Best Tools for Managing Freelancers

Working with freelancers allows you to get work done, without having to take on the financial responsibility of managing full-time employees.

To help you get the best out of working with freelancers, we cover the problems or challenges you may face when managing freelancers and the right tools and strategies you can use to mitigate them.

Team Collaboration Apps

• CloudApp allows you to capture anything on your screen, including screenshots and images to create GIFs, screen, voice, and webcam recordings. You can easily annotate your content and add items to emphasize things of importance (and hide or blur sensitive content).

• As a messaging app, Slack is completely flexible. You can have as many teams as you’d like, and you can easily control who joins which team(s). The ability to create channels means that you can collect conversations about different topics in an organized way.

• Tettra is an enterprise-grade wiki tool that leverages team organization and information-sharing features within Slack. It includes a simple text editor that makes it easy for everyone to contribute new knowledge.

• World Time Buddy allows you to set meeting times that work for everyone.

Paying Your Freelancers

• Dwolla offers a full API that you can use to connect your app to the banking system, they also have a simple transfer platform that you can get up and running in just minutes. This platform allows you to send or request payments via email, as well as send mass payments with the CSV upload tool. You can think of Dwolla as a simple alternative to PayPal.

• Payoneer allows you to send payments to your payees worldwide. You can use it for one-time payments, or you can automate payments. Its reporting features include payment history, freelancer information, account history, and more. At tax time, you can automatically generate the required tax forms.

Productivity Tools

• 15Five is a performance management suite that allows you to track and manage multiple freelancers. You manage weekly check-ins, share project objectives, track progress, message your team, and more.

• Axure is a wire-framing and prototyping tool that allows you to create detailed and realistic mock-ups without coding. You can also add conditional logic, dynamic content, animations, and more to make your prototype more realistic. As you build your mock-up, you can add notes that you can send to a Word document with your project’s specifications.

• Cacoo is a cloud-based diagram maker. You can think of this as a cloud-based, collaboration-oriented version of Microsoft’s Visio. Version control means you can easily go back to an earlier iteration and never lose your work.

• Google Workspace provides email services, word processing, digital storage, calendar, spreadsheets, and more, all of which can be easily shared with and accessed by others.

• InVision is a workflow management and collaboration tool. It’s a real-time workspace where you can collaborate and be on the same page as your teammates.

• Toggl is a time-tracking tool designed for simplicity, speed, and ease of use. Toggl offers browser buttons and desktop apps, so you don’t have to stay on the Toggl website to track time. There are also Android and iPhone apps available.

• Zapier is an automation system that allows you to connect your apps and automate your workflows, reducing the amount of hands-on management you have to do. Zapier supports integrations with several different apps, tools, and software suites, so you will likely find support for whatever you use.

Project Management Tools

• Hubstaff is a multipurpose project management suite that tracks time, monitors your employees’ activities, handles payroll, and integrates with other tools to increase flexibility.

• I Done This is a task management system that makes it easy for people to provide quick daily status updates. Each entry has a visual marker indicating its status: done, goal, or blocker. With I Done This, you can see the progress on tasks or why there’s a delay. Unfinished goals are automatically carried over to the next day.

• MeisterTask is a visually stunning, intuitive project and task management tool that takes its cues from the Kanban productivity system. You can add as many team members as necessary and assign them tasks.

• Streamtime is a project management tool created with creative teams in mind. You can create timesheets, schedules, quotes, and invoices. It also provinces analytics for your projects.

• Todoist is a cross-platform, cross-device task and project management tool. At heart, Todoist is a to-do list with features such as recurring tasks, sub-projects, labeling, and sharing.