The freelance life is tough.

As a freelancer, you wear more than one hat. You are the CEO, the marketer, the admin, the accountant and the janitor. Maybe, you are also a stay-at-home parent or have a full-time job. And you manage to juggle all these roles with aplomb (almost!). We are proud of you.

But, and let’s reiterate and admit it, it’s tough. You want to be doing work you enjoy, you want to earn your fair pay, make a living and have some time left for yourself and your family. However, some of the things freelancers have to do can be a drag, for instance, tracking invoices.

Enter technology. It can be a curse to any freelancer’s productivity—Facebook, Instagram, Buzzfeed anyone? But as we all know, tech can be a blessing, especially for busy solopreneurs seeking to automate the various back office operations of their business (e.g. time-tracking, drafting contracts and analyzing your finances over time).

To that end, here are three reasons why you should ditch your spreadsheets and download an invoice app to make getting paid virtually painless.

Increase efficiency

If you're self employed, time is money. The less time you spend updating Excel spreadsheets and PDF-ing invoices, the more time you'll have to hustle on projects you actually care about.

Looking for someplace to start? Pick up a free invoice app like AND CO, which offers you the tools needed to automate the invoicing process from start to finish.

Stop making dumb mistakes

Ever make a math error and bill a client too much, or too little? That's always a fun conversation. Not. Using an invoice app can ensure this never happens to you again.

“Mistakes while invoicing are a pain in the derriere,” says Shobhit Bakliwal, a freelance developer. “It just adds up to the invoice follow-up process where now you have to also let them know of the mistake you've committed. Plus, it’s embarrassing.”

Mistakes can happen to the best of us. Miscalculating the number of hours you worked for or forgetting to factor in the taxes are common mistakes. Freelancers can also squeeze themselves out of money by failing to tack back on additional expenses, like travel costs, to the final bill.

By using an invoicing app, you can sync your invoicing with your time-tracking, so you’ll never over (or under) charge a client again.

You’ll also avoid making typos in the final PDF, since an easy-to-use template can be repurposed at the end of each project. The result: Invoices that are 100 percent accurate. You’re such a pro!

Get paid on time, every time

Manually sending out invoices means you need to manually check in on the status of those invoices. If you’re a busy solopreneur (we know you are!), this could mean setting yourself several calendar reminders. Annoying, not to mention completely inefficient.

“Invoicing is a hassle, but a bigger one is following up to get paid. I currently use a spreadsheet to manually make sure if the invoice has been paid, when it was paid, when was the last time I followed up, etc.,” shares Bakliwal.

He is not alone. Most freelancers find it tedious to keep track of invoices in order to ensure their payment comes through and when you have multiple clients to follow up with, it can get downright nerve-wracking. Again, enter the invoice app.

Why would you waste time setting calendar reminders for yourself (or worse, creating Post-It reminders) when you can leave that up to technology, AKA a mobile-friendly invoice app? Make sure you get paid on time by using an invoice app to track the status of your invoices. Most of these apps will even ping you once money has hit your account. Cha-ching!

Invoicing is a necessary bother, but technology can take the pain away if you’d let it. A quick peek at your phone’s app store for a preferred invoice app may be all you need to make your freelancing life a whole lot easier.

This is a sponsored post by our friends at AND CO, an invoicing app for freelancers. Check out our co-created Freelance Contract here.

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