The best mobile apps for freelancers

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Being a freelancer in the highly competitive modern environment is a challenge. Quite often, you have to deal with work-related issues while on the go.

Smartphones can be lifesavers in such circumstances thanks to their accessibility. However, to be valuable assets, smartphones need to be equipped with the right apps.

Luckily, there are numerous software solutions on the market. Interestingly, many of them originate from the office environment as desktop apps.

At the same time, modern smartphones are powerful enough to give an average office computer a head start. All they need is a set of the right tools, which we’ll tackle in this post.

Trello—for project management

Whether you’re a freelancer or a regular office employee, you’ve probably heard of Trello. It’s one of the most popular tools to organize and manage your everyday work.

It’s often described as an app for collaborative activities. However, nothing stops you from enjoying excellent Trello features on your own.

You can divide your contracts into separate boards, create specific cards for each task, set deadlines, and get an overall tidy look at your work.

Trello is a multiplatform app that can be accessed from any device, which is especially important for freelancers. You don’t need to carry a laptop with you all day long.

Having a smartphone with the Trello app is more than enough to keep track of any of your work-related issues and follow the progress in real-time.

On top of that, the app is intuitive and easy to use, thanks to its flexibility and customization options.

Wave—for invoicing

Wave is another great app to have in your toolkit. It offers several essential financial features to make sure you’re receiving a decent and fair income.

As a freelancer, you often need to send invoices, which is Wave’s primary function. The app allows you to create customizable and professional-looking invoices that you can then send or reuse at any moment.

Moreover, you can track whether the invoice has been received and paid.

Wave wouldn’t have been so popular if it weren’t an all-in-one solution for invoicing, meaning it’s not just a useful invoice generator. The app comes packed with payment services integration.

It allows you to send an invoice as a document, request a payment, and instantly receive it. In keeping with the popular multiplatform trend, the mobile Wave app promptly synchronizes with its desktop version.

iScanner—for documentation

Contracts, invoices, and receipts are just a portion of all the documentation you need to handle as a freelancer. Needless to say, a specialized document scanner app is required to manage all those physical and digital papers.

Among such tools, iScanner is the most feature-packed and simultaneously straightforward app. At its core, it’s a digital scanner that allows you to copy and save any printed document as a PDF.

Thanks to an in-house OCR solution, the app can accurately recognize any text in almost two dozen different languages. This way, any printed document can instantly turn into a fully interactive, editable digital copy.

On top of that, iScanner doubles up as a convenient file storage. It allows you to keep all your important documents in one place and instantly access them thanks to an OCR-powered keyword search.

Expensify—for expense tracking

As a freelancer, you need to manage all your expenses personally, be it an investment in a new set of equipment or a travel fee.

To avoid exhausting manual tracking, you’ll need a dedicated mobile app, preferably, one that’ll help you manage your financial flows and know exactly how much you’ve spent.

Expensify is among the most useful tools for this specific task. It incorporates several crucial features, such as tracking expenses, categorizing them, and assigning custom tags.

With such a handy tool at your disposal, you can always check if renting a car has made a hole in your budget. Moreover, Expensify seamlessly integrates with popular financial tools and even apps like Uber.

It means that Expensify independently performs expense tracking for you in real-time. Last but not least, you can customize the app to your specific needs and enjoy native multi-currency support.

Slack—for communication

Maintaining communication with your clients is another crucial aspect of a freelancer’s job. There are several established tools for that, and Slack is often recognized as one of the best in the industry.

Over the years, there’s been a steady evolution in online communication.

As a result, Slack has accumulated virtually every bright idea in this field. Not only is it a brilliant text messenger, but it’s also a tool for video calls or themed conferences.

At its core, the app allows you to be a member of multiple workspaces and switch between them as needed. It’s especially valuable for freelancers who often take on several jobs at once.

In this case, you need to communicate with multiple clients or companies. Also, Slack supports seamless integration with popular business tools and services.

The app is available on every modern device, so you won’t lose your connections if you switch from a phone to a laptop.

Evernote—for productivity

While managing your exact tasks is of utmost importance, keeping track of yourself is no less essential. Boosting your productivity can be challenging, but only if you don’t have the right tools.

Evernote is the app to lend a helping hand, allowing you to collect bright ideas and manage to-do lists in one place. You can save anything useful and valuable for your job for later use.

It’ll be reliably stored in Evernote regardless of the specific file format, be it a video clip or a news article.

If used with other apps on this list, Evernote can be an excellent tool for tracking your freelancing journey and deciding if you need to improve anything.

Also, you can schedule specific productivity tasks by connecting the app with Google Calendar. Instant synchronization across devices ensures you’ll meet your goals regardless of the platform you’re using.

It emphasizes the parity between a mobile phone and a desktop computer.

QuickBooks—for accounting

As a freelancer, you don’t usually get any corporate benefits, such as insurance or retirement plans, so caring for your finances is your job.

It also implies that this task requires proper software to be managed effectively. For instance, paying taxes becomes the sole responsibility of a freelancer. And the perfect solution comes in the form of QuickBooks.

Filing tax forms is a completely normal phenomenon in freelance work, and using the plural form isn’t accidental here.

An independent contractor can have multiple jobs at once—or subsequently sign contracts with new clients. It’s common to fill out a separate tax form for each occasion.

QuickBooks effectively streamlines this process, allowing you to organize your finances. Thanks to it, you can effortlessly manage cash flows and even maximize tax deductions if you’re eligible for any.

Final thoughts

Regardless of the scale of your freelance activity, the apps listed above will help you preserve the benefits of your current position as a self-employed contractor.

To some extent, you may feel less burdened by your freelance work than before. It’s possible because you’ll be able to solve previously demanding issues while on the go.

For instance, you can send an invoice while on a train or update the status of any task while in a queue at a store. This is the true definition of flexibility.

You’ll do yourself a favor if you embrace the potential of mobile apps, allowing them to become a reliable part of your work life.

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