Best productivity apps for self-employed consultants

Do you ever struggle to stay productive as a self-employed consultant? You likely have several clients and projects to balance at once, which can be challenging without the right tools. 

Luckily, there are a bunch of apps that can help improve your efficiency, time, and business management straight from your phone. With these tools, you can get your work done in less time, reduce your stress, and satisfy your clients. 

This guide lists eight of the best productivity apps for consultants, including:

• Accelo – Project management 
• TMetric – Time tracking 
• Mile IQ – Mileage tracking 
• Countingup – Financial management
• Todoist – To-do lists
• Evernote – Note-taking 
• Plantie – Productivity 
• Be focused: Pomodoro Timer – Focus 

To find more general apps for a consulting business, check out our article on the best apps for independent consultants. 

Accelo is a project management platform specifically created for service businesses. So, it’s a great way to organise your client projects and overall work. The system helps with every part of the client management process, including:  

• Managing sales and creating quotes.  
• Organising and breaking down projects and tasks.
• Creating client profiles for ongoing work. 
• Progress reports. 

With the app, you can run your business smoothly and efficiently, easily tracking your progress and deadlines.   

Download Accelo on the App Store or Google Play. 

As self-employed consulting often means juggling many clients at once, you’ll need to track and manage your time well. 

TMetric focuses on freelance time management. It allows you to get a clear understanding of how you spend your time and how long tasks take. As a result, you can create more accurate schedules and time estimates for yourself. 

Overall, the app helps you focus and prioritise your time to avoid wasting it.  

Download TMetric on the App Store or Google Play. 

If you travel to your clients, it’s important to record your business mileage to claim back on your taxes. Manually tracking can be time-consuming, dragging you down as you try to get where you need to be. MileIQ can help. 

MileIQ automatically tracks your mileage as you travel to clients. You can then classify each trip to separate and organise your work travel. The app also calculates how much you earn back from your miles. 

Download MileIQ on the App Store or Google Play. 

Keeping up with your financial management is another major productivity killer. But with the Countingup app, you can save time by automating these tasks. 

Countingup is the business current account and accounting software in one app. It automates time-consuming bookkeeping admin for thousands of self-employed people across the UK. 

Countingup helps you streamline your financial management with: 

• Automatic expense categorisation to easily find transitions.
• Receipt capture to quickly save proof of payment. 
• Ongoing cash flow insight to track the money coming in and out of your business at a glance. 
• Year-round tax estimates to plan for these expenses. 

Save yourself hours of accounting admin so you can focus on growing your business. 

Start your three-month free trial today. 

Do you ever feel like you have a never-ending to-do list? ToDoist can help you create, organise, and manage different lists of things you need to get done for your consulting business. 

ToDoist is the ultimate app for remembering all your tidbits and tasks. It’s easy to separate your tasks by category and colour and add due dates to them. With this, you can avoid falling behind. 

Download ToDoist on the App Store or Google Play. 

Evernote is another one of the best productivity apps for consultants. Note-taking is a valuable way to retain and refer back to essential information. Otherwise, it’ll be difficult to remember everything you need to do.

But, as a consultant, your services likely rely heavily on client notes. So, you need an app that makes note-taking straightforward, organised, and efficient.

With Evernote, you can manage and organise notes right from your phone. The app goes beyond taking notes by hand. It also lets you: 

• Colour code your points.
• Create and schedule action items. 
• Mark up photos with the touch of a finger.

Evernote stores your thoughts and client information, making it simple to quickly access it on the go. 

Download Evernote on the App Store or Google Play. 

If you struggle to focus on your work for long periods, try the Plantie app. This game grows a plant on your phone screen while you work to help increase your productivity. If you look at your phone, the growth starts again. 

Over time, as your concentration lengthens, you can earn coins to get new virtual plants.

If you want to finish off a project, this is a fun way to dedicate time to it while training yourself away from distractions. 

Download Plantie on the App Store (or try Forest on Google Play). 

The Be Focused: Pomodoro Timer app is also a great way to stay on task and learn to focus. This app uses the Pomodoro Technique, a time management tactic that breaks up bigger projects into short spurts. 

With this app, you can input different priorities for your day or week and how long you’ll need to complete them. Then, the app will give you shorter intervals of time to concentrate on each task. 

This way, completing your work is far less intimidating as you do it in smaller portions over time. Overall, the app attempts to strengthen your attention span and overall efficiency. 

Download Be Focused: Pomodoro Timer on the App Store (or try Pomodoro Timer on Google Play). 

With the best productivity apps for consultants, you can organise your daily routine to improve business. The apps can help your time management, scheduling, finances, and overall focus. 

With a better overall business, you can better serve your clients and take on more, increasing your profitability. Sounds pretty good, right?

While you’re thinking about how to strengthen your consulting business, why not check out our article on six must-read books for self-employed consultants?