Best Freelance Management Systems for Efficient Workflow in 2024

A Freelance Management System (FMS) is a software application that enables businesses to easily manage transactions with their contingent workers, like freelancers and independent contractors, who are not employees.

Companies are increasingly hiring contract workers due to the model’s flexibility and cost benefits. Workers are also attracted to freelancing for the flexibility and freedom it offers. Processes and legal regulations for contract hires differ from those of regular employees. As a result, businesses need purpose-built FMS solutions to manage freelancers.

An FMS helps companies in many ways. Some of the benefits are streamlined processes, improved efficiency, verifiable compliance with regulations, and a better freelancer experience.

Geekflare team has researched and evaluated dozens of FMS software applications based on their features, ease of use, pricing, and ROI. We have listed these applications along with their pros, cons, best-fit customer segments, and most effective use cases.

• WorkMarket – All-In-One Contractor and Freelancer Management
• TalentDesk – Manage Global Freelance Workforce
• Bonsai – Best for Consulting Company
• Deel Contractor – Automate Onboarding and Contractors Payments
• WorkSuite – Best for Larger Businesses
• Worksome – Best for Contractor Workforce
• Remote.com – Best to Pay Global Contractors
• Upwork Enterprise – Best to Hire Talents
• Fiverr Enterprise – Outsource Hiring and Payments
• Show moreShow less

WorkMarket

WorkMarket is an all-in-one platform for managing independent contractors and freelancers. It includes features for worker verification and onboarding, talent sourcing, work management, payments, and compliance support. At the same time, it has a modular design that enables great flexibility for customization.

WorkMarket Features

• Verification and Onboarding: Automated workflows, automated verification of US tax IDs, W-9s, bank accounts, background checks, onboarding progress tracking, and bulk upload of contractor profiles for onboarding
• Sourcing and Organizing Freelancers: Shareable branded recruiting page, create “Labor Clouds” based on criteria covering skill sets, location, licenses, background checks, and more; send work opportunities to labor clouds or choose talents from them
• Work Management: Automated workflows, track all work assignments in a single view, worker performance rating, open APIs for integration to other work/project management tools
• Payments: Automatic invoice generation upon work approval, bulk payments, multiple payment methods, including international payments, analytics about contractor spending and usage, and open APIs for integration into other payment systems
• Compliance Support: 1099-NEC forms e-filing, centralized repo for all documents, including NDAs, licenses, certifications, contractor agreements, and invoice audit trails
• Automation: Custom automation rules spanning multiple integrated business apps, bulk data downloads and uploads
• Mobile app for workers: Onboarding, real-time communication with clients via SMS, uploading deliverables such as photos and documents, check-in and check-out for accurate time tracking, expense management, submitting work for approval, automated invoice generation

WorkMarket Pricing

Contact Sales for a custom quote.

Try WorkMarket

TalentDesk

TalentDesk is an end-to-end FMS solution enhanced with services for payment automation and global compliance.

TalentDesk Features

• Onboarding: Automated and tailored onboarding workflows, custom onboarding forms, documents e-signing and collection, optional Agent of Record (AOR) services
• Sourcing: Build custom freelancer directory, search and filter based on multiple fields, profile snapshots of filtered results, reviews and private notes in profiles, free access to hiring from TalentMarket freelancer marketplace
• Work Management: Multiple assignees to tasks, task checklists, task attachments, progress and budget tracking, task level budget caps, global messaging hub for collaboration, attach NDAs, SoWs, etc. to tasks, time logging for tasks
• Payments: Approve, reject, or amend timesheets or worksheets, single consolidated invoice that includes all contractor payments, granular breakdown of the invoice, choice of frequency and currency for payments, covers 55+ currencies and 190+ countries, parent/child organization to support multiple entities and subsidiaries
• Compliance: E-signing of documents, 1099 e-filing, optional Agent of Record (AOR) services, KYC verification, anti-money laundering (AML) checks, safekeeping of contracts and other legal docs
• Ready integrations with major accounting tools, including Oracle Netsuite, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Intuit Quickbooks, Xero, Freshbooks, and Zoho Books
• Open APIs for custom integrations

TalentDesk Pricing

TalentDesk pricing plans start at $450 per month. Payments and compliance modules are charged separately with custom pricing.

Explore TalentDesk

Bonsai

Bonsai is an end-to-end business management platform for agencies, consultancies, small businesses offering professional services, and freelancers. It contains a rich set of tools and features for client, project, and financial management.

Bonsai Features

Client Management

• CRM: Multiple contacts per client, notes log, automated workflows, pipeline tracking, tags, file attachments, dedicated client portals for sharing files, important updates, invoices, contracts, and more
• Proposals: Add single or multiple package options to proposals, white labeling, seen receipts, client e-approval, templates for proposals and quotes
• Contracts: Legally vetted templates, e-signing, seen receipts, client reminders, deposit capture
• Scheduling: Booking page, calendar integration, payment capture, multiple event types, white labeling, meeting reminders
• Form Builder: Integrated with CRM – easily link to clients and projects, white labeling, flexible fields, embed forms to websites

Project Management

• Task Management: Kanban view, Gantt chart, custom statuses, add planned hours and deadlines, task templates, recurring tasks, custom fields, budget tracking
• Time Tracking: In-app timer, task timer, billable and non-billable hours, timesheets, timesheet locking, set rates according to team roles
• Resource Management: Set capacity rates, allocate team hours, log time off, project reports for tracking, see utilization, profitability, and time reports for each team member

Financial Management

• Budgeting: Fee and time-based budgets, recurring budgets, budget warning notifications, budget reports for visibility across projects, set cost and billing rates for team members, profitability reports across clients
• Invoicing: Professional invoices with white labeling, add multiple payment options, recurring invoices, set up payment reminders, seen receipts, add late fees
• Reports: CSV export, profitability reports (projects and clients), team member utilization reports, activity reports (time spent across projects), project reports (schedule, budget utilization, billed time in a single view), profitability forecasts for projects, visualize per project, client, and more
• Expenses: Automated expense tracking and categorization for maximizing tax write-offs, monthly profit and loss reports, tax templates, and tax payment reminders with estimates
• Receiving Payments: Get paid via credit card or bank deposit in 100+ currencies, option of upfront deposit, recurring billing, or a one-time invoice, fully integrated with QuickBooks Online and Xero for syncing paid invoices

Bonsai Pricing

Bonsai offers a free, full-featured trial for seven days. It has four tiers of paid plans, starting at $9/user/month.

Try Bonsai

Deel Contractor

Deel Contractor facilitates the automation and streamlining of compliance, payments, and HR operations related to contractors for businesses. It covers contractors in 150 countries.

Deel Contractor Features

• Compliance: Create, send, and sign locally compliant agreements, documents collection, up-to-date contacts, AI-powered tool for assisting with classification, automatic flagging of changes in local labor laws, tax laws, and possible compliance issues along with a recommended action plan, Employer of Record and Contractor of Record services
• Payments: Instant, digital invoices after each payment, integration with popular accounting tools including QuickBooks, Xero, and NetSuite, bulk payments, 15 payment options including Crypto, Wise, Revolut, and more, Deel Card
• HR: Automation of onboarding – background checks, provisioning equipment and app access, emails; self-service HR platform for uploading documents, tracking payments, managing time off and expenses, getting tax help, and more
• Open APIs and out-of-the-box integrations

Deel Contractor Pricing

Deel Contractor pricing starts at $49/month. Contact Sales for a custom quote.

Try Deel Contractor

WorkSuite

WorkSuite is an all-inclusive platform that handles every aspect of freelancer engagement, from identifying the right freelancers for projects and tasks and project management to payments and legal compliance.

Apart from an FMS, WorkSuite includes two more products — Global Engage and Global Pay. Global Engage handles international contractor hiring in compliance with local laws. Global Pay makes it easy to pay freelancers wherever they are located, supporting 190+ countries and 120+ currencies.

WorkSuite Features

• Freelancer Sourcing: Custom talent pools/groups, advanced search, add private notes to profiles, custom profile templates, visibility into available freelancers, get availability updates from freelancers through SMS, share public or private links to requisitions with partners and suppliers, internal job boards
• Onboarding and Compliance: Custom onboarding workflows, background checks, information collection, tracking of onboarding progress
• Work Management: Live project overview with insights into assigned contractors, status updates, task completion, budgets, and payments; assign, track, review, and approve tasks in a single neatly-designed record; SoW generation; time, expense, and payments tracking and approval
• Invoice Management: Freelancers can create invoices within the portal, invoice tracking, invoice approval, match contracts to invoices, approval routing, and tracking for multi-tiered approvals
• Global Engage: Covers about 190 countries, background screening and information gathering to ensure compliance with local laws, automated ID and documents verification, contracts tailored to local labor laws, contractor classification, certification of compliance, and warranty of up to $25,000 against any government fines or penalties in relation to the issued classification
• Global Pay: Covers about 190 countries and supports 120+ currencies, automated generation, mailing, and e-filing of US tax forms

WorkSuite Pricing

WorkSuite offers three subscription plans, ideal for SMEs, corporate teams, and enterprise teams, for which one needs to contact Sale.

Try WorkSuite

Worksome

Worksome is a freelancer management solution that was founded in 2017 in Copenhagen, Denmark. It supports omni-channel sourcing, compliance and contracting, payments, and analytics and reporting.

Worksome Features

• Omni-Channel Sourcing: Job broadcasting to marketplace and talent platforms, and suppliers among Worksome’s partners, automated skill matching, creating private talent pools, automated workflows for quick approvals and processing
• Compliance and Contracting: Built-in global classification tool, misclassification indemnification, auto-populated classification, and tax information in contracts, global background screening, automated contracts with tax and legal compliance, digital signatures, audit-ready repository of legal documents, document library maintenance
• Payments: Weekly invoices, payment factoring, Employer of Record and Agent of Record services, simplified overview of invoices, clear payment visibility, including bank account details
• Reporting: Budget tracking, out-of-the-box reports for time-to-value, rates/fees tracking, location, hours worked, billing, payments, talent pool usage, cost by channel, and more, open APIs to export data

Worksome Pricing

Contact Sales for a custom quote for your needs.

Try Worksome

Remote.com

Remote.com Contractor Management software helps businesses manage onboarding, compliance, time tracking, invoicing, and global payments for contractors and freelancers.

Remote Contractor Management is part of Remote’s suite of products, which also includes software solutions for payroll, employer of record, HR management, jobs board, and global equity compensation.

Remote Contractor Management Features

• Onboarding: Automated 5-step onboarding process that includes information and document collection, compliance checks, contract signing, custom information fields, onboarding progress tracking
• Time Tracking: Option of adding time-in and time-out or adding hours manually, adding notes to relate logged time with specific projects, timesheet review and approval, timesheets saved for compliance, visibility into upcoming contractor availability
• Invoicing: Invoice creation tool for contractors, recurring invoices, employer-initiated invoices, consolidated view of invoices for approval/rejection, batch process multiple invoices, pay multiple contractors with one receipt
• Payments: Choice of currency for both employers and contractors, payment tracking, multiple payment options based on country, including fast bank transfers in local currency
• Compliance: Localized contractor agreements, indemnity coverage (add-on), updates about labor law changes worldwide
• Integrations: APIs for custom integrations, Zapier integrations, and out-of-the-box integrations with HR and accounting tools, including Bamboo HR, WorkDay, and Xero
• Mobile app for employers and contractors on iOS and Android

Remote Contractor Management Pricing

Remote Contractor Management costs $29/contractor/month, but the price increases to $99/contractor/month if misclassification indemnity protection is added.

Try Remote.com

Upwork Enterprise

Upwork, considered the top global marketplace for freelance talent, offers a solution tailored for businesses that work with a large number of freelancers: Upwork Enterprise. Upwork Enterprise is a unified platform with support for talent hiring, onboarding, compliance, collaboration, invoicing, and payments.

Upwork Enterprise Features

• Talent Hiring: Access to Upwork’s vast talent pool of freelancers and agencies offering 10,000+ skills, support from Upwork staff to find and shortlist talent, expert-vetted talent, talent profiles including reviews, job success scores, and badges, invite known talent to Upwork
• Onboarding: Customize onboarding plans, including contracts and agreements, onboarding tracking
• Collaboration: Message talent, share files, schedule meetings
• Compliance: Classification services, assistance with onboarding workflows
• Billing: Monthly invoice for all transactions, the break-up of invoices by team or other custom fields, add up to four approvers for job offers to maintain control over spending
• Security: ID-verified talent, multi-factor authentication, SSO, custom session timeouts, HTTPS and HSTS over transit, malware and spam protection, continuous security scanning, 24/7 support
• Reporting: Full visibility into cost and spend, data access permissions
• Managed services with full responsibility for building programs and delivering projects
• Employer of Record services (Upwork Payroll)
• Dedicated account team for end-to-end support

Upwork Enterprise Pricing

Contact Upwork for a custom quote.

Try Upwork Enterprise

Fiverr Enterprise

Fiverr Enterprise is a freelance management system from Fiverr, a popular freelancer marketplace. Fiverr Enterprise covers hiring, onboarding, payments, compliance, and reporting.

Fiverr Enterprise Features

• Hiring: Fiverr experts come up with 2 to 6 freelancer profiles based on JD in 48 to 72 hours, draft JD with Gen AI, pre-selected list of talents that are immediately available for self-sourcing, filter freelance talent by skills, language, location, colleague reviews, and rates
• Onboarding: Automated e-signing of legal and tax docs, custom fields in freelancer profiles, onboarding progress tracking
• Budget Tracking: Full visibility into budget spending details, organize budgets by department, hiring manager, individual job, or team lead, simplified overview for review and approval of budget requests
• Payments: Single, consolidated, monthly invoice for all payments, automated payments to freelancers at agreed-upon milestones, invoice breakdown by spend, PO, and cost center, supports payment to freelancers under various terms – hourly, fixed, project or milestone, 7 different payment methods, covers 190 countries and 80 currencies
• Compliance: Legal and tax docs safekeeping, doc expiry alerts, full responsibility for tax compliance – collecting tax forms from freelancers and submitting reports to authorities, automated workforce classification audits
• Reporting: Reports on workers’ activity, jobs, payments, set up custom reports, share report links, and download as CSVs
• No-code automation of workflows upon activated triggers
• APIs for custom integrations

Fiverr Enterprise Pricing

Fiverr Enterprise charges a percentage of the monthly spend on freelancers. Contact Fiverr to discuss pricing for your needs.

Try Fiverr Enterprise

What is a Freelance Management System (FMS)?

A Freelance Management System (FMS) is a software application that enables businesses to easily manage transactions with contingent workers, such as freelancers and independent contractors, who are not employees. FMSs provide a platform to manage everything related to freelancer engagements in a single place.

Processes and legal regulations for contract hires differ from those of regular employees. Moreover, an overwhelming majority of freelancers in the digital economy are remote workers worldwide. These factors throw up a unique set of challenges in managing freelancers and independent contractors. As a result, businesses need purpose-built FMS solutions to manage freelancers.

Freelance Management software addresses the challenges by facilitating the following aspects of freelancer engagement: freelancer onboarding that includes ID verification and background checks, storing and organizing freelancer-related information, compliance with local labor laws and tax regimes at the freelancer’s location, invoicing, and global payments.

Some FMSes also offer access to talent marketplaces for hiring, project/task management features, time tracking, and collaboration tools. In addition, most FMSes include reporting features to monitor freelancer activity, availability, performance, and budget spending.

Why Should Businesses Use FMS to Manage Freelancers and Contractors?

The following are the key benefits of using an FMS.

• Easy onboarding through services for ID verification and background checks, automated workflows, and onboarding progress tracking
• Document and Contract Management with support for e-signing and safekeeping of documents and contracts
• Reduced workloads on internal teams through process streamlining, automated workflows, and outsourcing of tasks like ID verification, background checks, and international payments
• Outsourced payments to freelancers in the currency and payment method of their choice
• Reduced compliance risk with services for worker classification, tax filing, agent of record, and employer of record
• Happy freelancers through prompt and hassle-free payments in the currency and payment method of their choice and automated verification and contracting

How to Choose the Right Freelance Management System?

The choice of the right freelance management platform depends on the following considerations.

Business Size

Consider how many freelancers you need, how frequently, and how long each contract or job typically lasts. Look for the vendors that offer the best deals for your requirements.

Actual Requirement

Identify the aspects of freelancer management you need the most help with from among the lifecycle stages between hiring and payment. Then, narrow down the FMS options by identifying the solutions that excel in that aspect/s.

If hiring is your biggest concern, the best choices would be solutions built on popular talent marketplaces like Upwork and Fiverr.

If you are looking for flexible and convenient options to pay your global contingent workforce, consider Remote.com, Deel Contractor, and TalentDesk.

If your primary need is a solution that protects you from compliance troubles, you might want to choose between Deel Contractor, WorkSuite, Worksome, and Remote.com.

If you want an end-to-end, unified solution, the best options would be WorkMarket, TalentDesk, WorkSuite, and Upwork Enterprise.

Budget

As with any purchasing decision, your budget is an important consideration that should influence your choice of FMS.

Specific Industry Requirements

Some industries may have unique requirements and challenges that may restrict the options to those products that address these requirements.

Final Words

Freelance Management Systems are software applications that help businesses to handle engagements with freelancers and independent contractors. They include tailor-made features to facilitate requirements like compliance with local labor laws and taxation rules, international payments, ID verification and background checks, and invoice management. Some products offer all-inclusive features ranging from hiring to payments, including project management and advanced analytics.

Understanding a product’s features, pros/cons, and primarily targeted use cases helps decide the FMS best suited to an organization’s needs.

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