Everyone loves to romanticise freelancing, and sure, there is some financial freedom, well, to a degree when it comes to freelancing. For example, you can usually sleep in, work in your pyjamas, take random Tuesday afternoons off. Also, you get to buy your own tools, your own freelance software, and have a process that works best for you.
And yeah, it all truly does sounds dreamy, well, until you’re sitting there at midnight trying to find a crumpled receipt from three months ago so you don’t mess up your taxes. Yeah, you’d be surprised to learn how common that actually is! The freedom is real, but so is the chaos.
Well, money is the part no one warns you about. It’s just the boring part that people seem to forget. Usually, clients drag their feet with payments, invoices that get “lost” in inboxes from time to time, and that gut-punch moment when you realise tax season is around the corner and you haven’t gotten anything started yet. But thankfully there are a lot of tech-related tools that can make finances a little more manageable for freelancers.
Find the Right Payment Platform
But this one should be low-hanging fruit, right? Well, not entirely, actually, a few things sting more than sending off a project and then waiting weeks to see the money hit your account. So, of course, digital payment tools cut that nonsense. Nowadays, you can count on clients can click, pay, and you can stop obsessively refreshing your banking app.
You’ll need to look into what payment platform works best, of course (and what looks the most professional), because stating something like “Can you PayPal me?” is going to sound incredibly unprofessional (and it makes it sound like this is merely a side hustle rather than your actual business).
Reliable Online Banking
So just above, banking apps were briefly mentioned, and yes, you absolutely need to have a decent business account from a bank. Honestly, don’t just see this as somewhere to “just dump your money”, because banking really doesn’t need to be that straightforward (unless you want it to be, of course). Just generally speaking, the right type of bank can help make your life easier.
How? Well, clear states, easy access to transactions, getting a business-related credit card (sometimes emergencies happen for your business to where you might need one), and yeah, not being blinded by tax too (or worrying about admin in general). You’ll need to do thorough research, and it probably helps to look into this before freelancing if possible.
Look into Accounting Apps
Yeah, spreadsheets are fine if you enjoy punishment, but freelancers need more than rows and columns (plus it strains the eyes). Thankfully, there are accounting apps (and usually accommodating software) out there that you can look into. Most of them are able to track income, log expenses, and even give you a snapshot of where your money is going (and thankfully, no brain fog tied to it either).
Basically, it means no more guessing if you can splurge on takeout or if you should be stockpiling cash for a slow month. Yeah, those decisions are common in the freelancer life, and yeah, clarity is everything when your income swings up and down like a yo-yo.
Budgeting Apps
Oh yeah, every freelancer knows the drill. One week, you land a big client, and you’re living large. But two weeks later, you are googling “cheap dinner recipes.” Usually, it’s just something for the first several months that happens to freelancers if they’re not budgeting appropriately. But yeah, look into some budgeting apps since this can save you from that rollercoaster.
