Whether you are a freelancer or a small/big team, using tools to keep biz-related data under control is usually a good idea for everyone.

SohoOS is an all-in-one application that comes with lots of features for managing a business online.

It is free-to-use and consists of tools like project, document, customers and contact management, communication, invoicing, and more.

Once registered, a friendly dashboard that displays the latest activities, quick links, notes and activities welcomes you (this page can easily become the start page for many users).

Contacts

The first thing would be adding your contacts: contacts, vendors, clients and leads as many other components of the app work integrated with them. They can be imported from the contacts in your e-mail service or from a .CSV file.

For the leads, besides adding them manually, they can be collected with a "contact form widget (named LeadsWidget)" that can be embedded into any web page.

Projects

Any number of projects can be created, tasks and milestones with deadlines can be defined and each of them can be assigned to users.

Users can also attach documents for the project and a progress chart helps viewing if things are performing all ok.

Invoicing & Sales Tools

SohoOS has the features for creating invoices (with a custom look), charging your clients and tracking the process.

Once an invoice is generated, optionally, the payment can be collected by the platform as well via PayPal or credit card (and no merchant account is needed).

Also, you can define the products/services of the business and create/send quotes, sales and purchase orders accordingly.

Documents

For a multi-user environment, managing documents can be hard as they should be reachable by everyone or only some users but should be kept in the same place for an easier access, back up, etc.

The documents module accomplishes all these with ease. Add as much documents as you want to the system, assign them to users or groups and even decide whether they should be available internally or externally.

Communication

This is a premium feature of SohoOS but pretty impressive.

Using the platform, you can make calls, send SMSs, emails and even faxes for a good price by just purchasing credits.

Also, a built-in email client keeps you focused by displaying any incoming e-mails from a given account.

Other Features

Besides these core features, SohoOS offers more like offering ways for improving the visibility of a business by letting them create a landing-page and collect leads or with the "Freelance Area" where businesses can post and get projects.

All sound good? Then you can give this complete and free business management tool a try.

Every designer-developer can have hard times on concentrating to the projects they are working on. Sometimes, it is the project which is not exciting anymore or, sometimes, it is the beautiful weather outside.

I have (recently) met a popular method named "The Pomodoro Technique" that helps me work much more effectively since then. Let;'s hear about it from Wikipedia:

The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method that uses a timer to break down periods of work into 25-minute intervals called 'pomodori' separated by breaks. Closely related to concepts such as timeboxing and iterative and incremental development used in software design, it is based on the idea that frequent breaks can improve mental agility.

To sum up, it helps focusing on a task for a given time, taking breaks and performing this process regularly.

If you need a better concentration to complete that client website or the-next-killer-web-app you are working on, I suggest giving the technique a try.

Here are 5 free Pomodoro technique apps for an easy start:

Focus Booster (Windows, Mac, Linux, Web)

Focus Booster is an app with 2 versions: desktop (Adobe AIR) and web-based.

It has an elegant interface and comes with few settings like changing the session/break length or enable/disable sounds.

Read the rest of this entry »

Joomla, the popular open source CMS, has many components that extend its functionality.

Projectfork is a free component that transforms Joomla into a full-featured project management application.

An unlimited number of projects can be defined with each having unlimited tasks and milestones.

There is an ACL-based permission system where each user is automatically notified about the updates related to them via e-mails.

Also, upcoming tasks can be viewed inside a calendar (the dashboard presents them as well).

Files can be attached to projects and there are per-project discussion boards where every member of the team can share their opinions.

And, a built-in time-tracking system can report you how much time is spent on each task/milestone/project.

Info: This is a review of a paid application.

As a part of a project, knowing your tasks and completing them on time, collaborating with the team members, reaching the necessary documents and analyzing the time/effort spent on a project, using a project management application is definitely a "must". No matter you are a freelancer or a huge team.

AceProject is a professional project management application that can control simple to complex projects pretty easily.

It allows assigning multiple users to a project (each having their own access rights), creating tasks (and task groups for a better categorization), setting the details of the tasks and assigning them to users.

Tasks can have almost every detail you may need where you can decide which ones to use according to the complexity of them, like:

• status, percentage of completion, priority
• estimated completion time
• hours worked
• dependencies with other tasks
  
• and more..

In order to have a snapshot of the project, AceProject can instantly generate Gantt charts and a calendar-view using the data in these tasks.

Documents are an important part of a project and the application manages them very well. Unlimited number of documents can be added, attached to tasks and they can be marked as private or public.

A nice feature is "versioning" of the documents so you'll know who edited the document and reach the past versions. Also, it is possible to "lock" documents to protect them from being edited or deleted.

For a company who charges by hours, timesheet management is very important. AceProject can handle this automatically with the help of a "time clock" where users just push when starting and stopping a task. Rest is handled with the system. And, manual updates are always possible.

As a group of users will be collaborating on the same project, getting notified on actions important for your workflow is necessary. AceProject sends e-mail notifications on such events (a task being assigned, timesheet approved, etc.). Also, it lets you know when a task is "soon due" to help preventing any delays.

There is a built-in per-project-forum to discuss any details and an integrated mailbox to see the messages received from the system and project users.

AceProject comes with many other features including mobile-access for all major smartphones, ability to brand the application, API support for 3rd party product integration and much more.

The project management software has various plans that can meet the requirements of any team. And besides the paid plans, there is a free plan provided which can be enough for a small project team.

P.S. There is also an "Intranet Package" for anyone who wants to install the application to their own servers.

mtrack is an open source application (built with PHP) for controlling a software/web app. project completely.

It has project management, source browser, wiki and issue tracking features which are inspired from the Trac Project.

The application has a flexible issue tracking system with configurable components, priorities, severities and milestones.

It has integration with Subversion, Mercurial and Git (SSH integration with push and pull permissions).

Users can get notified of updates to the code or issues via e-mails. And, a consolidated e-mail system helps minimizing the number of deliveries.

Also, with the API offered, mtrack can be extended/customized further.

The Bug Genie is an open source issue/bug tracking application (built with PHP/MySQL) with project management capabilities.

It was previously shared at WRD in 9 Free And Open Source Bug Tracking Softwares article but improved so much since then and seems like this is a good chance to remind it.

The application now has a very slick, Ajaxed interface where any number of projects>milestones>issues can be created + assigned to users.

Besides the team members, end users can report issues as well which is a very good way of improving an application (access control features lets you define who can see what parts of the project).

A complete project hierarchy is supported including editions, releases and components.

There is an integrated wiki where you can use to create a detailed-documentation on an issue or a how-to for end users.

The Bug Genie supports and integrates with several different version control systems including Subversion, Git (Gitorious and github) and Mercurial.

The application will automatically create updated file lists, issue commit comments, links to diffs and previous revisions and more from your commits.

It is also very flexible with customizable workflows, ability to extend easily with modules, multilanguage support and more.

Info: This is a review of a paid application (free during beta).

Source code management is a "must" for any developer team working on the same project to get updated on any changes made to the code and make sure every change is backed up.

Springloops, the popular source code management platform has released the V2 of their product which is more powerful with a new user interface, Git integration (besides Subversion) and ticketing support.

The files for a project can be imported from a repository or as a zipped file. Also, they can be set as private or public.

The platform is an all-in-one for managing development projects as it has the features of a project management application as well (with milestones and tickets that can be assigned to users).  And, it can integrate tightly with Basecamp.

Springloops has a very detailed knowledgebase that not only helps you get the basics of version control (if you're not experienced with it) but also covers answers to any possible questions regarding the service.

The V2 of the platform is currently in beta status and free-to-use with unlimited projects until it is out of beta. Simply, a good chance to give the service a try.

Hub List is an open source to-do list application that works on the desktop.

It has versions for Windows, Mac OS X + Linux and a mobile one that mostly targets the iOS platform.

The application supports creating folders>sub-folders and tasks>sub-tasks for an unlimited hierarchy.

Hub List is currently in beta status and working on impressive features like auto-synchronize data to any private cloud, collaboration and importing-exporting data.

Vermis is an open source application, built with PHP-MySQL, for tracking issues and managing projects effectively.

It is focused on software/web development projects and aims to improve the quality of code, efficiency and speed of development.

Once a project is started, you can add developers, project leaders and observers. Each of them can create + assign issues and comment on the project.

There are several issue types: task, bug, feature, improvement and refactoring to better define each entry.

Users get notified of any updates made to issues via automatically sent e-mails and every issue has a status, priority and graphical progress bar to easily see a snapshot of it.

The application is also multilingual and there are already few ready-to-use translations.

Ofuz is an open source application (also comes as a paid/hosted service) that aims to control the full business cycle for teams, freelancers or service providers.

It has powerful contact management features as contacts can be imported from almost anywhere, Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, etc.

Contacts can be categorized with tags and notes or e-mails can be attached to them.

Team members and/or customers can be invited to share files and emails, join discussions and get things done.

The time worked on projects can be tracked and timesheets/reports per customer/project/team member can be generated.

Ofuz also enables you to create invoices that will be sent for once or every selected period automatically (recurring).

And, with the web forms feature, you can grab leads from your website + send personalized mailings to your users.

The application is multilingual, has a REST API to integrate with any other tool and built with PHP/MySQL.