Five Essential Tools for Your Freelance Business

The moment you take the leap and decide to bet on yourself by becoming full-time self-employed, you’re saying goodbye to the shackles of employment. In many ways, it’s amazing! But now that you’re self-employed, you need to build your own processes and tool kit for success. This can either be an oh sh*t moment, or an opportunity to use tools that’ll help you work smarter and unlock earning potential.

But why should you trust us?

The WorkMade team has 15+ years of combined experience doing freelance work. We've worked for big companies like Google, growing startups, and small businesses. We're total tech nerds and we've tried a LOT of tools to help with WorkFlow. What we've learned? Less is more, and time is money. Here are the 5 tools we could run our entire business with.

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PandaDoc

Contracts are critical as a freelancer. Docusign might be the go-to for a lot of businesses, but we prefer PandaDoc because they make it so easy to make and reuse templates for contracts and proposals. They even have a great free freelancer contract template you can use.

Notion

Whether you have one client or 100 clients, taking notes is so important! Notion is a great tool to keep notes, manage client documents, and project plan. Notion has pre-made templates, but it’s also highly customizable and powerful. You can automate workflows through Notion and turn it into the ultimate client database!

Zapier

Zapier is a powerful tool that can connect your work apps so you can focus on the work that matters. Zapier allows you to create personalized, automated workflows and has an extensive DIY, support community. If you don’t have the time to set up Zapier workflows, you can also hire an expert to do it for you! If you’re looking to automate repetitive tasks, and manage business operations, and the sales process, Zapier is definitely worth a look. Check out some common Zapier workflows here.

Linkedin

There are some great talent platforms, but the best jobs are the ones you'll get by seeking out your dream clients and building relationships. LinkedIn is one of the best platforms to build your network and shamelessly promote your work. It’s free, so you won't have to give away 20% of your income, and simple to use. But if you want to unlock some more advanced features, consider paying for LinkedIn Premium (pro tip: don’t forget that a LinkedIn Premium is tax deductible.) If you use WorkMade we'll find that write-off for you automatically.

Honorable Mention: Polywork is another networking tool that has a more informal DIY feel. Similar to LinkedIn, it’s great for networking and finding opportunities. We’d recommend creating both a Polywork and LinkedIn account!

WorkMade

Obviously we're biased, but with all those years of freelancing, we couldn't find one tool that did a good job managing freelance taxes and income. So we built one.

WorkMade is an all-in-one banking and accounting app designed for freelancers! WorkMade automates the self-employed tax process, which means we’ll track your write-offs, calculate your quarterly tax, and put money aside for taxes whenever you deposit a paycheck. WorkMade will even pay your taxes for you. We’ll electronically file your estimated quarterly taxes with the IRS and your respective state tax agency, so you can focus on what matters!

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