Google – one moment it’s your biggest friend, the next moment it’s your worst enemy.
What do I mean? Well, just stop and think – you’ve probably experienced it yourself at some point. There’s a plethora of information on the internet nowadays about how to run a small business, tips and tricks on strategy, advice on what technology and platforms to use, you name it. But if you search online, there’s often hundreds of different articles, some good, some useless, and it can be really difficult to find what you’re actually looking for.
Well, we can’t promise to solve your every problem, but we’ve got together some of our favourite technology platforms and software, to help make life easier for you, and enable you to grow your business faster.
Accounting – Xero
Here at Zembr, we’re massive fans of simplifying the accounting process. We use Xero, and it’s designed to make your life easier with loads of great features like automatic importing of bank transactions, easy inventory tracking and payroll reports. By centralising all our data, it’s saved us so much admin time, putting an end to struggling with multiple accounts and different sources of information!
There’s an easy to use, customisable dashboard that allows us to see exactly where we are at a glance; from there, we can dive into a specific area of interest/concern and check on what’s happening. By filtering invoices by due date/amount owed/how long they’ve been outstanding, we can maintain a tight grip on our cashflow.
Xero has a great automatic invoice reminder feature to take the work out of chasing payments! All in all, we’re really happy with how Xero works for us. Sure, there’s other platforms that do similar things – they all have their strengths – but we heartily recommend Xero. They offer a free trial, which you can sign up for here.
Inbound Marketing/CRM – HubSpot
Did someone say FREE CRM? Yes, that’s absolutely right, and if you’re after a hassle free, easy to use platform that’s just right for growing a small business, then look no further. With HubSpot, there’s no catches, no time limits, no expiration dates; you can have unlimited users and data, with up to 1,000,000 contacts. You get 5 free email templates, 200 email tracking notifications per month, basic dashboard and reports, access to the HubSpot mobile app, and much more.
Need more features? You can upgrade to their starter package for only AU$68/month, which adds many great features such as deal pipelines, simple automation and quotes. As your business grows, further subscription options add the ability for sales analytics, lead rotation, custom reporting, and much more.
For SMBs though, we believe the free version is more than enough to get you going, without having to pay a penny. There’s other free CRMs and marketing platforms around, and you may find another is better suited for your needs, but HubSpot is a great place to start. Get going for free here.
Document Creation & File Management - Google Docs/Drive
Since the 1980s, Microsoft has dominated word processing, databases & presentations with its excellent range of Office programs. But what if you don’t need all those advanced features and functionality, and are looking for a cost-free option?
Enter Google. Here at Zembr, we use Google Docs and Sheets on a daily basis. They’re great as anything you do is instantly updated and saved to the cloud. Sharing and collaborating on documents is easy, and you can do it on the go from your laptop, or with their excellent mobile apps.
One of the great things about Google Docs is you get 15GB of Google Drive storage free, which means you can store thousands of files, and storage upgrades are available, starting from 100GB for only AU$24.99/year! For growing businesses with lots of photos, videos, and other large files, you can get a 2TB for AU$124.99/year – an absolute steal.
On top of all that, you can link everything up with the excellent Google ecosystem, including great value email offerings, video collaboration tools, contact management and much more.
Get your 15GB FREE storage, and excellent document tools, right here.
Task Management – Asana
How do you manage your tasks? Maybe if you are the sole employee, then a Post-It note or brief jottings on a notepad is enough to keep you on track. But what happens when you start to grow your team? At Zembr, we use Asana, and we love it. Asana gives you everything you need to stay up-to-date with how your team is getting on, whether projects are running on schedule, milestones reached, and loads more.
We use it to organise every project, no matter how big or small, and one of the reasons we love it so much is because not only is it really easy to get to grips with, but it looks great too! One consideration when choosing platforms like this is how quickly new employees can learn how to use it; with Asana, you can be confident they’ll be up and running in no time.
You can manage your teams’ workloads, create project templates, set up private spaces for sensitive work, and automate tedious/routine tasks with ease. On top of all that, there’s over 100 different app integrations, for example Google Chrome, whereby you can quickly add tasks to Asana from any browser window, and Zendesk, which automatically creates Asana tasks from support tickets and vice versa.
Oh, and…did we mention it’s free? Asana has so much to offer, so why not check their offering here?
Communication – Slack
Ahhh…communication. Something that every business gets perfectly, with no issues at all, right?
Umm nope. Not even #TeamZembr 🤯 Which is why we use Slack for all our internal comms, and it’s truly brilliant. No more missed WhatsApp messages or jumbled emails; conversations in Slack are easy to follow, and you can make calls, share files, and even send random GIFs to your colleagues to brighten up tiring Friday afternoons (best bit ioho)
They have an excellent channels function, and that’s really important to us as we thrive on team collaboration. We have our main channels for all employees, and then separate channels for the different teams – marketing, teleservices, etc.. It works well – gone are the days of accidentally missing people off group emails, or forgetting to send them the meeting invite!
Similarly to Asana, Slack can integrate with many different apps, like Google Drive, which makes your life loads easier. It also has a very good reminder function – if you’re too busy to respond to a message, with a couple of taps you can ask it to remind you at your preferred time.
It’s also great from a management perspective – they can view any channel whenever they want, meaning they can keep close to the team and stay up-to-date with everything that’s happening.
But enough waffle. Try it FREE here.
Time Tracking – Clockify
What better way to keep track of your time than a good ol’ time sheet eh? Tree after tree of paper, weeks of forgetting, only to randomly fill them in at month end with as much as you can remember…
Or is that perhaps a little old-school?
Enter Clockify, one of the most popular free time tracking tools available. Great for teams of all sizes, it works either in your browser, on Windows, Mac & Linux, or there’s Android & iOS apps, meaning you can take it anywhere you go. It all syncs to the cloud, so you can start timing on one device, stop on another, and then amend on a third. It’s truly easy to use - here at Zembr we have a very diverse workforce indeed, but they all love it!
Top features like team dashboards are great, as it enables you to see at a glance what your team have been up to that week, and simple reports make billing easy. You can set time estimates for projects, and track what’s used/what’s remaining to ensure you keep on track and budget.
If you want more features, there’s a selection of plans you can choose from, starting at about AU$5/user/month, which give you access to more administration features, management roles, invoicing, self-hosted security options, and much more; there’s a plan to suit everyone.
You’re probably thinking we’re biased? Of course!😁 There’s loads of time tracking options available, but here at Zembr, Clockify is perfect for us, due to its excellent team features and ease of use. Check it out here to get started…forever free!
What are your top tech tools and tips for SMB’s?
