Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives. It is sometimes conflated with program management, however technically a program is actually a higher level construct: a group of related and somehow interdependent projects. Having a program management tool that you actually like using is pretty hard these days and finding a good list of applications from which to choose the one that fits best for you is also difficult.
As well as project management tools, a designer also needs invoicing tools in order to create and track payments and because sharing is caring and I’m the sharing type of guy, I’m offering you a list of the best and, let’s say, most appealing invoicing tools or applications that you can find on the net.

Project Management Tools

Basecamp

Trusted by millions, Basecamp is the leading web-based project collaboration tool. Share files, meet deadlines, assign tasks, centralize feedback, make clients smile.
For years project management software was about charts, graphs, and stats. And you know what? It didn’t work. Pictures and numbers don’t get projects done. Basecamp tackles project management from an entirely different angle: A focus on communication and collaboration. Basecamp brings people together.

activeCollab

activeCollab is a project management & collaboration tool that you can set up on your own server or local network. Work with your team, clients and contractors in an easy to use environment, while keeping full control over your data.
Now improved with Invoice and Source Modules.

OpenProj

OpenProj is a free, open source project management solution. OpenProj is a replacement of Microsoft Project and other commercial project solutions. The OpenProj solution has been download more than 1,250,000 times in the few months since launch and is being used in over 142 countries. A free download of OpenProj is available here and is distributed under the CPAL license. OpenProj is ideal for desktop project management and is available on Linux, Unix, Mac or Windows. It even opens existing Microsoft or Primavera files. OpenProj shares the industry’s most advanced scheduling engine with Project-ON-Demand and provides Gantt Charts, Network Diagrams (PERT Charts), WBS and RBS charts, Earned Value costing and more.

Collabtive

Collabtive is web-based project management software.The project was started in November 2007. It is Open Source software and provides an alternative to proprietary tools like Basecamp. Collabtive is written in PHP and JavaScript. Collabtive is intended for small to medium-sized businesses and freelancers. We offer commercial services for installation and customization of Collabtive. It can also be installed on an internal server as well as in the cloud. All major browsers like Internet Explorer (7/8), Firefox, Opera, Safari, and Chrome are supported.
It is developed by a team of professional volunteers. Everyone involved is a pro in their respective areas, providing high quality contributions to the project.

Feng Office

Feng Office allows businesses to manage project tasks, billing, documents, communication with co-workers, customers and vendors, schedule meetings and events, and share every kind of electronic information.
Feng Office can be used in one of two ways: Feng Sky and Feng Onsite. When you sign up for the Feng Sky or Feng Onsite service you get unlimited user support, continuous software updates, exclusive plug-ins, training and consulting material, and more. No license fees are charged

Trac Open Source

Trac is an enhanced wiki and issue tracking system for software development projects. Trac uses a minimalistic approach to web-based software project management. Our mission is to help developers write great software while staying out of the way. Trac should impose as little as possible on a team’s established development process and policies.

Copper

Copper is an online project and task management software for creative teams, centralising your projects, clients, contacts, and documents in a single location. Copper becomes an indispensable Software-as-a-service (SAAS) tool for your team.
Like Apple, Sony Pictures, and Coca Cola, use Copper for more efficent team project processes, allow client’s to login for collaborative decision making, or simply get the upper hand on your own workload.

Liquid Planner

Online project management software for scheduling, collaboration, and time-tracking in one easy package. The result for your team: fewer meetings, less e-mail, less re-work and more project wins.

GoPlan

Goplan lets you keep track of your projects and collaborate with your colleagues securely through an intuitive user interface.

ProjectPier

ProjectPier is a Free, Open-Source, self-hosted PHP application for managing tasks, projects and teams through an intuitive web interface. ProjectPier will help your organization communicate, collaborate and get things done Its function is similar to commercial groupware/project management products, but allows the freedom Learn More »
and scalability of self-hosting.

ClockingIT

ClockingIT is a free Project Management solution, which helps your team stay focused and on top of things. It was created by Erlend & Ellen Simonsen, with contributions from a range of other people.
The project was started while Erlend was working as a consultant, and needed a way to keep track of how much time was spent per client and project. Earlier attempts in .NET and Java took too long or became too complex for one programmer to complete in a reasonable amount of time, but when Ruby On Rails was announced things started progressing nicely.

Subernova

Subernova is a project management tool that makes you more productive by taking the stress out of remembering important details of your projects, lets you track time, send invoices and estimates, collaborate with others and keeps your business smooth by keeping tabs on late payments, deadlines and more.

Klok

Your time is your product. Every minute you spend working that goes unaccounted for is like giving away your product for free. Tracking your time accurately is essential to staying profitable.
In addition, knowing how much time you spend on past projects, can allow you to better estimate future projects. Do you know how much time you spend in meetings? On the phone? Promoting yourself? Making sales calls?
Keep track of anything with Klok’s simple work timer and visual display of how your days “fill up”.

Huddle

Huddle gives you a secure online space to connect, share and work with other people. Huddle is hosted, there’s no software to download and it’s free to get started. With Huddle you can: manage projects, share and store files online, create and edit documents online, have group discussions, unlimited users.

LessTimeSpent

As a freelancer your time is how you make money. You must be dilligent in tracking and billing for this hours. Minor lapses in time tracking will cost you thousands at the end of the year. Not only track your time but record what you accomplished during those times.

Ta-da List
Ta-da List is the web’s easiest to-do list tool. Make lists for yourself or share them with others. It couldn’t be simpler.

Remember the milk

Remember the Milk allows users to create multiple task lists. Added tasks can be edited to include (or not) various fields; locations can be added, and an integrated Google Maps feature allows users to save commonly-used locations. Tasks can also be organized by tags. Tasks can be postponed, and Remember the Milk will inform users of the number of times that that task has been postponed.

Remember the Milk features the capability to manage tasks while offline. This feature is built upon the Gears software (formerly Google Gears). When a user reconnects to the internet their Remember the Milk account is updated to include offline changes. Events are stored online, so in the case of a user’s hard drive failure, no data is lost. The application supports publishing one’s tasks as an RSS news feed. It can export iCalendar files (.ics). Multiple task categories can be added and shared, allowing various levels of permissions for the users. This enables collaboration and sharing of schedules between groups or families.

TaskBin

In TaskBin you are always part of a group (or maybe multiple groups). These groups define the context of the tasks. Once you are a part of a group, the other group members can add tasks to your list or edit it. So in a sense, all your tasks are “shared”. TaskBin is not like a calendar or a scheduler, and there is no need to enter specific dates. Tasks can have the following priorities: Now, Today, Tomorrow, Sometime This Week and Sometime Soon. All your tasks have email notifications, which can be turned off. The application is ideal for work with cross location teams and has great support for multiple time zones. At one glance, you can see what is happening in your group, what was recently added/updated, what is due today, etc. This makes it a great company/team management tool.

Lighthouse

No matter where you are, we have the tools to keep you up to date on your project. Browse tickets using our slick iPhone optimized interface, manage tickets through our robust email system, or use your feed reader to subscribe to feeds.
Lighthouse’s email integration is a thing of beauty – you can do just about everything with a simple reply. Need to reassign a ticket to John in accounting from your BlackBerry? Reply to the email notification with your message and [responsible:John] and you’re done!

Springloops

Springloops is a unique source code management tool focused on web development teams. It allows you to code in parallel and share your code safely concentrated on results, not on lost changes or overwritten files. You get rapid collaboration in protected space. Thanks to the project management perspective it serves the getting things done attitude. Moreover, Springloops reduces repeatable activities in your day-to-day work.

Action Method

Action Method Online is a radically different approach to productivity, designed to simplify project management and life.
All of life can be divided into “projects” – the categories we use in our minds to separate and make sense of what we need to accomplish (e.g. “the party I’m planning,” “client X,” “event Y,” “finances”). The Action Method helps you manage your projects starting with the most basic elements – always with an emphasis on action.

CreativePro Office

CreativePro Office is well suited for both independent professionals and small teams of graphic designers, programmers and web developers.

Jumpchart

Use Jumpchart to quickly plan out the navigation of your site by adding pages, and sub-pages. If you change your mind, easily drag pages to new spots within the site hierarchy. There is no better way to organize the content for your website.

fourteenDayz

Brains4All products apply the “simplest thing that could possibly work” routine. No annoying features you’ll find in other time tracking software that get in your way. Instead, use only the options you really need.

Staction

Staction is a fast way to stay in touch with your co-workers. Since communication, time-tracking, and file sharing all happen in one spot, Staction makes it easy to work, and collaborate. While many productivity apps rely on different pages to denote content types, – Staction uses tags, -making it faster and easier to use.

Task.fm

Task.fm is a reminder tool. Use it to create sms, email or twitter reminders. Task.fm can understand your natural language like “meeting with bob next tuesday at 9am”, so you don’t need to enter dates and times manually.

Comindwork

Assign tasks, share files, discuss ideas, involve clients. Zero-investment and flexible pay-as-you-go pricing. Secure and reliable SaaS platform. Fully customizable.

Invoicing Tools

FreshBooks

FreshBooks is a product of the software company 2ndSite Inc. which is located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is an online invoicing software as a service made for freelancers, small businesses, agencies, and professionals. The product includes a myriad of other related features, such as time tracking, expense tracking, recurring billing, online payment collection, the ability to mail invoices through the U.S. Post, and support tickets.

Simply Invoices

Simply Invoices was created by roobasoft, LLC: A one man shop focusing on applications I’m passionate about. As a contractor, I developed Simply Invoices because it was a product I needed. The existing solutions didn’t have the integration with Basecamp that I wanted and most were too complex. So Simply Invoices was born.

Less Accounting

All of the small business accounting features are essential, intuitive and simplistic. With Less Accounting you can easily send professional business proposals, track invoices online, manage your contacts and a number of other basic small business accounting techniques

The Invoice Machine

The Invoice Machine takes a new clever approach to online invoicing. It’s beautiful and simple-to-use interface makes producing professional looking invoices a very pleasant experience.
The Invoice Machine is ideal for freelancers and businesses who want an easy way to manage, create and send their invoices. It’s great for anyone who has a service or product to sell.

Intuit

Intuit Billing Manager is the fast, easy, FREE way to Get Paid. Create customized, professional invoices and send them by email. Save time by tracking overdue payments and invoice status — all in one place.

BillingOrchard

BillingOrchard utilizes the familiar interface of a web site, along with the basic knowledge of accounting that any small business owner understands. That basic knowledge is: billing for services equals income. BillingOrchard will streamline your invoicing, allowing you to focus on your business rather than paperwork.

Blinksale

Blinksale is perfect for anyone who needs to invoice clients for services or products sold. Blinksale is an excellent choice for attorneys, accountants, designers, IT professionals, software developers, journalists, contractors, engineers, architects, videographers, and more.

MarketCircle

Your invoices should reflect your professionalism. Billings combines powerful features with stylish designs so you can send elegant invoices right out of the box. Choose from any of the customizable templates, or create your own with the built-in WYSIWYG designer. Either way you’ll send polished professional invoices in seconds.

InvoicePlace

Keep track of the health of your business by taking control of your billing. Multi-currency support means you can manage all of your customers all over the world in the one location.

PaySimple

PaySimple provides an on-demand Software as a Service (SaaS) platform that enables small businesses to bill, collect, and manage their customer payments under one user-friendly system.

WORKetc

WORKetc is a single software solution to run your entire business. It combines CRM, Projects, Billing, Documents, Time sheets and more with a powerful automation engine to help take your small business to the next level. The only complete small business management software solution.

Time 59

Time59 is time and billing software that runs in your web browser. It keeps track of your hours, generates client invoices, records payments, and maintains client balances. You can access your Time59 account from any computer with a web browser, as well as many mobile devices. Getting started is easy. No installation is required

Bill4Time

Whether you are a law firm, a small business, or a consultant, Bill4Time is your software for invoicing, time, and billing. It gives your business the advantage to succeed

ProfitTrain

Invoice from Kedisoft

Invoice is a full-featured invoice application for SOHO or business users. It has been designed from scratch to use the power and beauty of the Mac OS, while making life as easy as possible for its users.
Since Invoice was designed purely for OSX, it is not simply a port from another platform, unable to take full advantage of the OSX operating system. Invoice uses it ALL.

Harvest

Harvest lets you and your staff track time, log expenses, and create invoices in one simple, integrated workflow. Set yourself or your team up on Harvest in just a few minutes, and instantly start tracking time and expenses. Use the Harvest graphical reports to see the distribution of your company’s resources in a visual, intuitive way. Quickly create an invoice, and with just a single click, bill your client. You’ll see your revenue come in faster with Harvest. Give Harvest a try and improve your business today.

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