A More Productive, Organized Business for the Year 2009

As a freelancer, the way in which you manage your business can make or break the operation. Accounting, client communication, invoicing, they can really start to eat away at your billable hours if you don’t get them under control from the get go.

In planning for the new year I have spent the past several months searching out and reviewing project management apps. Apps that will make my life easier and more productive. The idea is to keep it simple for myself and for my clients. The following are a few of the tools and applications that have made the cut thus far, not set in stone, but they are worth checking out.

Email

The most basic of your needs as a business these days and probably one of, if not the most important. I have found that reading, organizing and responding to email can easily eat a whole days worth of time in the blink of an eye. My product of choice:

The beauty of Gmail is that it allows me to have all of my email in one easy to manage interface, no switching profiles or starting new programs. Email is easily organized using a handy little color coded category of my choice. There is a ton of space to store those emails you just might need in the future and best of all, it’s absolutely free.

Billing and Finance

Another essential duty to running a successful business is getting paid and keeping track of your money. For years I had been using Quickbooks to track finances and invoice clients, it’s a great application but it seemed a little bloated for my needs. When I started freelancing back in March of this year I was introduced to an amazing little application called Freshbooks.

• Freshbooks allows you to create, send and manage invoices in a matter of minutes.
• Accept payments online through a number of processors from PayPal to Authorize.net
• Track time and expenses.
• Generate a number of financial reports.
• View paid and outstanding invoices at a glance.
• Send follow ups automatically.
• And just recently added the ability to provide customer service via an open ticket system.

The interface is simple to understand and a breeze to use plans start at $0 for three clients and go up to $149 for as many as 5000 clients at a time. This particular application is one I couldn’t live without and has increased my productivity in the billing department tenfold.

Next on the list:

Bootstrap is a simple online bookeeping application that is fully integrated with Freshbooks (if you so choose). With the click of a button I download all of my paid and unpaid invoices, input expenses and easily generate all of the necessary reports come tax time. It even estimates your federal taxes for you. The best part of all, Bootstrap is currently free of charge! (they plan to charge for the service in the future, pricing is not currently available)

The combination of Freshbooks and Bootstrap has allowed me to completely replace that old bloated Quickbooks app.

Project Management

Allowing a project to get away from you, chances are we have all been there, things start to go missing, communications breaks down and money is lost. The search for my final choice in project management apps has not been an easy one. There are dozens of them out there varying in price and complexity. My personal needs are basic and simple, I want organization, collaboration and communication. It doesn’t have to be an all in one but the combo needs to be rock solid. The final test, the app needs to be all of the above for my clients as well. The app I choose needs to sell itself to even the most weary of my clients. Here’s a few worth checking out.

37 Signals the pioneers of the online project management application industry. They may simple apps that get the job done…periods. Their list of software includes.

Basecamp – Project Management and Collaboration
Highrise – Online contact manager and simple CRM
Backpack – Intranet, group calendar and organizer
Campfire – Real time group chat
Writeboard – Write, Share, Revise and Compare online
And on of my favorites but lesser know – Ta-da List – Simple to-dos

Currently I find myself getting the most use out of Basecamp free trial with the second most useful being Ta-da List, however as I look towards the future I see several of these apps coming together in a rather useful way. They are clean, unbloated and most importantly they are simple. All of their applications come with a free basic plan and work their way up from there. For instance, Basecamp tops out at $149 for unlimited with 50Gbs of space.

Rounding out the list of project management are two that I have just recently added to the list, OnStage and No Kahuna. Both of these apps seem to be modeled after 37 Signals Basecamp product, offering an alternative worth taking for a spin.

On stage looks to offer a sleek easy to use interface, is available in several different lanquages and follows that same simplistic approach as Basecamp. Pricing starts at $0 for an ad supported, 10 project version or just $10 for a similar non ad supported version with a max of $135 for the top end unlimited version with 60Gbs of space.

No Kahuna looks promising as a less expensive alternative to the above. The product stays free with unlimited projects and users as longs as you do require more than 30 open tasks. If you require a bit more go ahead and upgrade starting at just $9 for 3 open projects and up to $99 for 100. Oh and for all of you out here keeping it open source, No Kahuna remains free of charge for the life of the project!

Prototyping and Wireframing

Almost all of us in the web design business start a project with some sort of wireframe, diagram or mockup. For most of my projects I sketch out a nice little diagram to map out the website I am about to tackle and then I move into photoshop to begin mockup the design. Photoshop is great but it requires a lot of imagination for a lot of my customers to grasp how things will actually function once we are up and running. How do you navigate this hurdle yet keep it simple and easy to understand, enter Jumpchart.

Jumpchart looks to be a nice little project planning tool that allows your team to collaborate in planning the basic flow and navigation of your website. The free plan starts with 10 pages, 2 users and 1mb of storage. The paid plans range from $5/mo for 5 projects, 25 pages and 5 users per with a total of 100mb of storage. The deluxe plan for $50/mo with 30 projects, unlimited pages and users with 5000mb of storage.

Blogging

If you don’t have your own blog up and running you are missing some great opportunities. If you do run your own blog or several you well know that writing on a regular basis is serious business, especially if you have other income producing work to tackle. So why not take advantage of an app makes it all a whole lot easier. Introducing MarsEdit 2

With MarsEdit you are able to create, store, edit, preview and publish from a single location. You can work on everything offline (a big plus for those of us that travel), store it locally and then publish with the click of a button once you hit the ground. All of your images, tags and categories zipped right along with it. My personal favorite is that fact that I no longer have to squint and scroll as I work through an article. Starting with a free 30 day trial MarsEdit 2 comes with the extremely small price tag of $29.95, a price well worth it by any means.

Customer Support

So why would you need an added layer of customer support when you already have these beautiful project management apps, email and last but not least a phone number? I can think of three very good reasons.

1. Your inbox is flooded and although your intentions where to tackle the problem at the end of the day that little issue got pushed to the bottom and lost in the shuffle.
2. Phone conversations are never “just a minute of your time”.
3. Not all projects require a robust project management solution.

All I want is a simple issues tracking system. Client submits a ticket, client receives reply. It’s all right there in front of you as simple or as complex a solution as it needs to be. No lost emails, no working and reworking over the phone because you got placed on hold just gold old fashioned customer support. OsTicket looks to provide that and best part is, it’s completely free and completely open source.

So there it is a quick list of apps ranging in price from free to just under $200, all of them easy to use and all of them focus on a common goal, to increase productivity through organization and ease of use. It is not the end all be all of business management apps, it is at the very least to be a guide in forming your own. There are a ton of excellent applications out there, put together your list and become a more productive, better organized business in the year 2009.