you can log notes, establish tasks and projects based on those notes, delegate them, and visualize the productivity of both you and your team. For the freelancer who needs to manage business needs across multiple teams, Todoist provides powerful fuctionality.
Trello is a visual project management and collaboration tool that allows individuals and groups to work with any team. Multiple-person small businesses can collaborate and organize work through a system of boards, lists, and cards. Sole proprietor businesses can also benefit from Trello's moveable visual boards to organize and prioritize project tasks.
Workflow lets you get more done by combining all of the steps that you normally initiate in separate apps into a single tap. For example, if part of your daily freelancing routine includes initiating a to-do list app, a playlist app, a news feed app, and a time tracker app, you can combine and customize all those separate steps into a single tap.
YouCanBook.me is simple online scheduling that lets you avoid back and forth emails. You can connect with your calendar remotely and only share times you want with your clients so they can book straight into your calendar.
Zoho provides multiple online office productivity software applications. Zoho Office Suite includes word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, databases, note-taking, wikis, web conferencing, customer relationship management (CRM), project management, and invoicing software. Several of their products are integrated with the Google apps online suite.