Ask HN: As a freelancer, what's the best app to track finances?
Hi everyone!
I've been working as a freelancer practically my whole life. Although I'm not a very finances-oriented person, I do like to keep track of my spending and income, do some basic forecasting, budgeting, to also plan my time and activities.
One thing I've noticed is that most apps are really not oriented for people who, like me, dont have very fixed/stable sources of income. One month I'm doing something, next month I have very little work, next month I may be working on 3 different projects, with different wages.
I miss a simple way to track this, and to somehow allow me to plan my future, minimizing working hours and maximizing life (4hr work week anyone? ;)) But so far I haven't been able to find a finance management app that responds to the needs of freelancers like me.
Being in IT and software dev, I'm begin to think I should probably scratch my own itch and develop something that really suits my needs. So I'd like to ask you two things
2 - If you are somehow like me, would you give 5min of your time so that I could get more feedback from other freelancers about what would be useful for them, and other tips and strategies you might use for yourself for your own finances?
thanks so much!
137 comments
[ 5.9 ms ] story [ 184 ms ] threadFor me it's important that:
- There's a website
- Multiple wallets in multiple currencies and conversion on as much as possible.
- Export/Import Data
The only one I found that I am satisfied with is Spendee[1]. It's not perfect, actually far from it. But It's got what I need, it's flexible enough and it seems to be getting enough updates.
[1] https://spendee.com
https://toshl.com
17hats.com
I really liked it and my wife uses still today for high end cakes and stuff she does. I’ve also gotten quite of few of my buddies that do trade jobs on the side (plumbing, electrical, low voltage, etc) to use it and they love it as well.
Probably more than what your asking, but it’s a great AIO platform. I particularly like the built in contract and digital signing abilities.
http://track.tax for managing freelancer taxes
and its haskell clone hledger: https://hledger.org/index.html
I use hledger - but I bellieve both would work.
Edit: although the app is marketed as finding deductions, we show spending breakdown by category and are in the process of adding automatic revenue tracking.
Updates with startups take too long and your nit-picky features to increase your productivity probably do not directly correlate with these payment software companies business goals. I prefer full control / or the possible option for extensibility. Most importantly, looking at the data, no matter [or my several failed experiments/finance tool investments past year] ... I would eventually go back to excel. You just don't get the mental massaging that you are the shit in the UI.
Anyways, if this sounds interesting, I hope it saves you some time. I spent way too much time wasting my determination to find the perfect tool that actually never existed in the first place.
Check it out: https://github.com/mitul45/expense-manager
I do have one minor gripe: I have my Wave linked with my Azlo bank account, and when I'm scanning and uploading a receipt Wave creates a separate transaction, in addition to the one from my bank feed. You have to go in and manually select both txns and click "Merge". Seems like a pretty big miss, but still very usable. Especially on my small scale.
https://www.gnucash.org/
GnuCash is, let’s be honest, crap. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate it, it’s totally free, but it’s crap.
However, it forces you to learn how to do proper double-entry bookkeeping. You’ll get it wrong a bunch of times before you get it right. You’ll Google stuff and be frustrated that you can’t find an answer. You’ll just learn, somehow. But then...
...one day something clicks. And that day, you realise why this system has been the way that accountants do things for literally half a millennium [0]. It’s extraordinary. It’s impossible to lose track of money. The benefits are far too many to explain here, but just trust me when I say that when you ‘get it’, it’s like a transcendental moment.
So how do I plan my future? I put in speculative transactions. I forward-plot my income based on work done, invoice payment dates, and known tax office obligations. I play with the future, what-if this, what-if that. This is all really manual, in this software that will undoubtedly frustrate you, but the control you have is unmatched by any smart online Web 2.0 software. It’s like being in the Matrix of your money.
So yeah. GnuCash. Shite, but amazing.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-entry_bookkeeping_syste...
The reason why I disliked GnuCash was the lack of an undo together with a frickly date entry.
I recommend reading up on https://plaintextaccounting.org/ for those who like double entry but with text files
I haven't found an existing tool to budget in beancount so you'd have to write it yourself. Other people have successfully used Ledger's virtual postings (which doesn't exist in beancount) for budgeting though[0]. It might be a way forward for you?
[0]: https://emacs.cafe/ledger/emacs/ynab/budgeting/2018/06/12/el...
Not that I'm using GnuCash or even consider it, heck, I'm not even freelancing. However, people like you, sharing knowledge, are what keeps the Internet alive ;).
Last time I checked, gnucash sucked in charts :p
Learning to use GnuCash also gives you a good basic knowledge of accountancy principles which are useful skills to have both professionally and in general.
In addition to tracking personal/business finances in GnuCash, I used the invoicing feature to track billable hours and notes for each chunk of time. I had a custom invoice format that generated PDFs without the notes, and then I used the notes as reminders of what to put in periodic work reports.
A drawback to GnuCash, though, is that you can spend a lot of time getting your accounts and transaction splits just right, and tracking every little transaction. One of the best things I did was to move to doing less categorization and itemization in GnuCash (e.g., unless an expense was was tax-relevant, it got moved to "Misc.", and paper-money expenses weren't even tracked, but reconciled monthly).
Not a huge fan of mint, but I have about a decade of history in there. The UI is awful but every transaction continues to show up. So I export all to a spreadsheet every so often and manage everything in that sheet.
I've tried plenty of tools. Quicken, QuickBooks (online and offline), msn money when that was a thing, a few online services, etc. None of them got it right as far as I'm concerned.
Mint doesn't get it right either. And my spreadsheet isn't very good. But it gets the job done with very little hassle.
If I would live in the US I would use Freshbooks (not so good for Europe if you need to handle VAT taxes in my opinion).
It's also good to speak with your accountant what to use (if you have an accountant).
Personally I use Google Spreadsheets but only because I only write invoices 1-2 times a month and I don't have ton of expenses.
For purchasing and receipt collection, I take a picture of the receipt with my phone, always on me, and put it in a folder.
- It can do double-entry accounting and inter-account transfers.
- It can generate reports about your accounts and money flow, hence allows you to see trends and plan your finances.
It's very straightforward, hence very powerful, and allows me to track my finances very accurately and see my situation clearly.
Whenever I spend money, I record the transaction in the app and import my bank statements to reconcile once a month.
Not ideal for everyone, but works great for me. Aside from that, I like the ability to set goals for yearly expenses and making sure you are putting enough away. This is great for insurance, tax, etc. I use Xero for my official business accounts, and being able to look to the future is the single biggest thing missing.
Use Accountgram if: 1. You do not want to install yet-another-app (other than Telegram) 2. Your workflow revolves around backing up receipts