POSTS SEARCH SHOP
SEARCH
SHOP
  • Your Cart Is Empty!
Your address will show here +12 34 56 78
business, software

Apps Every Small Business Needs

By on

January 10, 2022

- Category : business, software

- Tags : 2021, accounting, accounting software, accouting

 

I get asked all the time by small business owners what apps they should be integrating into their business. There are a variety of articles out there talking about the top apps for the year.

Here are the Apps we recommend:

 

Communication

Slack

This team communication tool gathers group exchanges into one place, making information instantly available and searchable wherever you go. This cloud-based collaboration application began as an internal tool used by a now-defunct online game. SLACK is currently the fastest-growing B2B application, used by over 4 million active users every day.

Loom

Loom is a great way to capture videos to share with your team or clients. It can easily be integrated with Google Chrome and other applications like Trello, Google Docs, Basecamp, JIRA, Dropbox, Salesforce . Any video you record can be watched directly where it is shared.


Email

Google Suite

It is designed for your workplace and has everything you need in one place which makes working with your team a whole lot easier. You can collaborate in real-time with teammates or clients through documents, spreadsheets and slides. The ability to store and share files in the cloud gives you the ability to easily invite others to view, collaborate, and download.

Office 365

Whether you’re working in your office or on the go, you get a familiar, top-of-the-line set of productivity tools. Office applications —always the latest versions—let you create, edit, and share from anywhere in real time. 1 TB of storage per user, HD video, content sharing, shared calendars, and team chat.

 

CRM

Salesforce

Salesforce was created to take the hassles out of sales, service, marketing, and more with no software and no headaches. It can be integrated with 2,800 different apps. It can streamline processes and workflows with simple point and click power, so you can focus on customers.

Hubspot

HubSpot’s CRM platform has all the tools and integrations you need for marketing, sales, content management, and customer service. Each product in the platform is powerful alone, but the real magic happens when you use them together.


Project Management

Smartsheet

Smartsheet is the only platform that can scale from a single project to end-to-end work management, connecting business on a no-code, cloud-based platform where anyone can create the solution they need — backed by the control and security IT requires. Smartsheet is a software as a service offering for collaboration and work management, developed and marketed by Smartsheet Inc. It is used to assign tasks, track project progress, manage calendars, share documents, and manage other work, using a tabular user interface

Monday

Monday is a project management app that clearly organizes all tasks and boosts team communication. Just create a project, add tasks to the said project, and finally, add steps to each task. As employees complete a task or steps of a task, the status is updated so everyone can easily see where a project or task currently stands. In addition, users can create knowledge bases to store documents and anything else project related.

Trello

Trello is collaboration tool organizes your projects into boards, lists and cards so you can better prioritize work and life. At a single glance you can see what’s being worked on, who’s working on what and where in the process a project is. It makes project management–which can include work assignments, family chores or travel plans–easy and enjoyable.

What apps are you using in your business?

0
business

Small Business Year End Checklist

By on

December 30, 2021

- Category : business

- Tags : 2021, accounting, accounting software, accouting

We know that the end of the year is always hectic so we created 20 items to help small businesses close out 2021 and prepare for the new year.

Accounting

1. Close out and review 2021 books – Take a close look at all your income and expenses to make sure they are categorized correctly.

2. Prepare and report all 1099s – Make sure you have collected W9s from your vendors. I use Track1099.com software to file all my client’s 1099s. It’s super easy to use and all the forms are emailed to the vendors and to the IRS.

3. Prepay Expenses – are there any expenses that you can prepay in 2021 to help off set taxes?

4. Review your large purchases during the year and make any changes to your fixed asset count by recording adjustments.

5. Review Accounts Receivable – are there any balances that need to be written off?

6. Confirm that the split of principal and interest for your loan balances match year end and the 1099.

7. Review current and long-term liabilities.

8. Review financial statements – analyze current year trends and make adjustments to future forecasts.

9. Compare budget vs actuals – review variances between actual and budgeted numbers.

10. Conduct a year-end physical inventory count and record adjustments based on variances.

11. Review open purchase orders

Human Resources

12. Review employee handbook and company policies

13. Review PTO policies

14. Review bonus structure and commissions

15. Update any employee and payroll information

IT Department

15. Review open purchase orders

16. Generate necessary backup files

17. Clean up and archive files

Sales and Marketing

18. Review marketing spend to evaluate what work and what didn’t

19. Review marketing expenses to eliminate that aren’t providing a positive return on your investment

20. Review current sales processes

0
business, mindset, profit first

PIVOT….PIVOT….PIVOT

By on

August 24, 2021

- Category : business, mindset, profit first

- Tags : 2021, accounting, accounting software, accouting

We have all watched the Friends episode where Ross, Rachel, and Chandler are moving a couch up the stairs. Just like pivoting a couch up a flight of stairs, sometimes we have to repackage our product offering.

I always enjoy listening to Mike Michalowicz’s podcast. He shared an analogy about pivoting during unknown circumstances that really resonated with me. 2020 has taught us that we have to be ready to pivot at any given moment. It keeps us business owners on our toes!

What do you think about pivoting your business or products/services? Have you been in the process of pivoting?

Let’s look at your current offering or deliverable. For example, let’s say you own a restaurant and the final offering is food on the table.

1️⃣ The step before that the food is delivered to the table. If people can’t come to the restaurant they can deliver the food to people via food trucks to neighborhoods, etc.

2️⃣ A step before that the food is prepared. A business could create and sell its top 10-15 recipes online.

✅ This simple exercise can get you thinking about your end offering and how to take one step back to find repackage options.

What’s a small thing in your business you could change that would align you with big wins?

0

Why Automating Your Business is Smart for Scaling and Profits

By on

July 20, 2021

- Category : business, uncategorized

- Tags : 2021, accounting, accounting software, accouting

Every business owner strives for more automation in their business to increase performance and reduce overall costs.  Manual processes can be very inefficient. A few years ago I worked with a client who was printing off hundreds of invoices and scanning them back into their system. This was their current process and they didn’t know of a more efficient way to do things. This slight shift ended up saving the company tremendous amounts of time and money. 

As a small business owner, you wear many hats which can feel overwhelming and lead to exhaustion which can decrease the productivity and enjoyment of the company you have worked so hard to build.  Manual processes hinder small businesses from scaling and turning larger profits. It is so important to cut costs where you can.

Here are 5 key areas where you can start automating processes in your company to free up your time, your employee’s time and yield great returns.

  1. Copy and Pasting Data Items between multiple software platforms

Employees spend a good amount of their workweek doing manual data tasks like copy and pasting information from multiple pieces of technology together. I see this happen all the time, it’s a time-consuming task that can be highly susceptible to error. For example, The client was copying customer data (email, address, contact name, etc) from one software to another. This was leading to errors. There are programs like Zapier for instance that allows you to automate tasks. You can have someone sign up for your newsletter for example and have that data “zapped” into a CRM.  A new client signs up? Set Zapier to “zap” their information into your accounting software. You can set up a zap for nearly any task you’d like to automate.

2. Sales  

Using marketing automation platforms or email clients like Mailchimp or CRM tools like Hubspot allows you to take the most interested clients and continuously keep in touch with them. You can use these platforms to send out emails and some even allow you to send text messages through their platforms to your clients to keep your business top of mind.

3. Reporting

This is one of the biggest areas of opportunity for a business to have automation. If you aren’t on an ERP system or using a very antiquated system, reporting can be a time This is one of the biggest areas of opportunity for a business to automate. If you aren’t on an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system or you are using a very antiquated system, reporting can be a time consuming task due to data manipulation ERP software is used to manage day-day business activities throughout an organization (accounting, compliance, supply chain, manufacturing, shipping/receiving, budging, etc.  I’ve seen multi-million dollar companies use spreadsheets for reporting and run into inaccuracies with data or the document losing data. Eventually, you will have to move to an ERP system to further help with accurate reporting, reduce data duplication, and have a single source of truth.

4. Inventory Management

Automating the ability to see inventory on hand at all times, what is in production, and Automating the ability to see inventory on hand at all times, what is in production, and what has shipped out allows a business to scale and decrease counting errors.  Errors are especially problematic when attempting to manually track inventory on a spreadsheet. The best way to see inventory on-hand and any movement is having either a full ERP system or at least an inventory management software in place like Fishbowl. These software’s, will allow the business to set up various inventory workflows with automation and allow full transparency to see what inventory is on-hand, where it’s stored, and what work is in progress (WIP).

5. Invoices/Payments

In 2019, Forbes did a study that showed 69% of small business owners are kept up at night with concerns about cash flow. Automating your accounting system can be relatively easy. If you are using QuickBooks you can set up invoices to be emailed with a link for a customer/client to pay with their credit card. If you are sending invoices out manually you can have companies set up to have a credit card on file or pay via ACH so you aren’t waiting for a check to come in the mail.

 The key to increasing revenue and reducing costs throughout your business is automation!

0

OPEX vs CAPEX – What is the difference?

By on

June 3, 2021

- Category : business

- Tags : 2021, accounting, accounting software, accouting

I had a conversation with a small business last week about the difference between OPEX and CAPEX. They had recently purchased new technology/equipment and hired a firm to manage their new technology.

The business owner was wondering if he could write off the full amount of the purchase. We had a quick conversation about the difference and how these items were going to be recorded on the books.

➡️ OPEX is your day-to-day expenses that keep your business running. These items are reported on your profit and loss statement.
In this example, this is where the expenses to manage the technology.

➡️ CAPEX is funds used by a company to acquire, upgrade, and maintain physical assets such as property, plants, buildings, technology, or equipment. These items will show up on your balance sheet. The purchase of the new hardware and software would be put on the balance sheet and then depreciated over the years.

0