5 best apps for independent consultants

There’s a staggering number of services your devices can provide, depending on what apps you download onto them. With the right selection of apps, your smartphones and tablets can become a core part of your business. In addition, since these devices are portable, a good range of apps allows you to essentially run your business from anywhere.

If you’re an independent consultant, you’ll have to deal with a wide variety of client requests while also finding time to run your business. We’ve found a few apps that can help with that. 

The apps we’ll focus on in this article are:

• Hubspot
• Proposify
• Clockify
• Mailchimp
• Monday.com
• Countingup

Hubspot is a CRM app, which stands for customer relationship management. This means that it provides a wide range of services that focus on making sure you have the best relationship possible with your clients and customers.

Hubspot’s primary feature is allowing you to manage all of your clients’ contact details in one place. Instead of having a long list of numbers in your phone or a spreadsheet full of email addresses, you can use Hubspot to organise all of the contact details you have for your clients. 

Hubspot even allows you to create categories for your contacts. So if you’re in touch with multiple people in one client organisation, you can create a group to ensure their contact details are in the same place.

Hubspot also lets you track the interactions you have with your clients. For instance, say that you’re consulting for a large architectural firm, and you need to speak with a number of engineers working on a particular project. 

Hubspot can keep track of all of your interactions with each engineer and will store all of those conversations in one place. It can even do this regardless of the communications channel you use to get in touch with them.

On top of this, a lot of Hubspot’s features are free. This helps reduce the cost of starting your own consulting business.

As an independent consultant, you may frequently need to create business proposals and other similar documents for your clients to view and use. Proposify is a great app to use for this, as it allows you to make attractive and professional business proposals very quickly.

Business proposals like this are fairly common in the consulting industry, so having a tool that lets you create them quickly and efficiently is a huge help. Proposify has a ton of templates you can use to make these proposals. It also enables you to save and categorise things like product or service descriptions, so you can attach them to any proposal without having to type them out repeatedly.

Finally, Proposify supports electronic signatures, so getting your clients to sign off on your proposals is very straightforward. They don’t need to scan their signature or wait to receive a physical copy; they can simply click a few buttons to sign any documents you create with Proposify.

Time is your most valuable resource as a small business owner, so improving your time management is vital. Clockify is an app that can help independent consults manage their time better.

Clockify has a range of simple functions that provide huge benefits. It can track how much time you spend on different projects so you avoid accidentally focusing too much on one client instead of assisting another. You can also use this tracking feature to create timesheets, which can help you put together accurate invoices for your clients.

As well as all this, Clockify has a calendar. This might seem underwhelming, but Clockify’s calendar has several helpful features to set it apart. For starters, it allows you to visualise your entire day with customisable, colour-coded blocks that represent the jobs that need doing on a particular day. 

Clockify’s calendar also seamlessly connects with apps like Gmail and Outlook. This means any appointments or invites sent to you can easily be attached to the calendar so you’ll remember them.

As well as their self-titled website, monday.com offers a helpful application you can download to most devices. Monday.com’s primary function is project management. This makes it a great app to have when you’re an independent consultant, as you’ll likely have several projects you need to keep track of.

Monday.com is great for working on the same project with many different people, as it provides a hub where everyone can share information. This means you can use it to share work updates and progress reports with your client, keeping them happy and well-informed.

The app also allows you to more effectively manage your workload by prioritising different tasks depending on their importance. You can even assign tasks to different individuals so that you get the best person for the job.

If you have a lot of clients that you provide consulting services to, it can get in the way of running your business. In particular, your financial management can suffer since it’s a time-consuming task.

If you don’t have a lot of time to manage your business finances, consider using the Countingup app. Countingup makes tracking your company cash flow easy, giving you real-time, accurate insights whenever you need them.

Countingup also makes getting paid easier, as the app has a very simple system for creating invoices. You can send invoices using the app, receive notifications when clients pay, and even add your company logo to invoices so they look more professional.

Countingup is the business current account with built-in accounting software that allows you to manage all your financial data in one place. With features like automatic expense categorisation, receipt capture tools, tax estimates, and cash flow insights, you can confidently keep on top of your business finances wherever you are. 

You can also share your bookkeeping with your accountant instantly without worrying about duplication errors, data lags or inaccuracies. Seamless, simple, and straightforward! 

Find out more here.