5 Essential Apps For Self Employed Freelancers

Setting up a freelance business? Good on you. But you’ll need some help if you want to make it as successful as possible. All good sole traders have a list of must-have apps that help keep them organised and on track. And it’s these tools for freelancers that’ll ensure your business gets off to the best start.

They can help you to:

• Improve time management
• Simplify your tax return
• Enhance communication
• Better manage your project
• Enable flexibility

To help kick-start your self-employment journey, we’ve compiled a list of our essential apps for freelancers here.

1. Clockify – To help manage your time

When it comes to invoicing clients and improving your own processes, you need to be able to track time.

Clockify makes this easy. Acting as a timesheet, this free-to-use software allows you and any other freelancers to track work hours across projects and assess productivity levels.

Whether you’re reviewing time spent on a project or managing your accounts, using Clockify allows you to allocate time more effectively and optimise your working day.

2. GoSimpleTax – To help manage your finances

Want to take your record-keeping one step further? Our second tool for the self-employed would have to be our very own GoSimpleTax. With us, you can simplify the tax return process and file it without any of the usual unnecessary stress.

Our free trial allows self-employed freelancers to input up to five income entries and five business expense entries every month. This way, you can log them in real-time, and view your updated forecast tax bill all year round.

Better yet, you can integrate it with our Invoicing module to make entering your income and expenditure (and raising invoices if required) even easier. All data entered instantly appears in your tax return so you can see how much tax you owe.

3. Basecamp – To help improve your communication

Work with other freelancers? Streamline communication with Basecamp. Basecamp is a tool that allows you to log conversations in one place instead of spreading them across multiple email chains.

As the name suggests, it also acts as a hub for all project chatter and allows you to share files with (and set to-dos for) clients and other team members. Now you can see where everything is, know what everyone is working on, and follow a project’s progress.

As with the other apps for freelancers we’ve suggested, you can try Basecamp for free.

4. Airtable – To help manage your projects

Once you get the ball rolling and start winning more business, it’ll soon get harder to manage projects. That’s where Airtable comes in.

Airtable allows you to simplify and visualise your workflow in a way that saves you time. It’s free to use for teams of any size and can be levelled up depending on the scale of your business.

It also allows you to build applications within the platform that are custom-built towards your industry and business outcomes.

5. Zoom – To help improve flexible working

Perhaps one of the most well-known tools for freelancers on this list is Zoom – especially after 2020! The global shift to remote working has made this videoconferencing and webinar platform a household name, and it’s easy to see why.

Zoom has evolved remote meetings, providing a free version that requires minimal sign-up with optimal results. With it, you can arrange client calls, conduct workshops and even scope out work.

Now countless face-to-face catch-ups can be avoided, allowing you to focus on your work and limit your travel costs.

Get started today

Using any of these tools can improve your chances of freelance success. Not only can they increase your levels of productivity, but they can also prepare you for the challenges of working for yourself.

One of those challenges is undoubtedly keeping records and filing the tax return. That’s why we enable you to easily record expenditure, monitor your taxable income, and reduce your tax bill where possible throughout the year. Our software can be used on mobile devices, and it’s also recognised by HMRC.

So what are you waiting for? Sign up today.

Blog content is for information purposes and over time may become outdated, although we do strive to keep it current. It's written to help you understand your Tax's and is not to be relied upon as professional accounting, tax and legal advice due to differences in everyone's circumstances. For additional help please contact our support team or HMRC.