10 Best Accounting Tools For Freelancers

Freelancing or running a small business is fun, especially in the creative industry. Most of the time you are dealing with different clients, working on different projects and having lots of milestones and deadlines simultaneously so accounting is just adding a new challenge for you as a freelancer or a business owner.

Accounting Apps To The Rescue

Accounting if done right can be painless and sometimes fun activity which could help you to understand how you are actually doing with your business.

There are quite a lot of different tools for creatives online, but which are working the best? It is hard to decide, different people have different needs and everyone has to find their perfect fit.

In today’s roundup you will find 10 top tools for easier and more efficient accounting for creatives.

Some of them are available for free but you should invest in the one that fulfills your needs so you will be able to save the most in the long run.

FreshBooks

FreshBooks is one of the leaders in cloud accounting market and offers lots of useful features that will make your business much easier. Online invoicing, expense tracking, time tracking and much more you can try for free for 30 days.

Wave Accounting

Wave Accounting is a totally free accounting software for small businesses and freelancers. It offers effortless accounting for non-accountants, different banks integration, professional reports and seamless invoices. The best thing is that it doesn’t cost a penny.

Harvest

Another feature-rich and trusted by the creative industry tool. Harvest offers lots of different features and is available on a PC, Mac, mobile device, or desktop widget. Prices start at $12/month but you can try it for free for 30 days.

Billings

Billings is an accounting application for Mac OSX users with exceptional attention to details and intuitive interface. Billings offers you beautiful and professional looking invoice templates, time and expenses tracking, one-click invoicing and much more. You can buy Billings for only $39.99.

Xero

Xero is an accounting software which lets you to optimize work working in a team sharing access to business numbers from work, home or anywhere else. You can easily connect bank accounts, create and send invoices, integrate third party add-on apps to maximize your productivity and most important profit.

LessAccounting

LessAccounting as all of the other services listed here offer you easy online invoicing, proposals with prepared templates, reporting, mileage and business cost calculator and much more in a simple user interface. Price is $30/month for unlimited transactions, users, support & tips, so this would definitely work for a bigger business.

Solo

Solo targets individual designers and offers modern functionality to simplify any freelancers career. Nicely designed dashboard, organized projects, planner, invoicing system, timesheets and contacts are the things that fulfill every modern freelancer’s needs.

Mint

Mint is a finance management tool available on all major platforms like tablets, desktop computers and mobiles letting you to get any financial data you need at any time. Mint would work better for personal finances tracking, giving you the possibility to analyze your savings, investments, mortgage and more.

Pulse

Pulse is a cash flow management tool perfectly suitable for small businesses. Pulse provides you with multiple cash flow views, visual reports, easy companies & projects organizer, different roles for users. You can try it for free for 30 days, after that prices start from $14/month.

Paymo

Paymo is a free time tracking and billing tool which has rich functionality and is perfect choice for freelancers and businesses. Its smart dashboard will keep you or your team in the loop, project management option will help you to save a lot of time managing large scale projects and get the work done. You can use Paymo for free but you are limited to one user and only one invoice per month. Premium accounts start from $9.95/month.

What Accounting Apps & Tools Do You Use?

As with all freelancers and small businesses, everyones needs are different. I would be interested to hear what accounting tools you use to manage your finances, I use FreeAgent and I have found it to be invaluable to me.