If you’re a small business owner or an independent contractor then you know how difficult it can be to manage everything and you’re always looking for that next small business app that will make your life simpler. I know because as a freelance writer I have about a dozen employees at any one time. For tax purposes, I’m also licensed as a small business and on a few occasions I’ve hired out freelancers myself. For a couple months I had a book-keeper who was great at getting everything under control but it only took me a little while to realize that all she was doing was making sure that if I ever get audited, all my ducks were in a row. And though she was sweet, I figured I could do most of my records on my own.
This is 2016, if you’re a small business you need to be hiring freelancers, don’t get your neighbors art school dropout kid to draw you up a logo or put together a promo video for $50 when you can get a professional in Greece to do it for a couple euros and don’t hire a failed novelist to write your copy.
A small business app like Hiveage makes your life incredibly simpler by keeping track of due dates, payments and clients/employers. And now the company has released an Apple app to go with their hugely popular website that has customers in over 140 countries. It should go without saying that freelancers love the iPhone and the apps. I can write on wordpress, type a rough draft and email it with Pages and talk to my clients on Upwork, which is one the more popular freelancing websites. All without sitting down at my computer.
Hiveage lets you send invoices to an unlimited amount of clients and helps you keep track of those invoices. The platform is designed to accept a number of different payment methods, including PayPal, Stripe and Braintree. This is huge because my clients in New Zealand might want to pay me in one method while the guy I’m writing copy for in Italy wants to use another. The app also lets you send quotes and estimates which I love, since it lets me draw a line in the sand. If and when my client approves the estimate I can easily convert it to an invoice. You can also manage subscriptions with the app so if you have a service that charges a recurring price each month it’s easy to stay on top of that. You can work with multiple businesses and as your business grows you can work with multiple groups within your business.
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A friend of mine owns a credit card machine company and he’s experienced unexpected growth in the past few years so that he now has more employees that he previously thought he would need. With Hiveage he can stay on top of all the different groups that are working in different areas and check to see which clients they’ve picked up and knows almost immediately when a company has dropped him.
Since Hiveage has been around for a few years as a website they’ve worked out all the kinks in their system and the premier of the app is the next step that makes the platform more appealing to freelancers. Since taxes can be a burden when you’re a small business or a freelancer, Hiveage is the perfect solution to those pesky filing cabinets of receipts that you keep in a back room or a closet. Or, if you’re as lazy as I am, in a Toms shoebox under your bed.
If you’re a small business that takes mileage into account then it’s also pretty easy to track that with the site, there’s a simple button that makes billing from mileage simple and accurate. You can also track expenses with the site. If I’m getting coffee with a client or catching a cab to meet somebody for an interview I can put that into the system (and the app) and make sure that when it’s time to start looking for expenses to write off I can easily find my spending. While some small business apps are difficult to use and not very user-friendly, Hiveage is a simple solution that I’m looking for. You can download the app here.
Read More:
The Case for Apple for Small Businesses