Whether it’s communicating with your clients and team members, or working on a project, you need the best tools to accelerate your work.
According to reports, 70% of freelancers work between two to four projects at a time. This means freelancing involves communicating with multiple people on different deliverables, creating outlines and schedules for each of these projects to be on time, invoicing for each work done, and much more.
Using the right tools helps you to focus on the important tasks and manage all your clients properly.
In this article, we’ll highlight the best tools you need as a freelancer in Nigeria.
Best Tools For Creating Proposals
Applying to available job postings or connecting with prospective clients on community forums may do half the job.
Here are some tools to help you create killer proposals.
1. Proposify
Pricing: 14-day free trial. Paid plans start at $19/user/month.
Proposify has the biggest library of templates that are customizable and help you save time when writing proposals. You can pick typography and a snippet for your proposals, save them, and then use them again later to save time.
2. Bidsketch
Pricing: 14-day free trial. Paid plans start at $29/month
Bidsketch is a web app for proposal designing, with detailed and easy-to-use templates. You can create professional proposal templates with custom client landing pages in minutes.
SEE ALSO: How to Write a Proposal That Gets You Hired Immediately as a Freelancer
Best Tools For Contracting And Legal Paperwork
While doing good work is important, you also need to get all your contracts and legal documents right to avoid contract breaches. Clarity on both ends before beginning a project helps you to manage expectations.
3. InvoiceBerry
Pricing: 14-Day free trial. Paid plans start at $15/mo.
InvoiceBerry is your ideal choice for tracking expenses and creating financial reports. This cloud-based app is immensely reliable, user-friendly, and fast. You can email the invoices directly from the app and accelerate your receiving process by keeping a tab on who paid the invoices and who did not.
Best Tools for Finance
Finance is often a not-so-friendly topic for freelancers. But since you’re a one-man business, it’s important to check your finances as a business to know when you’re in the red or the black.
4. Zoho Books
Pricing: Zoho Books offers a free plan with paid plans starting at ₦4,320 per month
Zoho Books is part of the Zoho ecosystem and provides comprehensive accounting features tailored for freelancers and small businesses. It includes automation for bank feeds, payment reminders, and project expense tracking.
5. Quickbooks
Pricing: Quickbooks offer a 30-day free trial, while the paid plans start from $12.50 per month for a single user.
QuickBooks is another most-used accounting software used to connect your bank accounts and receive payment straight to your bank account. It also assists in tracking income and handling taxes.
SEE ALSO: 10 Best Invoicing Software For Freelancers in Nigeria (FREE)
Best Tools for Scheduling
As a freelancer, you’re primarily the only one managing your business. This means some days you’ll work while others will be for client calls and check-ins, etc.
6. Google Calendar
Pricing: Free
One of the best scheduling tools for freelancers is Google Calendar. It is totally free to use as long as you have a Google account. Google Calendar integrates with your project management tools, communication apps, Gmail on web and desktop apps, and Google Tasks, making Google Calendar the perfect app to schedule your work.
8. Calendly
Pricing: Completely free plan for solo users. Paid plans for more than 1 user start at $8/user/month.
Calendly makes it easier to schedule a meeting or appointment in a time slot convenient to both parties. You can skip the email threads and constant back and forth to decide which time is convenient for you and your client.
9. Profi
Pricing: Starting at $59 for individual providers. It also comes with a 30-day free trial.
Profi is one of the most comprehensive online coaching platforms, specifically set up for executive, life, health & wellness sports, and other coaches. You can manage your entire business operation easily with Profi.
Best Tools for Client Communications
Whether you started a new project or you have one in the pipeline, you’ll have endless conversations with your clients. Hence you need a familiar, easy-to-use tool that works for your clients.
10. Slack
Pricing: Slack is free, especially if you join your client's channel. Business paid plans start at $6.67/user/mo when billed annually.
Slack cuts down the load on emails for every small query. There's nothing more annoying than a long thread with one or two lines of mail.
SEE ALSO: How to Get & Retain Clients as a Freelancer in Nigeria
11. Google Meet
Pricing: Free (with Google Workspace)
Google Meet is the immediate choice for video/audio conversations between clients and freelancers. It’s easy-to-use nature makes it a top choice for most clients. And since it comes with Google Suite, it’s an automatic win-win.
12. Skype
Pricing: Skype is Free to use. If you want to call somebody through Skype, then you will have to buy Skype credits, starting at $2.99/mo.
For the longest time, Skype by Microsoft has been a great way to communicate and collaborate with businesses across the world. Instant messaging, quick video calls, list goes on about how Skype can be an easy tool to get up and running.
Best Tools For Time Management
Time is the most valuable asset for every business owner. You don’t want to waste billable hours in micro-managing your work.
Here are some tools to ensure you adequately bill for your time.
13. Time Doctor
Pricing: 14-day free trial. Paid plans start at $7/user/month
Want to keep track of time and create invoices for hours that may be billed? Time Doctor is the best option for you. Time Doctor allows you to manage payrolls and payments, keep an eye on discussions, take screenshots, and more in addition to tracking time.
14. TimeCamp
Pricing: Free for individual users. For small and medium-sized companies, paid plans start at $5.25 per user per month.
One of the best tools for freelancers is TimeCamp which is an essential time-tracking software. TimeCamp allows you to use tags to create as many tasks and subtasks as necessary inside a project.
15. Toggl Track
Pricing: Has a free plan. Premium plans start at $10/user/month
Toggl Track is the most straightforward program available if all you want to do is track time and export timesheets. You may begin monitoring time with a single click thanks to an intuitive UI. Create reports on working hours and move fluidly between jobs and projects.
SEE ALSO: How to Make More Money as a Freelancer in Nigeria: 7 Steps That Work
Best Tools for Project Management
For a freelancer, juggling several assignments is nothing new. To be on top of your work, you need to have the right project management abilities.
The best project management tools for freelancers are those that are simple to use and completely devoid of hassles.
16. Trello
Pricing: Free plan for life. To personalize boards, upgrade to the premium plan starting at $10 per user each month.
Trello is among the most widely used and straightforward project management applications. Creating cards, assigning tasks, adding due dates, and moving cards from left to right to indicate work in progress are all made simple by Trello boards.
17. Google Tasks
Pricing: Free (With Google Workspace)
The simplest straightforward task management program available is Google Tasks. No jargon, no extras, no difficulties. You can add activities to this straightforward to-do list generator straight from Gmail, Google Calendar, or any other location inside the G-suite. Subtask, add time and start right away.
Everything is immediately synchronized across all Google Apps because Google Tasks is a component of Google Workspace.
Best Tools for Productivity
As a freelancer, you always have complete control over which project you want to work on, how many hours you want to work, and when you want to take a break.
Here are some tools to help you maximize your productivity during working hours.
18. Automate.io
Pricing: Free. Some apps are for premium users only, starting at $49/mo.
An integration platform called Automate.io, now owned by Notion enables you to quickly and easily link your work tools. You can combine more than 200 applications and set up an automatic process to keep your work in sync across all of them. Automate.io allows you to run several bots, or automation sequences, integrate multiple apps, and verify the quality of data.
19. Pocket
Pricing: Free plan available. Paid plans start at $4.99/mo.
There are various instances where you like reading or watching a video and would like to save it for later use. Use Pocket to store these materials for future use on all devices rather than bookmarking everything in your browser.
SEE ALSO: 20 Highest-Paying Freelance Jobs in Nigeria
Best Tools for Design
Sometimes you have to make visual assets for your freelancing business right away. You will want the best tools for freelancers that can assist you in producing visually appealing content for your website, social media accounts, or even digital business cards. Here are some of the best tools to use.
20. Canva
Pricing: There is a free plan. For one user, paid subscriptions start at $12.95 per month. By subscribing to the corporate plan or paying for each user, you can create a team to work together on a design.
You can create anything using Canva, including static photos, GIFs, slideshows, movies, PDFs, and flyers whether you’re a designer or not. It has a vast collection of customizable templates, icons, and other components that let you start from scratch with your design.
21. Vimeo
Pricing: There is no cost associated with Vimeo Basic. A 30-day free trial is available for all paid programs. For a single user, paid rates begin at $7 per month.
Vimeo is your interactive video production tool if you have no prior experience with video editing. You can use this tool to produce videos for social media, content promotion, or any other customer's requirements.
22. Mojomox
Pricing: It is free. Only high-resolution files suitable for printing and online usage are charged. The files are included in a bundle with sample apps and logo variants customized for your industry for social media.
With the help of the free tool Mojomox, you can design trendy, fashionable, and high-quality wordmark logos and color schemes for your company. Experimenting with various designs is made simple by its intuitive UI.
Best Tools for Writing, Editing, and Proof-reading
Writing, editing, and proofreading are the three main components of the process. Whenever you need to document anything or send any documents, here are some of the best tools to use.
23. Write wall
Pricing: Free
Write Wall is a free and straightforward Chrome plugin. A writing mode free from distractions is provided by the black screen with white letters.
Additionally, rather than switching between two tabs or browsers, you may position it above another tab in Chrome and scroll the one below to refer to and write at the same time. This is accessible on all operating systems that support Google Chrome and is exclusive to Chrome users.
24. Google Docs
Pricing: Free
Formatting tools, word count settings, and a variety of export formats, including Word, PDF, and Text, are all available in Google Docs. Your client may view your draft immediately and provide comments or recommendations in real-time, all within the document itself. The in-doc chat feature allows you to work together in real-time while editing.
25. Grammarly
Pricing: Basic checks are free of charge. Advanced checks, such as plagiarism checks, need subscription plans, which start at $29.95 per month.
One of the best tools to address any grammar mistakes, language construction problems, or plagiarism concerns is Grammarly.
What’s in your Toolbox?
Tools are very important to growing your business and managing clients. Your objective is to increase productivity and save more time. This collection of freelancing tools is the ideal place to start if you need to do that.
If you need to work with more clients, check out Expaat. It’s a freelance platform that connects you to foreign clients.
