One of the biggest challenges a small business, freelancer, or consultant typically faces is accurately tracking their time and billing. FreshBooks offers a painless way to manage this process from your initial estimate on through to accepting your payment. With a thoughtful interface and rich feature set, FreshBooks tracks your time, sends and manages invoices (by mail or email), tracks payments, sends out late notices, and much more.

As unlikely as you are to need it, FreshBooks also has the best Customer Service team I have ever interacted with. Their phone number is prominently displayed on their home page and they seem genuinely happy when you use it. This is a team that loves their product and wants nothing more than for it to work well for you - and in my experience it will.

Sometimes the best technology solutions don’t require a computer. Web Design in a Nutshell is a Quick Reference Guide covering all things related to web design, web standards, CSS and more. Extremely well written and organized, there is a ton of information here. The appendices also contain really useful lists of HTML elements and CSS Properties for quick lookups on usage and syntax.

This book is the first I reach for when faced with a new design challenge or a problem I can’t resolve (as evidenced by it’s dog-eared, sticky-noted, heavily marked-up condition). I would say it is required, but at the least it is very highly recommended.

Finding the perfect web based task management software has been an elusive goal - that is until I found Toodledo. Organize your tasks by folders, due-dates, priorities, tags and more. If GTD is your thing, support for contexts and other GTD methodologies is superb, but it also works extremely well for those with alternative processes.

Honestly, far too many features and options to mention here. Developer Jake Olefsky updates frequently (Yay for new subfolders and subtasks!!) and is really responsive to user requests. Be sure to head over to the unofficial user forums for help to get you started.

A free package is available but for a very reasonable $14.95 a year, you get PRO and access to some great additional features.

We all know that using keyboard shortcuts can be a huge time saver, but learning and remembering them can be a challenge. To the rescue is KeyXL, a huge online repository of keyboard shortcuts. Searchable by program as well as operating environment, KeyXL is a great place to visit when you are ready to lose your mouse and move to the next level of productivity.

As a challenge to TechFires readers, I suggest you choose the one application that you use most frequently and make it a point to learn something new about that program each day - just one thing is enough. Individual time-saving actions may not seem significant but collectively they can mean minutes or even hours of “free” time in your day.

Finding just the right color combination for your web projects can be a challenge. With Combotester you can easily test color pairings as well as access a substantial library of preselected combinations. It works great for collaborative design sessions and options allow you to quickly generate a link or image to share.