Articles

Web applications for the freelancer

20 June 2008

Being a one-man-show requires me to use my time as effectively as possible. Early on I kept time records with pencil and paper, and I invoiced with PDFs created from an InDesign file. Thankfully, since then I have discovered several web tools that help me manage my business without much fuss.

Backpack was the first, but I honestly can’t remember why I tried it. Even so, now I can’t live without it. I create a page for each of my clients that contains contact information, notes, and anything else I need to know. Additionally, my main page contains to-do lists of all my current projects, proposal requests, and potential work. It’s a definite time-saver (and at times a life-saver) to be able to quickly and easily access all of that information wherever I have an internet connection. If only there were a mobile version…

Invoicing was my next obstacle, and Blinksale saved the day. All Blinksale can do is invoice, but it does it extremely well. It allows you to easily create, send, and manage your billing, and you can even send a neat “Thank you!” when receiving payments. From the dashboard you can see when all of your invoices are due and see who’s past due. If you know CSS, Blinksale also allows customization of invoices if you’d rather not use any of their templates.

Last on my list was time tracking. HarvestApp was the best choice at the time, but it’s better suited for teams. They have also added an invoicing feature that’s available for and extra fee, but I’ll talk about that in just a minute. For the freelancer, I just don’t think you can find anything better or easier than More Honey. All it requires to create a project is a title and then you start the clock. In fact, all you can really do is track time and create reports — that’s it. Oh, wait, it can record expenses, too.

Back to invoicing. Even though HarvestApp had introduced invoicing, this year I had decided to start keeping up with accounting in order to manage my business a little better. Since I have no accounting experience, I was overwhelmed by the likes of Quickbooks and Microsoft Money, but an online article led me to LessAccounting. Not only can it do basic accounting, but also proposals, invoicing, expenses, notes, and charts. But here’s the real magic: if you track your time with More Honey, you can import your time sheets directly into LessAccounting and create an invoice. It takes about 15 seconds — beautiful.

So to summarize, here’s what I currently use:

Man, I love the internet.

Small note: I’m actually not entirely a one-man-show. My wife helps me a great deal and offers invaluable advice, and my kids keep a smile on my face.