6 Tools for Your Small Business at Home
Working from home has become a very attractive alternative for both freelancers and small business owners. It’s your own space after all, so you can make it the ideal environment for you to focus and be in peak performance mode! Here are a few tools that will enhance your business and allow you to do more and track production.
Track Time
As a business owner, time is money, so knowing where you or a remote team of employees are spending their time is very important for efficiency’s sake. There are programs online and mobile apps depending on your preference and type of project.
- TSheets: free for one user, run by Quickbooks
- TopTracker: free app
- Due: free, great for client projects
Websites & Apps for Live Collaboration
Sharing written notes and using a whiteboard in the office are great, but when you have people making their own schedules and working from home, even out of state, those methods are no longer as effective as they used to be. Bring in the glorious apps!
- Trello: a favorite, and free, allows lots of organization, project task assigning, breaking down goals into small steps, and much more.
- Evernote: another freebee, though with less features, this is a simple way to share and update notes among colleagues.
- Slack: used by many impressive companies (airbnb, CapitalOne, Harvard University)…
Expense Tracking
Especially as a small business, it’s important to keep your business expenses separate from your personal expenses, and to keep track as you purchase. There are some handy apps that make this easier than ever.
- QuickBooks Self-Employed:Mileage Tracker & Taxes: a free app, this has a few uses, allows you to create invoices, and syncs with TurboTax
- Hurdlr: Expense & Mileage Tracker for Business: free, includes integrations with a variety of businesses including Square, Uber, credit cards, and more.
Social Media Management
Most small businesses find value in building a social network to grow sales, trust, and customer loyalty. If you have a few channels it can get a little tedious to keep up with each one individually, so there are tools that allow you to manage all of them in one place. You may want to check a few out to pick your favorite interface.
Accounting/Finance & Invoicing
Whether you have an accountant or not, it’s better to keep organized so you don’t see an auditor at your door! Ask your accountant which tools they like to work with, otherwise QuickBooks Intuit is a very up-to-date and robust tool that is widely used.
There are separate tools just for invoicing, but the less tools you need to keep track of, the better.
Working from home or the location of your choice (tropical white sandy beach…) can be a real dream come true. With the right tools in place and a killer productive process, you’ll be in a place to let your small business take off!
