Topics:
Tech,
Startup,
Business Management
Services:
Accounting,
Online Accounting
When you’re running your business, it’s easy to feel like there’s never enough time in the day. Luckily, there are now a wide range of tools available to help you scale your effort, insight and information.
Today, apps aren’t just for huge businesses running vast organisations – many are focused precisely on the needs of everyday business owners. But picking and prioritising the right tools can be a headache.
The goal of technology is to streamline operations, automate tedious tasks, and free up valuable time to focus on what truly matters: growing your business. However, choosing a too many tech tools that don't integrate or work efficiently for you, or you have 'shiny object syndrome', can leave you with more to do; not less.
We've compiled this guide to provide a shortcut to the top apps that can significantly impact your business for the better.
1. Streamline your financial management to focus on profit
Forgive an accounting firm for starting with the numbers, but a solid financial foundation is truly a non-negotiable. Understanding what you’re making and spending – and whether it’s working for you is the first step to making better decisions.
This starts with accurate, efficient tracking of income and expenses, efficient invoicing, and reliable payroll processing so you can manage your cash flow and spend smarter.
Xero
A comprehensive cloud accounting platform serves as your financial nerve centre, with the ability to add-on tools as needed, such as payroll. We’ve found Xero to be the easiest option for managing invoices, expenses, bank reconciliation, and financial reporting.
Dext
Once you’ve got your ledger online, it’s time to streamline getting data into it. Dext is the leading expense management tool, making it simple to capture receipts and invoices digitally, automating data extraction, and integrating with accounting software.
Read more about finance software in our previous blog here
2. Make getting paid easier
Getting paid quickly and efficiently is the core of maintaining a healthy cash flow and keeping your books balanced. Many payment tools can offer various payment options, automate recurring billing, and provide extra secure transaction processing.
Stripe
One of the leading online payment platforms, Stripe helps you accept credit and debit cards, manage subscriptions, and process various payment methods according to your customers’ needs.
GoCardless
For regular, recurring payments, like subscriptions or retainers, GoCardless can remove the guesswork, making it easy to set up direct debits that keep payments coming in
There are various subscription levels in each offering at different price points, which unlock extra features such as advanced reporting. The version that you need will depend on your business.
3. Use tech to make your customer relationships work better
Good customer relationships don’t just happen on their own – they need nurturing. And that starts with understanding who your customers are and what they need. The right tools can help understand your customers better, personalise your interactions, and make interactions smoother.
HubSpot
A comprehensive CRM platform, Hubspot helps you manage contacts, email marketing automation, track sales performance and scale your audience. With hundreds of integrations, it helps pull data into one place to streamline your operations. HubSpot’s starter bundle is built for small businesses, it’s got all the tools your need in one place, from building quotes and invoicing, to customer service management, landing pages, and much more.
Calendly
Calendly is a simple appointment scheduling tool for allowing clients to book appointments online without the email tennis back and forth.
Zendesk
Managing support queries and customer questions through email can be time consuming and it’s easy to fall behind. Zendesk helps you centralise your queries and track outstanding work from a single place.
4. Power up your online presence
Your digital presence is a key part of your business’ appeal. A professional website and brand not only build trust but also showcases your products and services – especially when combined with an effective e-commerce solution.
Squarespace
Build a tailored, professional website easily without any coding experience, with a range of prebuilt tools and themes on Squarespace.
Shopify
If you’re selling online, Shopify helps you manage and grow your online audience with an easy shopping experience.
Canva
Create a brand and visual identity you are proud of, an easy-to-use tool for creating engaging social media posts, marketing materials, and other visual content without the need for any design expertise on Canva.
5. Stay on top of your work
Effective project management is crucial for delivering projects on time and within budget, especially when juggling multiple responsibilities within a team. Choosing one of these project management tools can help you organise tasks, collaborate with your team, track progress, and keep things moving forward.
Asana
Asana works as a project management tool for creating tasks, assigning responsibilities, tracking progress, and collaborating with team members.
Trello
One for the visual among you, Trello is a workboard-style project management tool for visualising workflows, managing tasks, and collaborating on projects.
Notion
Notion enhances team collaboration by providing shared workspaces where team members can collaborate on projects, share information, and track progress in real-time. Features like comments, mentions, task assignments, and notifications streamline communication and ensure everyone stays on the same page. Integrations with popular communication and productivity tools further enhance collaboration and workflow efficiency.
6. Streamline your HR management
Managing a team requires a lot of admin on the back end – by making onboarding, payroll, and benefits administration simpler, you can free up valuable time and resources. Here are some options to look into:
HiBob
HiBob is an intuitive HR platform that simplifies managing employee data, payroll, benefits, and performance reviews across your team.
Gusto
Gusto offers a cloud-based payroll and benefits solution tailored for small businesses, to ensure employees get paid on time with minimal fuss.
BreatheHR
BreatheHR provides comprehensive HR software designed to manage employee leave, absences and other HR tasks, so you can easily track your team’s availability.
7. Accelerating agreements with secure e-signatures
Waiting for physical signatures creates unnecessary delays – and could even lead to missing out on a deal. Secure e-signature solutions allow you to quickly source signatures on contracts and agreements, helping you close deals faster. These are the two best-in-class options to check out:
DocuSign
DocuSign is a leading e-signature platform that enables you to sign and manage documents online with confidence, notifying all parties of document status.
PandaDoc
A similar tool, PandaDoc combines document automation with built-in e-signature capabilities, making it easy to create, send, and track your documents.
8. Secure your business with robust password management
Managing a multitude of passwords can be overwhelming and pose a significant security risk in an era of growing cybersecurity risk. One of the most effective ways to safeguard your business is by securing your passwords – password management tools make it easier to use strong, unique passwords across your organisation without the need to remember complex words and phrases.
LastPass
If you struggle remembering your passwords, LastPass is a popular password management tool that securely stores and manages your passwords, ready to use.
1Password
1Password offers a streamlined solution for individuals and teams, ensuring credentials remain safe and accessible only within your organisation.
Connecting the dots
Choosing the right tools is a highly personal journey. While you need to start by considering what business issues you’re looking to solve, and how it can grow with you as your business grows and evolves. A word of caution, the more tools you have the more complicated and costly it can become, not to mention time consuming constantly switching between multiple apps. Keep an eye on growing subscription costs for your tools and see how much you can consolidate into one app or package that can do more.
If you’re looking for advice on where to start, or simply want to work with an accounting firm that understands the role technology can play in helping your business thrive, why not reach out to our team?
