10 Time-Saving Apps for Freelancers

Operating as a freelance professional often means having to balance numerous projects and clients concurrently, with remuneration largely dependent on the amount of time invested in each project. For this reason, it’s essential for freelancers to accurately track their working hours to ensure fair compensation.

This guide provides an overview of ten innovative applications meticulously designed to assist freelancers with time management. These apps not only help track project hours with precision, but also facilitate seamless client billing, thereby helping you optimize your earnings.

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Continue reading for an in-depth analysis of each tool, enabling you to select the one that aligns best with your specific freelance needs. By integrating one of these time-saving apps into your workflow, you’ll boost your efficiency and elevate your freelance career.

Remember, successful freelancing is not just about delivering great work, but also about effective time management and ensuring you’re paid appropriately for your time and skills. These applications can serve as indispensable allies on your freelance journey.

FreshBooks

FreshBooks is a revolutionary tool that simplifies accounting for web design and development teams, as well as freelancers. If you’re finding that managing invoices and expenses is consuming too much of your time, you might want to explore this cloud-based accounting application.

FreshBooks offers a free 30-day trial.

The platform makes creating and sending invoices incredibly simple. There’s no need to worry about formatting or complex formulas, and you can personalize your invoices with your own brand colors and logo. Furthermore, it allows you to easily receive payments online, which your clients will appreciate.

In addition, FreshBooks provides a dashboard where you can monitor your business’s financial health. Other features include expense and time tracking capabilities. You can also use FreshBooks’s mobile app to snap pictures of receipts and directly upload them to the system.

Try FreshBooks

Memory by Timely

Memory by Timely is a tool that keeps a comprehensive record of all your work activities, from files and websites you’ve accessed to the apps you’ve used. It presents this information in a visually pleasing timeline, making it easy for you to keep track of your tasks. Inadequate or nonexistent time tracking methods can result in significant financial losses for businesses. The main reason for this is that people often forget what they’ve worked on and for how long.

Even for small businesses and freelancers, it is crucial to avoid losing billable hours amidst the chaos. Imagine the time it takes for an employee to manually fill out a time sheet. Those few minutes spent on non-billable tasks can accumulate into numerous non-billable hours per month for large companies. With Memory by Timely, you can provide your clients with an accurate breakdown of what they are paying for, fulfilling their expectations. Additionally, this app also helps project teams monitor their utilization of the project’s budget.

Try Memory by Timely

Futuramo Time Tracker

Futuramo Time Tracker is a tool that helps you keep track of the time you spend on your projects. No more guessing how much time you’ve spent on your hobby project this month or incorrectly predicting when a project will be finished. This app, which works in the cloud, is great for both individuals and large teams. It comes with advanced statistics that give you a clear picture of your daily work habits, or those of your team. Understanding how you use your time is crucial for making better predictions about time and costs in the future.

You can use the app to track time spent on different clients, projects, or specific date ranges. You can choose to have the app track your time automatically, or you can enter the time manually. If you forgot to track something in the past, you can also add that information manually. Plus, it’s no problem to track multiple projects at the same time.

The best part? Futuramo Time Tracker is free for up to 3 users.

Try Futuramo Time Tracker

Avaza

Avaza is a comprehensive business management tool created specifically for creative agencies. It offers a range of features such as easy-to-use invoicing, adaptable project billing and budgeting, task management, and team collaboration. The Avaza Expenses feature simplifies the process of managing employee costs, while Avaza Timesheets gives you all the necessary data for time tracking, billing, and reporting.

Avaza also allows you to connect with over 500 other apps to enhance your business operations. You can start using it for free, and you don’t need a credit card to sign up.

Try Avaza

Timing

Timing is a tool that you can use on your Mac to keep track of all your activities. It already has some categories set up for you, but you can also add your own, like meetings or phone calls, and it will keep track of those too. You can monitor as many projects as you like. The dashboard gives you a summary of your activities and shows you where you’ve been working the most efficiently. You can also export this information to make invoices.

Timing is a time management tool specifically designed for Macs. You can download and try it out for free for a two-week period.

Try Timing

Elorus

Elorus is a web-based tool for creating and managing bills and invoices. It’s completely free if you’re a professional working with up to 3 customers or vendors each month, and there’s no limit on the number of invoices you can send to each of them.

One of the standout features of Elorus is its private portal for clients. Here, you can allow one or more clients to see their past transactions, download their invoices, and even pay online. This makes Elorus a great tool for freelancers, small businesses, and agencies.

Try Elorus

ClickTime

ClickTime is a tool that assists you in staying within your project’s budget. It offers features to control project expenses, personalized time tracking options, and a user-friendly dashboard for resource planning. With ClickTime, you can monitor project tasks and handle costs even when you’re not in the office, thanks to its free mobile apps.

They offer three different plans, and each one comes with a free trial period of 30 days.

Try ClickTime

Paymo

Paymo is a tool that assists you in handling your projects from start to finish. It simplifies the process of planning, scheduling tasks and resources, and assigning tasks. It also keeps track of the time spent on work, sends out invoices once the work is done, and creates useful reports for checking progress and planning future tasks.

There are also mobile apps available, so you can keep an eye on things or make adjustments even when you’re out and about.

Try Paymo

Hiveage’s Invoice Generator

Are you finding it hard to make invoices, or is it eating up too much of your time? Try out this free invoice generator. All you need to do is input your details, and you’ll get a polished invoice in PDF form in your email, ready to be sent to your client. And the best part? It’s completely free. This tool is a product of Hiveage. Check out their website to learn more about their advanced features for managing clients.

Try Hiveage’s Invoice Generator

Trigger

If you’re looking for a tool that does more than just keep track of time, consider using Trigger. This tool allows you to not only track time but also manage your projects, work together with your design team, create management reports, and even send invoices directly to Xero.

Plus, it offers a lot more features. Trigger makes it easy to gather data about your company, projects, tasks, target hours, logged hours, and average hours per employee, among other things. You can even invite your clients to join Trigger at no cost, which can make reporting easier and increase transparency.

Try Trigger

Summary

You now know all about the top tools for tracking time, creating invoices, and managing projects. With so many great apps available, it can be tough to pick one. But don’t worry, even if you don’t choose the absolute best, you won’t make a bad choice.

Don’t forget to use the free trials! They’ll help you find the perfect tool that suits your needs.