Essential Tools for Freelancers and Micro Businesses

A mechanic requires the help of their tools to fix your car. A doctor relies on medical devices to treat patients. So too do freelancers and micro business owners need tools to assist them with their everyday tasks in order to be successful.

It’s tempting to believe you can do it all on your own — but that’s a myth. At some point, you’ll need to find a resource, tool, application or platform that can assist you with a certain task (or more likely than not, with many tasks).

Whether it’s bookkeeping, time tracking, client management, virtual storage or video chat, you’ll almost certainly need multiple different types of tools to survive as a freelancer or micro business owner. And there is no shame in that game!

Not sure what tools are out there that can help you with your everyday tasks? We compiled the list below of essential tools for freelancers and micro business owners, so you can pick and choose what you need to scale your business.

Client & Business Management

The bulk of your time, energy, frustration and dollars will be spent on your day-to-day client and business management. These are the in-the-weeds tasks that you have to do to keep that money coming in. As a freelancer or mirco business owner, you are getting paid to assist your client with their needs, and that means you need to stay organized. Here are some tools you can use to streamline your workflow:

• Grasshopper (virtual phone)
• Skype (voice and video calls)
• Zoom (voice and video calls)
• Google Calendar (calendar)
• Calendly (meeting scheduler)
• Wunderlist (to-do tracker)
• Dropbox (cloud storage)
• Google Drive (cloud storage & software tools)
• Slack (communication & project management)
• Trello (project management)
• Asana (project management)
• Basecamp (project management)
• HelloSign (document approval)
• 1Password (password manager)
• Buffer (social media management)
• Hootsuite (social media management)
• Sprout Social (social media management)

Accounting, Finance, Time-tracking & Invoicing

Once your revenue is rolling in, you’ll need tools to help you manage the often mundane and challenging tasks of accounting, finance, bookkeeping, time-tracking and invoicing. Here are tools you should check out:

• FreshBooks (accounting software)
• QuickBooks (accounting software)
• Bonsai (contract creation & invoicing software)
• PayPal (payment tool)
• Square (payment tool)
• Mint (finance management)
• Harvest (time-tracking)
• Toggl (time-tracking)

Website, Design & Branding

Building out your brand and your website, but don’t know where to start? Don’t worry — these platforms are here to make your life easier:

• NameCheap (domain names)
• Squadhelp (logo design)
• Squarespace (website hosting)
• IncPromote (Google Adwords)
• Canva (graphic design)
• Unsplash (stock photography)
• InVision (digital product design)
• Hemingway (grammar tool)
• Grammarly (grammar tool)
• MailChimp (email marketing)

In addition to the tools above, Incfile has a host of offerings within our platform to help you manage your freelance or micro business successfully, such as our Business Name Search tool or Registered Agent service.

Looking for a specific tool that isn’t on this list? Let us know what type of service you need — we can help point you in the right direction.