For a long time, we've been fans of FinTech startup Kontist's business account, which is specifically tailored to the needs of freelancers and includes many useful features such as accounting and invoicing integrations.
Independeskist das AirBnB der Arbeitswelt – das Berliner Startup bietet freie Schreibtische in der Nachbarschaft als Alternative zum Homeoffice an, die stunden- und tageweise gebucht werden können. Der Gründer Karsten Kossatz erklärt uns, wie independesk das remote Arbeiten besser macht.
Time and again we observe lively discussions in our Slack about the best freelancing tools. The range of tools for accounting, invoicing, or tracking your expenses and time is constantly growing. Many services try to cover the whole range of possibilities. The solutions can often be used by solo entrepreneurs, start-ups and also corporate organisations. However, the issue here is that those tools quickly become overloaded, like huge management tools.
We are very excited to announce our cooperation with DBITS (Deutscher Bundesverband Informationstechnologie für Selbständige e.V.) and thereby to be able to represent our members' interests even better by working on common topics.
Die Nemensis ist eigentlich ein etablierter Dienstleister und seit 2007 am Schweizer Markt. In diesem Jahr haben wir die bis dahin brach liegende Nemensis Deutschland neu aufleben lassen. Da wir beide schon mehrere Jahre bei etablierten Dienstleistern in der Projektvermittlung tätig waren, kennen wir den deutschen IT-Projektmarkt sehr gut. Allerdings wissen wir auch, was alles nicht so gut läuft: Intransparentes Arbeiten, haltlose Zusagen, keine Verbindlichkeit oder unpersönliche Zusammenarbeit. Da wir dies schon immer anders gelebt haben, setzen wir unsere Werte konsequent um – zum Vorteil von Freelancern und Kunden.
tl;dr - Nemensis is the first of our partners who will be able use our system to publish jobs in our community, and interview and introduce freelancers to their own clients.
Update September 16, 2020 - We changed our pricing model slightly and will charge the 3% fee, which we initially planned to charge to the recruiter, to the candidate instead. Also, after feedback from the community, we changed the term "middleman" everywhere (including the new Slack channel names) to "recruiter". Let's call a spade a spade. 😉
Time and again we have noticed in conversations with our freelancers that there is a high demand for an English-speaking accounting solution with which you can easily complete your tax return afterwards. Therefore, we have decided to get another partner in the area of accounting software on board, and Accountable convinced us with their target group specific concept.
We are happy to reactivate our cooperation with the Berlin-based FinTech startup Kontist. We are still big fans of their business bank account designed for freelancers! Nowadays they're offering even more and help you to stay on top of your business with real-time tax calculation, accounting integrations, and much more.
Recently we have noticed several discussions about accounting topics in our community.
The duties of a self-employed person include, besides the actual core project business, project acquisition as well as a variety of different administrative tasks such as accounting and taxes. For many freelancers, the accounting tasks are some of their least favorite ones. The simplest solution is, of course, to outsource the entire work to a tax consultant. However, if the tax consultant takes over all accounting tasks, you can expect relatively high costs. Thus a more pragmatic solution is to handle the preparatory accounting tasks yourself with the help of one of the various cloud-based accounting programs, and afterwards have it audited by a tax consultant.
There is hardly a market that is as intransparent and saturated as the insurance market. If you google "insurance for freelancers", you'll get 1.040.000 results in 0.42 seconds. Here you can see how confusing and enormous the market for insurance services is. The times in which a few large insurance providers dominated the market are over - more and more founders are starting to change this traditional market and "InsurTech" startups such as ottonova and Friendsurance are sprouting. One of these startups is our partner Exali, an insurance broker that offers custom-made insurance plans for freelancers.