Freelance Accounting Software: If You're a Freelancer and not Using Harpoon, It's Time To Switch

As a freelancer who has sent thousands of invoices, logged thousands of hours, filed taxes for over a decade, tracked years of expenses, and earned 1.4 million dollars in income since 2014, there is one accounting system I recommend freelancers use: Harpoon. 

As a former marketing agency owner, I've used a variety of different accounting systems. I've also worked with accounting firms, exposing me to a variety of bookkeeping software systems for small businesses and enterprise systems. And, years ago, I was paid to provide feedback on a prominent business accounting system.

And after everything, Harpoon is still my go-to system.

It not only provides the basic functions that freelancers need (like invoicing and collecting payment) it also offers so many other powerful functions I desired in a freelance accounting system. Many of its functions I couldn't go without, but I also didn't know I wanted until I started using Harpoon!

In this post, we'll survey these functions. Let's start by exploring Harpoon's invoicing.

Automated Invoicing That Looks Professional

Harpoon is the top invoicing system tailored for freelancers, a significant upgrade from basic emailed templates that many freelancers tend to use.

Additional key benefits of Harpoon include:

• Easily Get Paid: Quick, branded invoices with simple client payment via Stripe.
• Automated Followup: Automatic reminders on overdue invoices.
• Automatic Recurring Invoices: Effortless management of ongoing billing.
• View Tracking: Get notifications and see when clients view invoices.
• Professional Templates: Customizable, branded invoice designs.
• Payment History: Insights into client payment patterns.
• Integrated Reporting: Comprehensive income tracking by client and project.
• Simple Invoice Creation: Quick and easy invoice generation.

For freelancers seeking to streamline billing and secure timely payments, Harpoon is my recommended and effective solution.

If you'd like a more detailed explanation of Harpoon's invoicing and what I find most valuable about it, check out my full article written here.

The First Web-Based Accounting App With Forecasting For Freelancers

Imagine having a high degree of certainty about your financial future as a freelancer?

Forecasting is a powerful tool to alleviate our anxiety about the unknown. It's why in my book on freelancing, I recommend building systems to prevent what we fear from happening.

When I first started freelancing, I built myself some spreadsheets that would allow me to do some basic forecasting. I wanted to understand how much work and income I had approved for my current month and how much of a gap I had to fill to reach my goals. This helped me focus my efforts to grow my freelancing business into what is now a multi-year, consistent pattern of having more work than I have time to do.

After switching to Harpoon, I no longer have to maintain my spreadsheets because Harpoon's software provides this type of forecasting, and it does it in some cool and unexpected ways.

Harpoon has a dashboard that has some helpful quick reference numbers to see where you're at with your income for the year and how much it expects you to earn by year's end.

You can dive deeper with their income scheduler system, which breaks down your revenue by month for the remainder of the year.

Their scheduling tool shows you how much money you should have at this point in the year, and how much you actually have, revealing the gap of how far behind you are, or how far ahead you are. This report will give you a breakdown by month and by client to see how much money you can expect to earn, and which clients it will come from, based on the income you've made and recurring invoices you've set up.

Once you know how much income you'll earn based on what you've already collected and what you have set up to invoice, you'll see the amount between where you land with that total and the goal you've set for the year.

As the year unfolds, each month will adjust to the goal (up or down) based on what you need to do to catch up or if you have enough slack to take some breaks.

I've never seen forecasting software like this for freelancers. Usually, this type of visibility and reporting is reserved for more sophisticated enterprise accounting systems. In this case, it's available for freelancers like you and me.

Expense Tracking & Useful Financial Reporting

As a freelancer, your expenses will likely be quite minimal (one of the great benefits of freelancing), but when it comes to taxes, you'll need to tally whatever expenses you do have and report on them each year. 

Harpoon allows you to either automatically download transactions from your bank, import them via a bank export file (what I do during tax season), or manually add and edit them.

These expenses can be tethered to clients and projects if you need to do a report on the profitability of a project.

And like any accounting system, Harpoon provides a range of reports, most of which I never use, but are there for those that need them and have different types of freelancing businesses.

Generally, I'll use the annual profit and loss statement. They also have the following reports:

• Expenses
• Timesheet
• Invoice payments
• Other Income
• Accounts Aging
• Invoice Details
• Tax Summary
• Mileage
• Project Summary
• Lead Sources (I'll look at this from time to time)

These reports are in addition to reporting that's available in each section of the application (like Clients, Projects, etc...).

Frictionless Time Tracking Made Easy

Harpoon allows for time tracking through its web interface, and it also has an Apple Mac computer widget you can use.

Time tracked can be assigned to clients and projects, which allows for helpful insights and reporting around capacity and profitability.

If you want to explore in further detail my approach and recommendations for tracking your time as a freelancer, I've written an entire article on the topic here.

One benefit ot Harpoon is how much of an all-in-one web software it is for freelancers. Time tracking is one of the things that brings this all together.

Harpoon's Other Accounting Functions

Harpoon does so many more things than I need from it.

Here are many of the other functions you can leverage to grow your freelancing business.

• Predictive project budgeting
• Responsible Expense Budgeting
• Advanced Team Management (for agencies)
• Hundreds of integrations (Zapier, Mailchimp, Google Docs, Stripe, etc...)

Harpoon is an incredible app for freelancers, and it's made my freelancing work so much easier and better.

The more visibility for what's ahead and the less I have to deal with getting paid, the better. As long as I'm freelancing, I'll be using Harpoon, and if you're a freelancer, I recommend you do as well.

Harpoon's Secret Sauce

"The goal is not to sell what we have to people who need it. The goal is to do business with people who believe what we believe." - Simon Sinek

My first book, Path of the Freelancer, is the blueprint for my freelancing success.

Throughout the pages, I mapped out my proven habits and systems required to master the business of one (freelancing).

Many of these systems were ones I was managing manually using spreadsheets and other software. But when I found Harpoon, I didn't just find a tool that captured these functions, I discovered a company that embodied these values and vision.

Simply put, the features I needed resulted from the core values we shared. This is most clear in Harpoon's philosophy, a set of four rules that guide the company's design of the software. They are as follows:

1. Set a financial goal
2. Plan your revenue
3. Bill your clients intelligently
4. Control your expenses

These rules so effectively translate from my Path of the Freelancer book that it's as if they read it and built the system using it as a guide.

In reality, we both discovered something that mattered and was effective in growing a freelance business.

This is great because it means that their shared beliefs will guide the evolution of the software and continue making it better for us, independent contractors.

For Harpoon, it's not just software as a service but a business partnership I couldn't imagine going without.

The Cost of Harpoon and Its 14-Day Free Trial

While the marketing agency package is $99 per month, the freelancer option is only $19 per month!

And, if you're just getting started with freelancing, it's only $9 per month if you have 3 or fewer clients.

Plus, if you're still not sure Harpoon is a good fit, they offer a 14-day free trial.

So, sign up and give it a try. Discover if it's as awesome for you as it has been for me.