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Ask HN: As a freelancer, what's the best app to track finances?

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Re: Ask HN: As a freelancer, what's the best app to track finances?

#81

Post by nunodonato »

thibaut_barrere wrote: post #78
d0100 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot or freelancers are from non-EU/US countries. 22€ can go from "food for a week" to "half of the minimum wage".

If you are suggesting free or 1$/mo, then know it's not sustainable for me, at least in current conditions.

this is the challenge with a global marketplace, where prices are set based on where the developers live, but are paid by people living in different economic conditions :)

I use Buxfer at the moment, which has a simple paid plan at 4.99, and a more complete one at 9.99 (with advanced features). I think offering more than one plan is a good idea, to catch different users at different price points. Unless your price is low, but at 20$+, its a really high-entry point for me

Re: Ask HN: As a freelancer, what's the best app to track finances?

#82

Post by nunodonato »

dig1 wrote: post #80

I'm running a company on ledger-cli [1], emacs and org-mode [2]. Sure, there are some additional scripts that will pull banking logs or do repetitive tasks, but these are basic building blocks. Tried GnuCash few times - first time I failed because I didn't know how to work with double-entry accounting [3]. Second time failed because GnuCash isn't flexible with currencies (maybe things got better now). All these tools…

hi! i'm using org-mode for my projects, tasks and general info & planning. Didnt occur to me to use it for finances as well. Will take a look :)

Re: Ask HN: As a freelancer, what's the best app to track finances?

#83

Post by nunodonato »

vekker wrote: post #45

I don't use finance tracking apps anymore. Using Tim Ferriss's advice "how can I throw money at this problem to solve it?", I pay my accountant 200 to 300 euros every month and as part of their job they handle my financial tracking. I just upload my invoices & expenses to their online tool or forward it via email, they process it and hand me quarterly and yearly reports with suggestions for optimisations.

I guess that works fine when you have money to throw at :) My current status is to know the money you have at any point in time (or estimates), to know more or less what is throwable and what is not ;)

Re: Ask HN: As a freelancer, what's the best app to track finances?

#84

Post by jen729w »

ferdek wrote: post #73
jen729w wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes to GnuCash, but for none of the reasons OP wants. 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 so…

Looks like you might posses valuable knowledge that some are Googling in vain, just as you said. And you have quite pleasant writing style. I would strongly encourage you to document at least some of the endeavours you had with GnuCash, in your free time, for future generations. 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…

Kind words, which mean a lot. Thank you.

Re: Ask HN: As a freelancer, what's the best app to track finances?

#88

Post by nickjj »

I like GnuCash and wrote about it at: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/using-gnucash-as-a-freelancer...

It was also discussed here last year at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16857884

Been using it for a few years now to track finances as a freelancer and I don't see a reason to switch. It works really well.

But I wrote my own Bash script to calculate invoice amounts. I run 1 command per month and it spits out the number of hours I worked for each client and then shows how much I should invoice them for.

Re: Ask HN: As a freelancer, what's the best app to track finances?

#89

Post by rushabh »

Frappe Accounting is an electron based app exactly for this (GPL v3). We have pushed an alpha version and would love to find collaborators. Out of the box you can setup chart of accounts, make bills, payments, get basic accounting reports.

https://github.com/frappe/accounting

https://frappe.io/accounting

Anyone willing to collaborate, please drop me a mail.

Re: Ask HN: As a freelancer, what's the best app to track finances?

#90

Post by graeme »

nunodonato wrote: post #58
thibaut_barrere wrote: post #40

I'm a freelance myself (since 2005). I ultimately scratched my own itch and created an app specifically for this: https://www.wisecashhq.com I built it pretty much for what you describe: to plan my future (it computes your runway & "time wealth"), adjust working hours as needed, "make time" for other topics, negotiate based on data etc. The goal is not to "track all expenses", but rather to make a reasonable forecast…

interesting! the features do sound similar to what I'm looking for, unfortunately the monthly cost is too high for me :(

Just a general comment for those reading: this app is very likely a business expense for any freelancer or business owner. Cashflow planning is a core business job and allows you to determine how much you can invest, what jobs you need to seek when, etc. So this significantly cuts the cost of the service.

Btw, to the maker, something like $15 USD would be a no brainer purchase price for me personally. This price, roughly $25 USD, is something I'll have to think about, but may get. (That might make $25 USD the right price! This is just one data point)

Also, you may wish to consider setting your prices in USD instead of Euros, depending on where your customers are located for the most part. A lot of non-US business owners will nonetheless operate in USD. For example, I'm Canadian but the US is my largest market so all of my prices and most of my online expenses are in USD, I have a USD credit card, etc. Likewise, my developer lives in Asia, and takes all of his payments in USD.

If your customers are mostly European this probably isn't worth it, but it could gain you some extra sales through reduced friction in other markets.

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I had subscribed several years back, but didn't have a need then, so I cancelled. Now, I've moved to a higher sales higher expense model and had large cashflow swings in the low season. Which is why I'm quite likely to do it at $25 USD now, when I didn't before: I'm aware of how horrible cashflow crunches are.

Does wise cash do multi currency actually?

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