The best free apps that make solopreneurs way more efficient
When you’re a solopreneur, efficiency is key. You don’t have a big team to run your operations or organize your business. It’s up to you. Thankfully, this list of the best free apps can help you simplify and streamline your business so you can get more done in less time.
Trello — for project management
The first thing a solopreneur needs to organize is their list of projects. When you are running the show, you are responsible for making sure things move forward and don’t slip through the cracks. Trello helps you to do that. The project management app sets up boards to organize your business operations tasks and client management processes from start to finish.
Not sold on Trello as a project management app? Check out this list of other options.
Toggl — for time management
Time is money for solopreneurs, so make sure you are spending yours wisely.
Track all of your time spent on tasks and client work.
This will help you review how you spend your time and easily track billable hours for clients. Toggl is one of the best free apps for tracking time as you can organize work by clients, projects, and single tasks.
Boomerang — for email management
Most solopreneurs don’t have assistants to send them reminders or make sure they follow up on projects. But you don’t necessarily need an assistant for that task when you have Boomerang. One of the best free apps for email, Boomerang is a Gmail extension that allows you to set reminders to follow up on emails and delay the sending of emails so you can better manage your time and projects.
Pro tip: If you want to be taken seriously as a business owner, you’ll want to graduate from generic email accounts like Gmail to a professional email address that includes your business domain.
Zapier — for automating your workflows
When you are a solopreneur, you may be unable to delegate tasks to other people. But you can delegate to Zapier. Zapier is an automation app that moves information between more than 500 apps so they can work together. You set up an automated workflow once and let Zapier take over from there.
Slack — for collaboration
Despite what the name says, solopreneurs rarely work alone. Many solopreneurs work with outside contractors or part-time staff to manage their businesses. Because the team is not full-time, they rarely work at the same location, so solopreneurs need a tool to communicate with their off-site team.
Slack is one of the best free apps to keep a remote team on the same page.
It includes messengers, file sharing and tagging to open and organization communication lines. You can also add clients and use it to communicate with them during their projects.
Shake — for creating contracts
Solopreneurs need to protect themselves before they work with clients. Shakelaw makes that easy. The Shake app allows users to quickly create contracts from buy/sell to freelance to non-disclosure agreements. With the mobile app, solopreneurs and their customers and clients can sign and store the agreements right from the mobile device.
Square — for collecting payments
All solopreneurs need to get paid, so it’s important to have a tool that makes money transfer easy. While there are a variety of payments tools, Square is one of the best free apps. Square collects payment via mobile readers (when you register, you get one free Square reader), online portals, or point-of-sale systems. While it is a free app, there are fees that are applied to each transaction.
Mile IQ — for tracking mileage
Solopreneurs need to get all of the tax savings they can, yet many fail to track deductible mileage because it is tedious. But that isn’t the case when you have Mile IQ. The free app tracks and organizes trips so you can create milage reports. The free plan includes up to 40 drives each month.
Hootsuite — for managing multiple social media accounts
As a solopreneur, you are one person. But that doesn’t mean you have only one social media account to worry about. Most solopreneurs have many social profiles. To make it easier to manage all of your accounts from one place, we have Hootsuite. One of the best free apps for social media management, Hootsuite allows users to connect multiple accounts so they can see their feeds from one dashboard.
Canva — for creating professional graphics
As a solopreneur, you wear many hats, one of which is a graphic designer. From creating social media posts and presentations to business cards and flyers, solopreneurs need a variety of graphics for their business. With Canva, creating those images is easy. The free app provides templates and easy-to-use design features that make even the most novice designer look like a pro.
Pocket — for staying up-to-date
Solopreneurs need to read blogs and articles to stay up-to-date on the latest news and trends in their industry. But they also can’t get sucked into the distractions of so much online content. To help them strike a balance between staying informed and not getting side-tracked, there is Pocket.
Pocket allows you to store articles that you come across in a library for later reading. That way, you don’t have to stop what you are doing every time you see a must-read article.
Like a team
When you are a solopreneur, you are on your own for most things. But with these apps, you won’t feel so overwhelmed or alone. These best free apps will make you feel like you have a devoted team there to help you be more efficient, productive, powerful and successful.
Looking for even more apps to help you streamline your business? Check out this list of the best apps to help you manage your money.
Originally published at Garage.