Freelancing: Great Invoicing Tools

Anum — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 22:00:02 +0000

Freelancing is a tough gig; many people simply do not have what it takes to make it in this role. As time goes by, you will hopefully take on more and more clients. It can become hard to keep track of your costs and hours, which you should be billing your clients for. If you do not keep effective records, you might start to lose money, and you fail to properly bill people the right amounts. Luckily, for you freelancers out there, we have found some great tools that can help you.

The following list of applications can do more than just help you to stay organized. They can help you to stay on top of things, even if you do not have your own accounting department. Now you can compete with the big businesses in a professional manner.

These tools are not listed in any special order. You should be careful when choosing an app, because it can be difficult to change over if you find that there are problems in your choice. Before you commit paying for any of these applications, you should try out the free trial, if there is one. Try out a series of different tools before you decide on the one that is right for you.

Billing boss

This tool lets anyone, whether they are freelancers or running a small business, bill clients using an unlimited number of invoices. You can add as many clients as you have to the database. When you create an invoice it is automatically saved and stored in a catalogue, so that you can have easy reference later on. Billing boss is integrated with PayPal, making it easy to deal with a large amount of clients, using various currencies.

LessAccounting

This application does more than simply let your organize your invoices. You can keep track of all of your expenses with LessAccounting. You can easily create categories for your expenses, and add notes or pictures of receipts to help you stay organized.

Simple invoices

This is a web based application for creating invoices, that can be installed to a web server or a Windows based computer. It is a good option if you need to create a lot of invoices, and will help you to stay organized.

Blinksale

This is an attractive and powerful web application. You can even send invoices through traditional snail mail if you want to. Your invoices can be customized using logos or CSS design. This can add a great personal touch and make your look more professional.

FreskBooks

You can use this tool to make recurring invoices, and automated bills. These will automatically charge your client’s credit card, so that you do not have to do it yourself. You can easily invoice your clients using any currency, which is great for working with people in other countries. You just have to make your invoice, choose the currency, and you are pretty much finished. Take the hassle out of invoicing with this useful service.

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Applications for Freelancing Designers

Anum — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 20:42:01 +0000

Most freelancers rely on a series of different applications to get their work done efficiently. No matter what you are doing, there will usually be an app that can make the work easier.

Today we see more and more apps emerging and becoming available. However, often these apps will start up a lot of buzz, be used by people for a while in the beta phase, and then simply disappear. Many of these applications are actually very good, but for some reason they do not gain popularity. There are so many different apps out on the market that there is simply too much competition for some of the smaller developers to cope with. This article will discuss some of the apps that a freelance designer will find useful.

You might be tempted to try every app until you find a handful that can make your life easier. The problem is that many of them do cost money. While freeware software is abundant and many companies are happy just to have their software being used, most companies will want you to pay to use their programs. Luckily, many programmers have released their work as shareware so that you can trial the software for awhile and see if you like it, before you make a purchase.

For an app to be great it must be able to stand the test of time. New versions should be brought out periodically, which improve upon the older ones. Many people love apps these days, especially with the release of the iPhone. People search for and download, as many as they can get, and then often they are left to sit idle. Do not waste your time finding too many apps, but rather find the ones that can really boost your productivity daily.

Basecamp

This application was made by 37 Signals, and is very popular. It allows the management of projects online as well as collaboration with team members. Whether you are working with someone on the other side of the office or the other side of the world, this app can help you. There are many different collaboration programs out there, but they are probably not as popular as Base-camp. There is a greater chance that your co workers will own a copy, so you will be able to get to work at sharing ideas right away. There are a few alternatives, which will work just as well as this software: activeCollab, ThriveSolo and Apollo.

Things

“Things” is a to-do list app. While there are many different to-do lists out there, this is one that stands out from the crowd. It is made for Macs, which might be a problem for the majority of users in the world who own PCs.