Freelancers and entrepreneurs are the creatives of the business world, and they often work alone or as contractors and consultants for multiple companies and clients. When you’re building your freelance or consulting business, you often don’t have the money for either an assistant or a part-time secretary.
But you don’t need one. Your smartphone, equipped with the right apps, can track your schedule, help with finances, and perform more functions, allowing you to focus on building your business.
Keep All Contact Details.
Your phone has a built-in address book, and that’s all you need for keeping your business contacts in one place. Save as much information about each person as you can, including work and personal email addresses, contact numbers, work addresses, and LinkedIn URLs.
Let’s face it: Even when you download an address book app, your first instinct when reaching for contact information is to simply start typing into an email or text address field. Your phone pulls from the address book already loaded. Make it easy on yourself by keeping the address book updated.
Set Reminders.
Remind yourself of location-specific tasks with your phone’s built-in reminder app. Instead of creating a work to-do list that forces you to drive all over town and waste portions of your day running errands, use your phone to help you with nonessential tasks.
Set your reminders to appear when you arrive at or leave a specific location. Set a reminder for something as simple as checking your mailbox when you leave the house or checking your post office box when you drive past the post office on a route you typically take.
Plan With Google Keep.
The free app Google Keep is for entrepreneurs and freelancers who find themselves overwhelmed with to-do lists, tasks, and reminders.
Organize your work life by color-coding your notes, searching through the app for specific information, and automatically transcribing voice memos that you leave for yourself. When you can’t afford a personal assistant, Google Keep is the next best solution. The sync options are powerful, too. Be sure your phone has a powerful mobile processor, such as the Qualcomm Snapdragon, before downloading this app for the best results. The Qualcomm Snapdragon mobile processor offers increased device speed and better power savings, features which allow rich apps such as Google Keep from draining your phone’s battery.
Scan With Tiny Scanner.
Free to download, the Tiny Scanner app is the perfect solution when you’re on the go and need to get PDF documents to clients or colleagues ASAP.
You can use your phone’s camera to photograph, adjust, and crop images of the documents you need to scan. You can also select documents already in your photo library. Then, you can save or send your PDF file through email, Dropbox, Evernote, and other options. Remove the hassle of finding a scanner or fax machine after wet-signing an important document.
Create a Freelance Budget With Mint.
Mint is a personal finance app that you can use for your freelance budget. Download Mint for free on your iOS device, then connect your business accounts to start managing your freelance earnings and expenses. Track your bills and expenses, get spending analysis, and see simple financial trends over the course of your app usage.
While this personal finance app is too simple to manage a small business’s finances, Mint will work wonderfully for a freelancer who is learning to work with a budget. Mint also offers some helpful finance tips for freelancers using the app.
Expense With Expensify.
Mint is a wonderful finance app if you work alone and work from home. If you travel and need to make expense reports, even for yourself, you need something extra. The free iOS and Android app Expensify is perfect for freelancers and entrepreneurs who travel for business. Take pictures of receipts and track your gas mileage with the Expensify app. Figure out exactly how much you spend on each business trip so that your taxes are simpler when tax season arrives.
You may not have office space, a fax machine, or a landline telephone, but you do have a smartphone, and that smartphone is all you need. Combining your phone’s capabilities with free apps creates a business resource that fits in your pocket and allows you to more easily be a freelancer, consultant, or entrepreneur.
