By 2025, the freelance economy is already booming. As more individuals choose the independent route, managing money has become even more important.
If you work as a freelance content writer, graphic designer, consultant, or even a digital marketer, managing your banking tasks, invoicing, tracking expenses, or paying taxes is much more efficient when you use proper tools.
This guide focuses on the best financial tools for freelancers in 2025 Mercury, Wise, and Relay, together with other essential tools increase your efficiency boosting productivity.
Freelancers can manage schedules and receive payments without hassle, sustainably supporting business growth with these tools.
1. QuickBooks Self-Employed
Best for: Expense tracking, invoicing, and tax calculations
Intuit’s Quickbooks has freelanced finances under control for a long time. Their new product, QuickBooks Self-Employed focuses on self-employed individuals and makes it easier to track income, expenses, and tax preparation as well as crafting polished professional invoices.
Important Highlights:
- Automated expense categorization for optimizing tax deductions
- Mileage tracking using GPS technology
- Integration with Turbo Tax for filing convenience
- Invoice generation with payment and invoice tracking feature
- Real-time updates from synced bank accounts and credit cards
What Freelancers Appreciate:
Eliminate stress around quarterly taxes and bookkeeping with snapshots of profit and deductible expenses. For self-employed individuals seeking minimal effort in finance tracking and tax compliance, this tool is particularly valuable.
2. Mercury
Ideal for: LLC owners and freelancers focusing on online businesses; streamlined digital banking
Mercury is popular among freelancers and startup founders, particularly when operating under a US LLC. It is favored by remote workers from abroad due to no monthly fees, attractive interface, and quick digital sign-up through Bizstartz.
Main Highlights:
- Freedom from monthly maintenance fees, overdraft fees, no required minimum balances
- Physical and virtual debit cards for team usage
- Integration with QuickBooks, Xero, and payment processors like Stripe is effortless.
- Multi-user access with international wire transfer capabilities.
- Covered by partner banks’ FDIC insurance.
Why Freelancers Think It’s Great:
Through Mercury, digital nomads and foreign residents can swiftly set up a U.S. business bank account without stepping into a physical bank. The banking dashboard is user-friendly for freelancers and tech-oriented users, giving them easy-to-use tools and total command over their finances.
3. Wave
Best for: No-cost accounting and invoicing for financially savvy freelancers.
For freelancers on a budget, Wave is a great option because it is powerful and free. Wave offers robust accounting functionality, unlimited invoicing, receipt scanning, all at no charge. It’s perfect for new freelancers who are looking for affordable and professional-grade tools.
Key Features:
- Generate unlimited invoices, estimates, and clients.
- Automatically track income and classify expenses.
- Scan receipts with the mobile app.
- Generate key financial reports such as profit/loss, tax summary, and more.
- Payroll and online payment processing as add-ons (for a fee).
Why Freelancers Love It:
Wave allows freelancers and solopreneurs to efficiently manage their finances without incurring additional expenses, thanks to its no-cost core accounting features.
4. Wise (Formerly TransferWise)
Best for: Global freelancers receiving or sending international payments.
Wise is revolutionary for freelancers engaging with international clients or remote team members. Freelancers can take advantage of real exchange rates (mid-market rate) and low fees, saving considerably compared to PayPal or traditional banks.
Core Benefits:
- Maintain a single account for 50+ currencies
- Receive payments with localized bank details in USD, EUR, GBP, AUD and several other currencies
- Unrestricted low-cost international payment transfers to over 160 countries
- Wise Issues physical and virtual debit cards which can be used internationally
- No hidden charges or fees
Why They Love It:
Wise is heaven sent for cross border business transactions. Freelancers from Nepal, India or The Philippines can receive USD payments into their LLC accounts and then seamlessly withdraw from local banks with great conversion rates.
5. FreshBooks
Best for: Freelancers looking for an invoice and client billing platform that combines multiple features.
FreshBooks provides freelancers with powerful, easy-to-use tools for invoicing, expense tracking, time management, and client communication. Service-based freelancers like consultants, coaches and even designers stand to benefit the most.
Key Features:
- Automated recurring invoices and payment reminders
- Integrated time tracking for projects and billing
- Creation of proposals and contracts
- Pay via Stripe, PayPal or credit card and over other payment gateways
- Accountant access and generation of Financial reports
Why Freelancers Love It:
FreshBooks provides a holistic workflow for freelancers beginning from onboarding clients all the way through to invoicing and preparing for taxes. Through the mobile app, freelancers can easily stay on top of tasks track time, or send invoices no matter where they’re located.
6. Relay
Best for: Business banking with organized flexible sub-accounts.
Relay is specially catered for small businesses and freelancers, letting users organize income streams seamlessly. It is a modern banking platform that allows you to manage up to twenty checking accounts. This capability simplifies the management of your income, taxes, savings, and business expenses.
Key Features:
- Order specific accounts to manage income streams (ex: profit, tax, salary, savings)
- Assign spending control debit cards to employees, and contractors
- Automate transaction categorization and bill payment
- Has integrations with QuickBooks, Xero, and Gusto
- International Payments and ACH Transfers
Why Freelancers Love It:
Structure is important when managing cash flow, and for freelancers Relay’s Profit First-style structure helps balance saving, spending and investing effortlessly. Whether it’s saving for taxes, reinvesting for growth, or tracking multiple income sources, Relay provides the tools to accomplish these tasks with ease.
7. Bonsai
Best for: All-in-one contract-to-payment solution for freelancers.
Bonsai focuses on freelancers and consultants. It allows them to create proposals and contracts, along with time tracking, invoicing, and task management. This consolidated platform makes it smooth for users to advance from pitch to payment, removing any possible friction from the process.
Key Features:
- Ready made legal documents for freelance work
- Embedded e-signatures for quick client sign-off
- Automated invoicing includes tax and late fee options
- Project linked time and expense tracking
- Add-ons for tax help and bookkeeping
Why Freelancers Love It:
For freelancers, Bonsai acts like a dedicated business assistant. It handles many of the monotonous admin work such as contracts, invoicing, taxes, and communications which reduces the time spent on non-billable work and automates scaling.
8. Toggl Track
Best for: Tracking time and optimizing productivity
Toggl Track is a powerful time-tracking tool for freelancers who either want to charge by the hour or enhance their productivity. It features both manual and automatic tracking, project tagging, and insightful reports.
Key Features:
- Timers that can be activated with a single click or run in the background
- Custom billing reports at the project level
- Detection of idling and reminders
- Synchronization across devices: desktop, browser, mobile
- Reports that can be exported for billing or personal review
Why Freelancers Love It:
In addition to ensuring that freelancers capture every billable minute, Toggl Track provides usable insights on time inefficiencies to improve workflows and optimize pricing structures.
9. PayPal Business
Best for: Receiving payments from international clients
PayPal continues to be one of the most widely recognized platforms for payment processing. Although it’s not the most economical choice compared to Wise, many clients will prefer PayPal because of its convenience and the trust associated with its brand.
Key Features:
- Business-branded invoices and subscription billing
- Accepts payments from over 200 countries and regions
- Instant withdrawal to U.S. bank accounts (e.g., Mercury or Relay)
- Dispute resolution and purchase protection
- Business debit card to spend funds directly
Why Freelancers Love It:
PayPal helps freelancers ensure that they will always receive payment from clients regardless of where they are based. Its integration with most e-commerce and invoicing platforms makes it a must-have for digital workers.
10. Notion + Finance Templates
Best for: personalized strategic planning and creation of financial dashboards.
Notion serves more than just a note-taking application. Nowadays, freelancers utilize it as a complete business operating system. Through appropriate finance templates, it is possible to manage a monthly income, track client payments, invoices, and even visualize savings milestones.
Key Features:
- Fully customizable dashboards with tables, tags, and progress bars
- Budget planners, invoice logs, and tax organizers
- Embedded task management linked to financial objectives
- Supports integration with Google Sheets, Stripe, and many other applications via API
- Collaborative workspaces for teams or clients
Why Freelancers Love It:
Notion lets you design a bespoke financial tracking solution that works with your workflow. As a minimalist or data-loving freelancer, it adjusts to you as your business develops.
Final thoughts
Keeping track of finances as a freelancer in 2025 means staying organized, no longer optional, now mandatory if you wish to achieve success. The tools above not only help manage money with precision, but also provide the assurance needed to scale a freelance business.
For those starting out or running an established freelance brand, Mercury, Wise, and Relay offer ingenious solutions for smoother financial operations.
Wondering how to establish a U.S. business as a freelancer?
Bizstartz offers:
- Formation of US LLCs for freelancers
- Obtaining an EIN and setting up a business bank account with Mercury or Relay
- Filing BOI, bookkeeping, and other services
👉 Start with Bizstartz Now and ease the process of freelancing for you!
