Being a freelancer has many advantages but also as many challenges. The bureaucracy is sometimes scary, one has to think of a medical insurance and a good retirement plan and in many countries there is the stressful process of returning the VAT every three months. And on top of all these things to consider, a freelancer works many hours, many weekends, skips holidays or works during “holidays”. The “office people” tend to say that freelancers hace all this freedom to travel but the sad truth is that the backstage of a lovely beach sunset photo posted on Instagram is a stressed freelancer looking for wi-fi signal to respond an e-mail for a client, finish that presentation or delegate some tasks to a colleague.  

Thus I made a list of 5 apps for freelancer newbies that will hopefully contribute to some stress reduction.

1. Zoho

Zoho is a suite that has a number of solutions such as a CRM tool to manage current and potential clients, invoice tool free for up to 5 clients or a Bug Tracker for web developers, amongst others. I find it one of the best software solutions for freelancers and SMBs.

2. Evernote

This is a digital notebook that has a great variety of uses: taking notes, saving web articles or pages or even creating photo albums from a trip. Something i use a lot are the to-do lists especially for shopping and packing for a long trip.

3. Expensify

You have no clue about how much you are spending? You are not alone. Expensify will enter your life like a superhero. It allows you to track expenses on the go. You can have different categories, such as transportation, food or office supply. It also has a bill scanner to save some time.

4. Remember The Milk

It is the ultimate task management app integrated with your Gmail. You can set up location reminders, plan your time and collaborate with fellow freelancers or clients. It also integrates with Evernote.

5. Quora

For those who do not know, Quora is sort of a Facebook for Q&A on any topic. It is very selective and the team is extremely strict about driving traffic to external websites or not being extremely specific in the answers. You can ask anything from accounting to business development or marketing ideas and the community of experts will help you. For free!

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