10 Useful Time Tracking and Invoicing Apps for Agencies and Freelancers

Time tracking, invoicing, expense tracking, and a few related activities are essential parts of running a business. Unfortunately, these same tasks can consume an undue amount of your time. Whether you’re a freelancing web designer/developer, or you run a small to medium-size agency, having to perform these tasks takes time away from what you would prefer to be doing; and what you do best.

If you haven’t yet tried software solutions for some of these business needs, you could be surprised as to how much time you could save, and how much more smoothly your business could operate. If you’ve tried one or more time-saving and productivity-enhancing tools, with good results, there’s always room for improvement.

Check out these best of 2017 time tracking, invoicing, and project management apps. You have a good chance of finding one that will make your working life a little easier, or much easier.

FreshBooks

Tracking time, sending invoices, and capturing and managing expenses, are all things that need to be done. They can be genuine time and resource hogs if they need to be done manually, and they can still take up excessive time if the tools used aren’t highly efficient.

FreshBooks is an account and invoicing app that will let you invest that otherwise lost time, into conducting your business the way you want it to be run. FreshBooks was designed with creatives and service-oriented small businesses in mind. It’s cloud-based, so there’s nothing to install. As more than 10 million users will tell you, you don’t need to be a whiz at numbers to use it. FreshBooks is super-easy to use. You can send out a professional-looking invoice that sports your logo and brand’s color in 30 seconds or less, receive payments online, and refer to the dashboard to see how business is progressing.

FreshBooks’ customer and technical service is superb. You’ll be talking with a real live person instead of trying to navigate a menu.

Memory by Timely

As you may bill by the hour or need to know where to allocate your time, tracking time is often an essential part of running a business. That is why solutions that automatically show and tell you in detail what you’ve worked on and for how long are well worth the investment.

Timely is one such time tracking tool, and when combined with Memory, it enables you to go back in time showing you exactly what you worked on yesterday or a week ago Wednesday. Memory tracks every app you use or file you work on, including what you do in GitHub, Asana, Trello, Office 365/ Outlook Calendar, Gmail, etc.

All this information is beautifully presented in a readable timeline format. When you want to see what you did, when you did it, and how long, your timeline has all the answers.

Futuramo Time Tracker

If your objective involves more than just tracking the time you and your team spend on various tasks, and what you’re looking for are insights from past projects to help you plan your next ones, the Futuramo Time Tracker app is the right solution for you.

This cloud-based app’s advanced statistics make it easier for teams to schedule and prioritize work. Futuramo Time Tracker’s powerful filters, for example, allow you to filter activities by project, client, and/or date range. It’s possible to track time offline and add records manually. You will find it particularly valuable anytime you’re faced with managing several projects at once.

This app works great for both individuals and large teams. It’s easy to work with, there’s nothing to install, it’s free for up to 3 users, and you can get started in seconds.

Avaza

Avaza automates your time tracking tasks, enables you to create and send invoices in seconds, and manages your project tasks and files and expense reporting activities. This all-in-one project management app is currently in use by more than 15,000 businesses around the globe.

Avaza makes project management that much easier by allowing you to toggle between task lists, Gantt charts, and Kanban boards. It also helps you communicate and collaborate with clients and team members, and communicate directly with Slack, MailChimp. Trello, Dropbox, and other apps.

Timing

Everyone wants to complete their projects and individual tasks as quickly and efficiently as possible, and which is what Timing is designed to do. This native Mac time tracking app automatically tracks your time. There’s no manual starting and stopping timers required on your part.

The dashboard provides a visual timeline of tasks you did, and when you did them, and you can simultaneously track as many tasks or projects as you wish. All you need to do is drag and drop events and activities into the appropriate projects. You can download Timing and try it for free for 14 days.

Elorus

Elorus might be just another good, but somewhat run-of-the-mill invoicing and billing app, except for a few features that you will really love, just like its users and their clients do. It’s private client portal lets you invite whichever clients you choose to log in to your system and review their transactions and their account status.

In addition to its invoicing, billing, and expense reporting capabilities, this online app can also generate business performance timelines and monitor your cash flow. It’s an ideal solution for both individuals and business owners.

Trigger

If you want to know what’s really going on in your business, Trigger can help. Trigger enables your team to track time, manage projects, invoice clients (direct to Xero) and access management reports that help you stop over-servicing clients, and stop losing money.

It offers both Kanban and task list view options, plus the ability to copy projects and create project templates. Trigger is integrated with Slack, Google Apps, Dropbox and more.

ClickTime – Easy Online Timesheets

With its 80 pre-built reports, interactive planning dashboard, time tracking and expense tracking capabilities, and timesheets, you can customize ClickTime – Easy Online Timesheets to fit your business’s needs.

With this app, you can avoid the overhead costs involved in building your own timesheet solutions. There’s a Basic, a Corporate, and an Enterprise plan; each with a 30-day free trial, and each with a free mobile companion app for iPhone and Android devices.

Paymo

Paymo is an advanced project management app that helps you plan projects, assign and track tasks, and report performance from start to finish.

Useful features include Gantt charts and visual Kanban boards or project templates. Paymo provides automatic time tracking, automates your invoicing and expense reporting tasks, helps you schedule resources, and promotes real-time collaboration among team members.

Free Invoice Generator

Hiveage’s Free Invoice Generator gives you a simple way to create PDF-formatted invoices to submit to your clients. You simply type in your details, and those of your client, and in no time at all, you’ll receive the invoice by email, at no cost to you.

Hiveage also offers an advanced invoice generating software package that features time and expense tracking, provides project estimates, and enables online payments.

Conclusion

It doesn’t matter if you are a freelancing web developer, project manager, or a business owner, there’s something here for you. It might be an invoice generating app, a time tracking app, or a software platform that offers a comprehensive set of project management solutions.

There’s a few freebies that are well worth taking advantage of, and most of what you see provide no-obligation (no credit card) free trial offers.

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