5 Types Of Tools Freelancers Can Use To Scale Their Business

Currently, there are approximately 1.1 billion freelancers in the world, which accounts for 31.4% of the total workforce. While freelancers weren’t so common not too long ago, now a company can hire a freelancer to complete almost any business task.

The company you're working with may use a freelance management software tool to better manage its contractors, but there are some tools that you should use as a freelancer. After all, tools aren’t just for companies, they’re for the freelancers they hire as well.

If you’re not sure where to start, here are the five tools every freelancer needs to scale their business.

Billing And Accounting Tool 

Freelancing comes with a lot of benefits, but something a majority of freelancers don’t like about their job is the fact they need to take care of all of their financial matters by themselves. This includes tasks such as accounting, invoicing, and tax payments all through the fiscal year.

And while you can do it manually, there are a lot of issues. Financial tasks take up a lot of time you could otherwise spend on work and if you’re not an accountant, you will have to learn how to deal with financial matters. Not to mention that the possibility of human error always exists.

This is why it would be smart to use a billing and accounting tool that will take care of the financial matters. If you don’t want to use a tool but still want to make billing and accounting easier, you can use good old Excel which people have used for decades to organize their finances.

And if you don’t know how to use Excel very well, you can hire an Excel macro consultant. They will teach you how to build upon an existing Excel-related infrastructure.

Time Management Tool

There are two types of freelancers: those who charge an hourly rate and those who get paid per project. After all, it doesn’t matter which type of freelancer you are because in both cases you could use a time management tool.

For those who charge an hourly rate, it’s obvious why you need a time management tool. It will allow you to track the time you’re spending on every task and make it easier for you to send invoices as you will have proof of the time spent on the project.

Even those who get paid per project need a time management tool because it will help plan out workdays better. Only about 20% of the average working day is spent on activities that matter, but when you’re working from home, it’s easy to procrastinate and forget about work.

When you track your time, it will be easier to hold yourself accountable and know how much time you’re spending on work.

Cloud Storage Tool

As a freelancer, you probably work from home most of the time, but the beauty of freelancing is that you can take your work with you anywhere. If you want to take advantage of this, you also need to be able to access your work from anywhere you go.

This is why cloud storage tools are a necessary solution for every freelancer out there. They allow you to save your work and access it from anywhere in the world as long as you have an internet connection.

Additionally, with cloud storage, you can make sure that you won’t lose any valuable data. Computers can crash at any time, and you should never depend on your hardware for storage.

There are multiple cloud computing service providers you can consider depending on what type of services and how much storage you need.

Social Media Management Tool

Most businesses use social media to promote their products and services, but social media marketing isn’t just for regular companies. A lot of freelancers have platforms on social media that they use to promote themselves. If you’re not on social media, you need to change that right away.

What kind of social media presence you have can be a big deciding factor for what kind of clients you get in the future. However, spending hours every day ensuring all of your pages are optimized isn’t feasible for most freelancers as it takes time away from their projects.

If you want to have an amazing social media presence without taking on all the time-consuming responsibilities, you should use a social media management tool.

Communication Tool

Good communication is the basis of any relationship, both personal and professional. If you want to maintain your relationships with current clients and make it easy to acquire new ones, you need to know how to talk to them.

Communication tools were designed to help business professionals maintain their relationships with existing clients and create the perfect outreach strategies for new clients.

Final Thoughts

As freelancing becomes more widespread, so do the tools these professionals can use to help make their day-to-day lives easier and more efficient.

Since companies of all sizes and niches have realized why hiring freelancers is beneficial for everyone, freelancers have started competing for attention.

Don’t let your talents go to waste just because other freelancers are using tools and you aren’t. Instead, be smart about how you handle your job and consider using the tools we talked about here.