The web is filled with a lot of resources for freelancers to start and manage their own business. There are tools to keep track of time, billing, invoices, and where to look for jobs.I put together a list of 90 Useful freelance tools to help all you freelancers out there. If I’m missing one, feel free to add a comment. Thank you for reading.
Timing Tools: Here are tools to keep track of your time.
1.) slimtimer.com – SLIMTIMER is funded and developed by myself, Richard White, using Ruby on Rails and borne out of my time tracking needs when I became a freelance UI designer.
2.) tickspot.com – Molehill is a small web application development shop with a passion for powerfully small, elegant and beautiful, web based software. We’ve been in this business for over 10 years and love the daily challenges of solving real problems in the simplest way possible.
3.) getharvest.com – Harvest is a service of Iridesco, a New York City-based web software company with big ideas. Founded in 2003 by designers Danny Wen and Shawn Liu, Iridesco has its roots as a creative agency. In 2006, the company evolved from its consulting model into a software service provider with Harvest as its flagship offering.
4.) 14dayz.com – We are drivers in the movement for better software. Too many features make software complex and tedious to use, install or maintain.
5.) timepost2.com – Forget about slow and awkward web interfaces, start tracking your time effortlessly from the comfort of your desktop.
6.) fanuriotimetracking.com – Fanurio is a time tracking and billing software application, highly appreciated by freelancers for its intuitive interface, flexible timer and ability to produce detailed invoices.
7.) lesstimespent.com – As a freelancer your time is how you make money. You must be diligent in tracking and billing for this hours. Minor lapses in time tracking will cost you thousands at the end of the year. Not only track your time but record what you accomplished during those times.
8.) timeEdition.com – timeEdition is targeted at all users in a computer workplace who value detailed documentation of their working hours, whether they use it for customer billing or for monitoring the duration of individual projects.
9.) klok.mcgraphix.com – Your time is your product. Every minute you spend working that goes unaccounted for is like giving away your product for free. Tracking your time accurately is essential to staying profitable.
10.) time59.com – Be more organized with less effort. Time59 keeps track of your work, gets your invoices out quickly, and manages client accounts. Access your Time59 account from any web browser… at home, at your office, or on your iPhone.
Invoicing: Here are websites to help make invoice to send to your clients
11.) simplybill.com – Simplybill brings simple invoice management to all. Instead of wrestling with overly complex accounting software or trying to mash-up a spreadsheet into some sort of design, begin sending attractive invoices in minutes.
12.) blinksale.com – Blinksale is perfect for anyone who needs to invoice clients for services or products sold. Blinksale is an excellent choice for attorneys, accountants, designers, IT professionals, software developers, journalists, contractors, engineers, architects, videographers, and more. Basically, if you need to send invoices, Blinksale can work for you
13.) quickbooks.intuit.com – Instant invoices and expense tracking—get organized
14.) freshbooks.com – Send, track and collect payments quickly. Great for teams, freelancers and service providers.
15.) lessaccounting.com – Less Everything, Inc is based out of Jacksonville, Florida. The company has been a successful web firm for several years and began pursuing Ruby on Rails product development in 2007. In the beginning, we struggled with accounting, because accounting is scary, accounting is boring and quite simply, no one likes accounting.
16.) getcashboard.com – Invoicing with Cashboard is beautiful,configurable, and reflects the quality of your business.
17.) billmyclients.com – BillMyClients.com wants to be your invoicing and billing partner. Whether you’d like to do it yourself or have us do it for you, we’ve got a solution to meet your needs.
18.) invotrak.com – If you’re a freelancer, small business owner, or individual looking to tame your invoicing and time tracking – and get your billings in order
19.) simplyinvoices.com – Simply Invoices was created by roobasoft, LLC: A one man shop focusing on applications I’m passionate about. As a contractor, I developed Simply Invoices because it was a product I needed. The existing solutions didn’t have the integration with Basecamp that I wanted and most were too complex. So Simply Invoices was born.
20.) freeagentcentral.com
21.) invoicemachine.com – The Invoice Machine takes a new clever approach to online invoicing. It’s beautiful and simple-to-use interface makes producing professional looking invoices a very pleasant experience.
22.) roninapp.com – Simple online invoicing and time tracking. Perfect for creative teams and solo freelancers. Designed to make you look professional.
23.) billingsapp.com – Your invoices should reflect your professionalism. Billings combines powerful features with stylish designs so you can send elegant invoices right out of the box. Choose from any of the customizable templates, or create your own with the built-in WYSIWYG designer. Either way you’ll send polished professional invoices in seconds.
24.) zoho.com – Zoho Invoice is an easy-to-use online invoicing software that helps you send invoices for your projects and customer expenses, receive payments and track the overall health of your business quickly and efficiently. It makes invoicing and following-up really easy – reducing the time it takes you to manage the paperwork and get paid, so you can remain focused on your customers and your business.
25.) getballpark.com
26.) xero.com – Xero was founded in July 2006 by successful technology entrepreneur Rod Drury and specialist small business accountant Hamish Edwards. Xero is listed on the New Zealand Stock Exchange and is a fast growing company with offices in Wellington, Auckland, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and London.
27.) billingboss.com – Billing Boss is a free online invoicing tool designed for small businesses and freelancers to create, send and track the status of invoices. It’s so simple to use that you can create and send your first invoice within minutes.
27.) citrusbill.com – Citrus is an online invoicing solution that gets you paid quickly, accurately, and streamlines invoice fulfillment, payment and credit control, cutting your costs and significantly reducing manual errors.
Project Management: Here we have Project Managers to help keep the projects in line.
28.) backpackit.com – Share information with your team. Keep your documents, discussions, and schedules in one place all the time.
29.) conceptshare.com – ConceptShare is a web-based design collaboration tool engineered for the unique needs of creative professionals whose final product is visual – design, application interface, graphics, advertisements, branding, video animation, etc.
30.) wridea.com – Wridea is a web service first to avoid ideas being forgotten, then to organize and improve those ideas by giving you the opportunity to share your ideas with friends and necessary tools to improve your ideas by yourself and individually.
31.) goplanapp.com – Goplan is an online project management and collaboration solution for individuals and teams, built by the team at WBS.
32.) monkeyon.com – We’ll send that person email reminders about the task, and email you a reminder when the deadline for the task has expired.
33.) rememberthemilk.com – Managing tasks is generally not a fun way to spend your time. We created Remember The Milk so that you no longer have to write your to-do lists on sticky notes, whiteboards, random scraps of paper, or the back of your hand. Remember The Milk makes managing tasks an enjoyable experience.
34.) activecollab.com – activeCollab is a project management & collaboration tool that you can set up on your own server or local network. Work with your team, clients and contractors in an easy to use environment, while keeping full control over your data. Now improved with Invoice and Source Modules.
35.) project2manage.com – Project2Manage is an Online project management system that allows you to stay up-to-date, on task and connected with your team. We’ve taken the hard work of staying organized and simplified it for you.
36.) projects.zoho.com – Looking for Tasks and Milestones? We do that too. But above all, Zoho Projects is about helping teams get their projects done.
37.) springloops.com – Springloops is a unique source code management tool focused on web development teams.
38.) teamworkpm.net – Teamwork Project Manager is an easy-to-use online teamwork & project management software application that helps managers, staff and clients work together more productively online.
39.) 5pmweb.com – 5pm can be your central location for project and task management, team collaboration, time tracking, reporting and more
40.) planzone.com – As Information Workers, we all spend a great deal of time working with others on projects of one kind or another. We all have experienced the frustration of trying to collaborate with team members and manage our own task lists, email messages, files and schedules with basic desktop tools. It’s not working. Because we are experienced project management specialists at Planzone, we know that a successful project requires a good project management tool. And, a good project management tool is one that helps you spend less timemanaging information and more time acting on it. It’s that simple.
41.) comindwork.com – Assign tasks, share files, discuss ideas, involve clients. Zero-investment and flexible pay-as-you-go pricing. Secure and reliable SaaS platform. Fully customizable.
42.) worketc.com – We combine CRM, Projects, Billing, Documents, Time sheets and more with a powerful automation engine to help take your small business to the next level. The only complete small business management software solution.
43.) proworkflow.com – ProWorkflow helps your company manage projects, tasks, time tracking, staff and contacts at anytime from anywhere. All you need is a web browser or iPhone!
44.) planningforce.com – PlanningForce is a unique project management software focused on simulations,decisions and monitoring.
Stock Libraries: here are some website to get useful photos, templates and icons
45.) icetemplates.com – Having a professional looking site is really important for the success of any business. If you ever heard someone saying that a website is not important for their business, it is because they have not utilized the proper resources to get their return on investment. Nowadays every business that strives to be a success needs a web presence.
46.) templatemonster.com – Template Monster website templates, flash templates and other products are ready-made web designs, that can be used as a basis for fast and high-quality website. Our website templates, flash templates and all other products are completely customizable and ready for immediate download. We at TemplateMonster.com do our best to provide you with web templates design of premium quality.
47.) iconeden.com – Time is precious! Launched by Frexy Studio, IconEden helps you save time by offering well-designed stock icons for your projects. All of our icons are available in both scalable vector format and other standard graphic formats.
48.) iconbuffet.com – So here’s the deal… a few years back we launched the original IconBuffet. At the time we sold stock icons to web designers and other geeky folks all over the world. After a while we figured it would be totally sweet to give away free icons every month to IconBuffet members. Only there’s a little twist… not everyone gets the same icons. So you have to swap icons with your friends to get them all. Kinda like baseball cards. Only you can use them on your website.
49.) medialoot.com – Put simply, MediaLoot is a collection of premium design resources that will be available for a single monthly subscription fee.
50.) activeden.net – ActiveDen is an Envato Marketplace. At ActiveDen you can buy and sell royalty-free Adobe Flash and Flex files for just a few dollars. Items are priced on the complexity, quality and use of the file. The site is home to a bustling community of Flash designers and developers and is the largest Flash library on the web.
51.) gettyimages.com – We are the leading provider of digital media worldwide, creating and distributing a range of assets – from royalty-free stock photography and editorial images to footage, music and multimedia – that help communicators around the globe tell their stories.
52.) istockphoto.com – iStockphoto is the internet’s original member-generated image and design community. Get easy, affordable inspiration with millions of safe, royalty-free photographs, vector illustrations, video footage, audio tracks and Flash files. Buy stock or sell stock — or both.
53.) veer.com – See things in a new light. Hint at potential. Invent contexts. Create concepts. It’s what you do as a creative. It’s our goal at Veer, too. We want to help you break out of the grid, the list, the rulebook. To show you visual elements for design in ways that work. To filter out the obvious and the mundane, in our products and our presentation. To help you do the best creative work possible.
Business Tools : Most of the business tools you will need.
54.) zoho.com
55.) campaignmonitor.com – Campaign Monitor is a small software company right near the beach in southern Sydney. We build email marketing software for designers and their clients and are lucky enough to have lots of passionate customers.
56.) feelbreeze.com – Breeze is another sophisticated yet simple web product from Element Fusion. Since 1999, we’ve grown our company with a reputation for rising above the competition.
57.) business-paper.dk – The Business Paper system is a next generation application and is a joint venture between Retouch ApS and Antracit ApS.
58.) google.com/apps
59.) wave.google.com
60.) gotomeeting.com – Citrix Online is a fast-growing division of Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: CTXS), based in Santa Barbara, California, with satellite offices and data centers around the world. Every month, more than 17,000 new customers start using Citrix Online’s services to work from anywhere with anyone – using our remote-connectivity tools to save time, get more done and connect to others around the world.
62.) wufoo.com – Wufoo strives to be the easiest way to collect information over the Internet.
63.) sba.gov
64.) paypal.com – PayPal is the faster, safer way to pay and get paid online. The service allows members to send money without sharing financial information, with the flexibility to pay using their account balances, bank accounts, credit cards or promotional financing.
65.) moneybookers.com – Moneybookers offers one of the fastest and safest ways to pay online and transfer money on the internet.
66.) trendwatching.com -One of the world’s leading trend firms, trendwatching.com scans the globe for emerging consumer trends.
Legal: Because you have to protect yourself and your work.
67.) mynewcompany.com – MyNewCompany.com, Inc. was founded in 2001 with one simple mission: to make starting a business as simple, fast and inexpensive as possible. Since then we’ve formed thousands of Corporations and LLC’s for our clients and have grown into one of America’s largest providers of Incorporation and LLC formation services.
68.) designerstoolbox.com
69.) copyright.gov
70.) creativecommons.org
Job Boards: A lot of places to find a freelance job.
71.) designm.ag
72.) jobs.smashingmagazine.com
73.) jobs.37signals.com
74.) authenticjobs.com
75.) coroflot.com
76.) artypapers.com
77.) krop.com
78.) xemion.com
79.) jobs.ajaxian.com
80.) creativehotlist.com
81.) designrelated.com
82.) jobs.freelanceswitch.com
83.) jobs.webdesignerwall.com
84.) behance.net
Advertising and Marketing : you will need to get your website out there to the internet world.
85.) text-link-ads.com -Located in New York City, Text Link Ads is the premiere targeted traffic and link popularity ad firm. We specialize in placing static html links on high quality, high traffic web properties. Our clients have seen a dramatic increase in targeted traffic, brand exposure, and organic search engine rankings with our service. We currently work with a wide range of clients from Fortune 500 firms to individual website owners.
86.) reviewme.com
87.) adbrite.com – Serving over 242 million impressions a day on over 116,582 sites, AdBrite is The Internet’s Ad Marketplace®. AdBrite has created a completely transparent and effective advertising exchange focused on maximizing ROI for advertisers and publisher yield through best in class targeting and optimization technology. AdBrite’s auction-driven pricing, real-time bidding and API functionality, combined with a self-service account management interface, gives our customers unparalleled access to campaign information and total control.
88.) adengage.com – AdEngage operates a major online advertising network that displays over 12 billion ads on over 4,500 websites each month. We serve as the link between publishers who want to sell ad space on their websites and advertisers who want to buy ads on those sites.
89.) google.com
90.) professionalontheweb.com
