A few weeks ago, a friend of mine gave me one of those personality tests that tells you what “color” you are: blue, green, gold, or orange. Well, let’s just say I scored high on the side of lists and all things organizational. As such, you can only imagine how thrilled I was when I heard of Filemaker’s ridiculously detailed database software application Bento 3. Named after those Japanese Bento boxes that compartmentalize food, Bento (the software) puts all your information where it should be—heck, it was almost too much organization for me!

Almost, I said. Almost.

For the home business types, of which freelancers most definitely are, Bento 3 can quite literally do it all. Library templates already exist for business-related categories such as Contacts, Projects, Expenses; there’s even an Hourly Billing template. There’s a template exchange as well, just in case you can’t quite do what you need with one of the provided libraries, or you can choose “Blank” and make your own. You can even customize the libraries or templates that are pre-made to include any info you need. Also, aside from all the business aspects of Bento, users can keep track of their medical history, catalog their home entertainment, or take care of virtually anything in their lives via a list.

Now, with the iPhone and iPad, Bento 3 is even more of a wise investment, as it’s now possible to easily sync your stuff from your home computer to your phone to your iPad to … well … you get the picture. Not only can you do just about anything with Bento 3, you can be just about anywhere when you do it. Instead of dozens of one-off apps that focus on a single task, here you’ve got one easy to use app that keeps everything in one accessible spot.

There are some flaws, to be sure. Formatting of text, etc., is limited if non-existent, and if you’re hoping for an elaborate database with intricate calculation possibilities, I’d suggest looking elsewhere. For freelancers, though, Bento 3 is an affordable solution to all the organizational tasks that tend to slow down our actual workday.