SCREENish

The time tracking with screenshots software is a perfect way to remotely control all your projects. Its various adjustable features will help you organize your projects, workforce and simplify your accounting. SCREENish time tracking with screenshots app and android GPS and time tracking app will give you the opportunity to effectively lead and monitor your workforce.

Further reading: Improve Your Project Management With Time Tracking

Trello

Trello is an easy to use and intuitive organizational virtual board. It will help you keep everyone update and improve the collaboration in your team. It will allow you to organize and prioritize projects, tasks, and ideas, helping all your team members to be on track.

Slack

Slack is a messaging app for teams that will improve the communication. It allows the creation of private and direct channels, file sharing, and direct messaging. Including the option to create calls and synchronization with Google Drive, Box and Dropbox make it extremely helpful for team communication.

G-Suite

Google’s G-Suit allows collaboration like no other. Almost all your team’s work can be done with the G-Suite. You can work on your computer, phone or tablet. You can store, collaborate, communicate and manage your project and team.

Dropbox

Dropbox is a file sharing platform, where you can selectively share files with your team members. You can access and share files from virtually anywhere, and only the members of your team with permission can use them. You can work on slides together and everyone will get the update automatically.

Further reading:
3 Invaluable Tips For Managing Remote Workers
4 Best Leadership Practices

These 5 collaboration tools are ideal for managing and sharing with your remote team and control all your undertaken projects. They will improve the communication and collaboration between you and the team members. Which tools do you use to collaborate with your team?

That being said, it is known that UpWork‘s useful tool for both freelancers and their clients was exactly the opportunity to track the working hours as evidence for the payment required.

For freelancers, it will be extremely easy to substitute the freelance website UpWork‘s app with SCREENish‘ time tracking software. Why?

UpWork‘s time tracking software allowed the freelancers to pick an employer, a project and start tracking their hours, with the app taking screenshots every now and then, also recording their keyboard/mouse activity, storing all info on their website in a work diary menu.

The Software

As an employee/freelancer with SCREENish, you can again choose between multiple employers and projects in the highly intuitive time tracking app.

SCREENish is also an app that allows time tracking with screenshots and records the activity levels of your mouse/keyboards.

With SCREENish, you can set notes for each working cycle as the time tracking app will remind you to update your information, as often as you have set it to, while you work on your project.

The Worklog

The information recorded from the time tracking software is simultaneously uploaded the in the SCREENish database, accessible only to the freelancer and the employer.

Using the worklog menu on the website of SCREENish you can access your tracked activities.

SCREENish holds a record of your working hours, where it allows the freelancer to edit them, also see how much hours have they worked on which project, monthly, weekly and daily.

The Employers

Furthermore, the employer can set hourly rates and weekly limits for each hired freelancer.

The employer can create projects, add their objective and form teams, using the project panel.

The website also offers an accounting option, which summarizes the working hours of the chosen employee for selected time period and calculates the payment based on the hourly rates and recorded time in the timesheets.

SCREENish also presents the employer with a weekly graph, where the overall performance of the team is presented.

The Advantage

A huge plus is, SCREENish time tracking software is free for use for freelancers, while there is a small monthly fee for employers and the more people an employer has the better price we can offer.

You can check SCREENish‘ full options in here.

Our team is constantly improving the services of the app and website to make it even more convenient than it already is. Why don’t you try SCREENish? You get a 10 free trial, no credit card info required! If you have any questions, use the contact form and we will provide you with an answer shortly.

Regards,
SCREENish Team.

The Newest UpWork Pricing Policy Update

Now, just a little while after the first announcement, UpWork sent a new message to its users, promising their policy will not take effect over the old contracts, only new ones. Furthermore, the day of change has been postponed to 21st of June. Now, according to the last letter, a freelancers fee will not change for old contracts, only for those signed after June 21st, however, if the old contract reaches the $500 the fee will be according to the new policy. At first look, it seems okay, but question is, how many lifelong contracts are there on the website?

Sooner or later the contract will be over, the job will be done and freelancers will again pay 25% in UpWork taxes. Lucky will only be a few people with contracts above $10,000 and not forever. Clients’ new pricing has not changed and they will continue to pay 2.75% per-transaction fee unless they are from a specific country.  This only serves to prove that even with the newest pricing policy update, there are not actual lasting changes that can be beneficial for the freelance community. It simply just delays the inevitable.

The Freelance Community

We could only guess the freelance platform owners got scared of the weave of leavers, who publicly denounced the website. We could point that and the fact that it has been a significant drop in numbers of the job opportunities posted in the UpWork feed, especially the last weeks. After many have accused UpWork of ripping freelancers and employers the internet is now flooded with commercials of upcoming or older websites promising their users a fair system.  Another future solution many have taken into consideration is the usage of a time tracking software to keep record of work hours and continue their relationship with  clients.

The Future Of Freelancing

The newest fee changes of UpWork may be tempting for the old users of the website, yet will repel any new aspiring talents to offer their services using that exact platform. Inevitably it is highly unlikely those who have left to return to the website, as the previous declaration forever branded UpWork as a website who does not care for it users, be it freelancers or employers.

The Conclusion

Once a great platform, which gave amazing opportunities, UpWork is now causing a great deal of changes on the freelance market. The user migration has started and the newest change will not be able to stop that. The monopole over the freelance marker is no longer in the hands of UpWork, unless they yet again decide to make a fee change that cancels the change. Anyhow, the past events have won UpWork a bad name over the internet, and there is no cure for that. It is up to the freelance community to either choose to keep up with the insane pricing or search for better solutions like time tracking software or other freelance platforms.