Why Freelancers Need a Simple Project  Management Tool

The Key To Success

Once the career of a freelancer gains its momentum, there are a lot of things to take care of and to be looked upon. Juggling tasks for multiple clients, having multiple clients, time tracking, sending reports, generating invoices, handling multiple projects at the same time, bidding on new projects become part of everyday life.

The list that I’ve made just of the top of my head is already daunting, and I’ve probably skipped something related to a freelancer’s usual activities. In order to get more time to work and earn more, freelancers need a tool that can help them organize and plan their activities. A simple project management tool can really make a freelancer's life easier. If you are unfamiliar with this type of software, here are a few reasons why freelancers need it.

Better Management, More Efficiency

Unlike enterprise project management tools, simple ones have really intuitive, easy to use and user-friendly interfaces. It is important to use a simple project management tool as a freelancer, because you don’t want to spend extra time on learning how to operate a complicated piece of software when your plate is already full.

Simple PM tools also have features that enable them to be used as semiautomatic tracking and managing tools, thus allowing freelancers to spend more time on work. Efficiency is also increased by the mobile-friendly side of the story, as freelancers can check on and update any of the projects on the go and from any device.

Since simple SM tools are also capable of streamlining the entire work process, they make a perfect ally for any freelancer in any industry.

Save More Time, Create Projects in Seconds 

Every worker values the money earned/time spent ratio. During difficult times, freelancers will definitely appreciate having simple PM software. While creating a project in an expensive enterprise PM solution can take time, in a simple one it takes mere seconds.

Immediately after you come to the user interface you can use one of the premade templates and start working on your first task in the next couple of minutes. There is no template that suits your project? Don’t worry about it, as almost every simple PM tool allows you to create your own template that you can use over and over again.

This software can also be used to check time spent on a project, its status and progress. Everything a freelancer needs to stay on track of productivity and accuracy.

Develop Trust and Become More Efficient

You must wonder how these two come hand in hand. Well they do, ever since PM tools started coming with a time tracking feature. Since many of the freelancers are paid per hour, this feature can be really handy. By finishing tasks in the agreed time and including time spent in your reports, you will develop trust with your clients.

Time tracking tools have also proven to be an excellent way of keeping people motivated and focused on the ask they are currently working on. By having insight into how much time you need per task, it is much easier to identify the ones that you lack the skills or knowledge to complete efficiently. When you know what you can improve on, you can easily become more competitive in this market.

Say Goodbye to Dull Reports

Having to send reports is very common in the freelancing world, but the problem is when you have to cooperate with a client who wants a report by the end of each day. Having to deal with two of these would be catastrophic. You would lose too many productive hours just by listing what has been done and what is due soon.

Simple PM software can really help you with this by generating reports and sending reports for you whenever you want. These reports are incredibly detailed and they contain information about every aspect of a project – tasks, progress, estimated time, time spent, etc. Taking care of details will set you on a course of success and higher hourly rates.

Collaborate with Clients and Other Freelancers 

Quite often, freelancers get some more complex projects. In these situations, they are forced to collaborate with other freelancers or with their clients. For a project to be completed successfully, this collaboration has to be in real time and around the clock.

Fortunately, simple SM tools also foster collaboration by allowing their users to add people to the project, thus making coordination and completion of task dependencies quite simple.

Also, did you know that SM software also has support for file sharing? The entire project documentation can be kept in the cloud, with a neat revision history feature that will protect any information from getting lost.

Generating and Sending Invoices is Very Easy

Having to drop everything you are doing so that you can create an invoice and send it to a client before he can pay you can be quite irritating. Not only will you have to drop whatever you were doing, but you will also have to dig through your previous project, take a sit and create an invoice.

Fortunately, simple project management tools have a “generate invoice” feature that practically automates the entire process for you. Some of them have advanced features that allow you to set a billable amount for each separate project task. With the help of some addons, you will be able to generate estimated project expenses, in order to avoid some misunderstandings after you have completed the project and sent an invoice.

Simple project management software offer quite a few benefits to freelancers. They can be used to automate several crucial processes directly connected with customer satisfaction, such as automatic report and invoice generation, onboarding a client on a project, etc.

What’s more important, even some of the free online project management tools have the basic features, such as time tracking, which can help freelancers focus more on their work and less on management.