[deleted]
Ask HN: As a freelancer, what's the best app to track finances?
21–30 of 138 posts
Re: Ask HN: As a freelancer, what's the best app to track finances?
#22https://mint.com
I used a hybrid approach with mint and spreadsheets.
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.
Re: Ask HN: As a freelancer, what's the best app to track finances?
#23QuickBooks online from Intuit is big in European countries. Works also good in Android and iOS.
If you go really big use Xero (but not cheap).
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.
Re: Ask HN: As a freelancer, what's the best app to track finances?
#24I have a bunch of Excel spreadsheets that I use to handle invoicing and expenses; they're easy enough to feed into tax software at the end of the year.
Re: Ask HN: As a freelancer, what's the best app to track finances?
#25There is an app my wife made that I use: it's for expense ticketing. It's available here: https://spendtrim.com
Re: Ask HN: As a freelancer, what's the best app to track finances?
#26I've personally tried several different online services but ultimately landed on Wave ( https://waveapps.com - no affiliation). I used it for personal consulting and lately have used it for somewhat more formal (bit still fairly straightforward) corporate accounting. I'm a big fan - just my two cents.
+1 for Wave. I started an LLC to do contract work and so far it's been great. 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 smal…
Completely agree - being able to just add rote attachments to a journal entry is a huge miss. Hoping they rectify it soon.
Re: Ask HN: As a freelancer, what's the best app to track finances?
#27There's a slight learning curve but I've been very happy with GnuCash. It supports multiple accounts and containers, has decent reporting, invoicing, categorizing, etc. I also really like that it's offline. https://www.gnucash.org/
I have all my transactions in GnuCash (i keep thinking it'll be useful one day), but i've never bothered to learn to bend the reports to my will. Do you have to write code? Are there good examples anywhere? Because i find the default reports... Terribly clunky.
Re: Ask HN: As a freelancer, what's the best app to track finances?
#28For invoicing and tax, I do everything through Google sheets. Accessible anywhere, link any cells/tab from any other one, complex formulas, it has all you need.
For purchasing and receipt collection, I take a picture of the receipt with my phone, always on me, and put it in a folder.
Re: Ask HN: As a freelancer, what's the best app to track finances?
#29ledger: https://www.ledger-cli.org/ and its haskell clone hledger: https://hledger.org/index.html I use hledger - but I bellieve both would work.
+1 to that. I wrote about my use of the tool here when I was freelancing http://nibrahim.net.in/2015/11/07/ledger_and_personal_financ...
Re: Ask HN: As a freelancer, what's the best app to track finances?
#30https://mint.com
Mint requires that you give them login credentials to your bank, credit cards, etc.