10 Productivity Apps For Freelancers To Start Off
As a freelancer, your time is more than valuable. You are under pressure to complete your projects on time, you have to keep track of them and just like these two, there are a lot of more things you need to keep an eye on.
At the same time, managing your time effectively can be a pretty hectic task. In fact, there are many people out there who are not productive at all. So in order to help them out, I have decided to write down some of the best productivity apps for freelancers.
So let’s just dig a little bit deeper into the specific topic without wasting any time:
1. Evernote
Writing down notes for the projects you have to complete is a pretty good practice. It helps you keep track of your projects, and you can easily manage them.
Evernote is actually one of the best note-taking apps, as you can create a schedule for yourself or make a to-do list, and so on. You can also receive help from the app itself. It is a smartphone and web-based app which allows you to keep track of your checklists pretty easily. The app is free to use, but for some extra features, you have to make a payment. It excels in helping you:
- Create personal to-do lists.
- Set reminders to keep on top of activities.
- Write to-do lists.
- Plan events such as holidays, weddings or parties.
- Use it as a planner to organize your life.
- Create notebooks, write notes, memos, and journals on the go with the easy-to-use notepad.
2. MailChimp
As a freelancer, you use your email mostly to interact with your clients. You use an email for managing orders to sending them the essential information. Also, over time, as a freelancer, you work with quite a lot of people and, sometimes, you hardly get to hear anything from some of them.
So wouldn't it be a great idea to remind them about your communication by sending an email? Well, MailChimp helps you with precisely that. It helps you manage an email list and send professional-looking emails to your clients. So, if you choose to use it, you will be able to:
- Create an email list to manage your clients.
- Send professional-looking emails whenever it's needed.
3. Skype
As a freelancer, you may have to talk to your clients in person. But what if your client is somewhere in Canada, and you are located in Manhattan? The distance is pretty far, isn't it?
Well, in such cases, you would obviously switch to webcam apps to have a meeting. Now, you can use Skype. It’s a free service offered by Microsoft which allows you to have a video call or even chats. Also, you can share your screen over the call and do a hell lot of other things. Skype offers you the ability to:
- Make video calls so you can have a personal talk.
- Create group chats with 1 person or 24 other people.
- Chat with your clients in an effective way.
- Give/Receive voice calls.
4. Grammarly
It is a little awkward to make minor grammatical mistakes while writing an article or email to your client. Isn’t it? Of course, it is. That’s why you should be very careful with correct grammar and punctuation. However, not all of us have a great grip on grammar.
So what can be done? Well, that’s where Grammarly comes to the rescue. You can use it to check your emails or documents for grammatical mistakes and fix them easily. Grammarly is available as both a free and a paid service, so go ahead and check out their offerings. Grammarly is more than useful to you if you wish to:
- Easily check for your grammar mistakes, spelling mistakes, and so on.
- Be offered a desktop app, browser extension, and Microsoft add-on.
5. Google Docs
Google Docs will be a pretty useful tool if you are a freelancer content writer. Google docs will continuously save your project as you start working on it. You can also add your clients to the Google doc and ask them to suggest something or even do changes.
Also, sharing the doc with other people is a very easy task. What's more? Google docs is an app that is completely free, and you get the advantage to work on your project from different devices. So if you decide to use it, you will have the opportunity to:
- Share your documents with other users easily.
- Let other users edit and review your documents.
- Work through this cloud-based platform so you can access it from whichever device you want.
6. 1 Password
There is no doubt that as a freelancer you have accounts on various social media, job-profile, and freelancer websites. But have you ever thought about security? Well, if the answer is yes, then you must have a different password for each website. In case you don’t, then we would suggest you keep a different password for each of your online profiles.
However, the other side of the story is that managing multiple passwords can be complex. So what do you do? Well, in this case, you can use the 1 password. It is a password-managing tool which will manage all your passwords and logins easily. It will definitely:
- Manage your passwords in an effective way.
- Save and store your passwords.
- Auto-fill the passwords whenever you need them.
7. Toggl
Next, we have Toggl. This one is a must-have app for those people who find it tough to manage their own time. The app will help you track your time. Plus, it will make sure that you are not missing any deadlines of your projects.
The app comes with some of the best features. For instance, there is a browser extension which sets a timer as soon as you start working. Toggl:
- Is an easy way to manage your time.
- Comes with a browser extension.
8. QuickBooks
Coming up next, QuickBooks. A freelancer obviously needs an app to track their financial status, and this app helps with that only. This app is capable of tracking your income and all your expenses by getting linked to your bank accounts. It also helps you estimate your taxes.
The app also helps you separate the business from the personal expenses pretty easily. However, the app is not free. There is a monthly subscription you have to pay. But it does come with a trial period of 30 days. It actually:
- Helps you with estimating your taxes.
- Provides you with an easy way to track financial status.
9. Paypal
If you are dealing with international clients around the world, then you obviously need a place to get payments. Paypal helps you with exactly that.
Paypal can help you receive payments from clients of foreign countries, and you also can send payments to other people pretty easily. Not to forget here that there are quite a lot of websites out there which require a PayPal account in order to make a payment. So it’s more than useful to have a PayPal account. Also, its app makes the job even easier. With this app, to be precise, you may:
- Easily send payment overseas.
- Receive payment overseas.
10. Invoice2go
In the end, we have Invoice2go. As you can figure out by reading the name, Invoice2go has to do with invoices. So yes, the app lets you create invoices plus it helps you receive payments via credit or debit cards using the app. However, the app is not free but it comes with a 14-day trial. So, in short, you may:
- Create invoices in an effective way.
- Receive payments via credit and debit cards.
