5 essential tools the Scribbr team swears by
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These free tools will help you better manage your freelance business and save time on day-to-day tasks
Let’s be honest: Most of us can’t afford to hire a personal assistant who could take some of the administrative tasks off of our shoulders. Every minute that you spend on manual work is a minute you’re not spending doing the tasks that you actually signed up for as a freelancer — which are the tasks that ultimately generate your income.
If you are looking to work more efficiently and grow your business, you won’t get far without a number of tools at hand. It’s like growing a well-functioning team of assistants around you. And, just like creating any other team, you’ll have to find the right fit and become familiar with them.
Even I, as a millenial, am sometimes lazy when it comes to looking for tools and learning how to use them. It takes some effort in the beginning, and if you don’t know what’s in it for you, why wouldn’t you stick to the good old pen and paper? But let me tell you, if you try the following tools, I’m sure you won’t regret it.
1. Asana
Asana is a project- and task management tool that has become indispensable for our team. You can use it to manage and plan long-term projects or small daily tasks and reminders. It also allows you to communicate and collaborate with teams and to share files.
I also use it to structure my day: I plan the challenging tasks in the morning and the easier ones in the afternoon, when my concentration usually goes down. And on top of the satisfying feeling of ticking off your tasks and seeing the list disappear throughout the day, Asana sends a flying unicorn across your screen to celebrate the completion of multiple tasks in a row (now, if that doesn’t sell it to you…).
Asana is one of my favourite tools. It’s where most of my daily activities come together. I use it to receive tasks from colleagues, manage my own tasks, store ideas for later and manage projects.
Using Asana’s “Today”, “Upcoming” and “Later” sections enables me to focus on tasks with high priority, without being bothered by tasks that don’t require immediate attention.
The only thing I do is add an estimated due date to every task and plan my “upcoming” tasks once a week. Other than that, I trust Asana to put tasks on my radar again when they matter.
2. Lastpass
This is a simple tool that is useful to anyone, but in particular those with a bad memory or anyone who uses the same password for dozens of websites. Lastpass keeps all your passwords in one place and automatically fills in login credentials for you. It works as a browser add-on, and you can also download the Lastpass app to your phone.
Since I was introduced to Lastpass through my job at Scribbr, I have started using it in my personal life, and it has saved me a great amount of stress (and dramatically reduced how often I need to click the “Forgot your password?” button). Another feature that I find helpful is that you can share passwords with another person or your whole organization.
3. Clockify
Clockify is one of many time-tracking apps targeted to freelancers. It helps you track the time you spend on individual tasks and projects and know how much to bill individual clients. It also shows you customizable overviews and graphs, which is useful for tracking your productivity and workload across projects and throughout the year.
Compared to other tools I have tried, Clockify makes it super easy to get started, and the free version offers everything I need. I personally used this tool to monitor my working hours while working remotely and to make sure the lines between work and doing my laundry don’t get blurry.
4. Signrequest
With Signrequest, you can send your pen and scanner off to retirement and sign documents in a matter of seconds. Simply upload a document and fill it out with words, dates or signatures, or create predefined fields and send them to someone else to fill out. The documents are not saved in your Signrequest account but sent directly to your email address.
5. Calendly
Calendly is an automated scheduling tool that makes finding a meeting time with your network easy. By filling out your availability or synchronizing it with your Google calendar, you can send your personal calendly link to someone and allow them to simply select a time to meet. It is particularly useful if you are in contact with people in a different time zone (or just someone with a full calendar).
I find Calendly extremely useful when scheduling calls with our editors. Instead of emailing back and forth, the editor can simply choose a spot in my calendar that works best for them. I receive a confirmation — plus, it is automatically added to my calendar. It saves us both a lot of time, and it is user-friendly.
I have tested several scheduling tools before, but Calendly has the easiest interface, and it offers you customizable options such as event duration, setting a limit of events per day and event buffers.
A big bonus for me is that it takes the time zones into account, which means the chance of me calling someone during their nighttime is small.
