Alex Stone

I’ve been shifting gears quite a bit, trying to supplement my day job with as much freelance work as humanly possible, and figure’d I’d talk about how powerful an iPhone is to a freelancer and share some of my must-have apps for freelancers and anyone that is their own business manager.

I’m just going to get into it.

Billings, free ($14.99 in-app purchase for the pro features - totally worth it)

For those working on the Mac, you are probably very familiar with Billings. The app is beautifully designed and extremely powerful. You can log time, expenses, mileage, and all kinds of line items and have automatically generated, professional-looking invoices. The app is free, so I’ll just encourage you to grab it and play with it to get a feel for the power of this app.

The app is free, but does require a $14.99 in-app purchase to unlock the pro features like syncing with the desktop app over Wifi and emailing invoices from the app. If you’re serious about what you do, the $14.99 and a desktop license is well beyond worth it.

Things, $9.99

Things is one of the more popular GTD (gettings things done) apps available for the Mac. The iPhone app is a wonderful counterpart and is more than capable of running on it’s own. Handle projects and tasks all within one of the best task list interfaces you’re going to find on the iPhone.

HootSuite, $1.99

Let’s face it. Any good business has a Twitter account. If anything, to announce new work, new projects, and raise general awareness about what it is you’re doing. A Twitter account & Facebook page is the modern day equivalent of having a corporate blog.

HootSuite is a popular web-based Twitter client, allowing you to post to multiple Twitter accounts, Facebook walls, Facebook status messages, and even page walls and statuses. While the free TweetDeck offers many of the same features, HootSuite offers statistics on your tweets and the things you link, which may be very helpful to you.

If you don’t care for the stats, then TweetDeck may be more up your alley for managing multiple accounts and keeping user lists to track your followers a little better.

Ego, $1.99

Ego is a wonderful app designed to keep you up to date on how popular you are, basically. Offering many widgets (with constant updates, adding more services), you can track lots of important information. Google Analytics, Vimeo stats, Twitter stats, Mint stats, FeedBurner stats, and the list goes on. If you put things on the Internet, being able to see how much traffic all these things have gotten is very handy.

Cha-Ching, $2.99

Cha-ching is my absolute favorite personal finance app. It has every feature that you would need or want, looks great, and syncs with the desktop client (Mac only). Manage multiple accounts, maintain budgets, track bills, etc. It even uses geo-location to determine where you are (or might be) when you’re about to log a new expense. If you’re a freelancer, personal finance and business finance are essential. You need to have a good understanding of where your money is going.

Evernote, free

Evernote is a free “cloud”-based notetaking app. Take notes, videos, audio, pictures, whatever with it. Jot anything down and it not only saves your notes, but saves your notes to the your free Evernote “cloud”, which is then accessible on pretty much any other device on the planet. Or the web. I use Evernote to take notes from meetings, log anything interesting, etc. It’s nice to just write it down and have it waiting for me when I get back to the computer.

Contacts, free (built-in to the iPhone OS)

Most people don’t understand the full potential of the Contacts app. It’s pretty much a powerful rolodex, enhanced by the iPhone’s easy-to-use built-in Spotlight search feature. What makes the contacts app so great is that you can sync it to your Google Contacts, which will sync over-the-air in the background. Very nice to have.

Calendars, free (built-in to the iPhone OS)

The calendar app on the iPhone is also extremely powerful, but like the contacts app, most people don’t push it to its full potential.

Get this… did you know you can have it push sync with Google Calendars? Once you’ve done that, the possibilities are endless. Need to sync with another user’s Google Calendar? No problem. Just have that user share their calendar with you and it just shows up. All changes are updated instantly, behind the scenes. Very set-it-and-forget-it.

Maps, free (built-in to the OS)

Powered by Google Maps, this is one of my most-used apps. With the 3GS’ compass feature, not only can you tell exactly where you are, but which way you’re facing, for better directional accuracy. I’ve never gotten lost with the Maps app and with the compass, it makes it great for when you’re on foot looking for your location.

NOTE: Any good freelancer would scout the location beforehand, if it’s within reasonable driving distance.