Running a small business can tend to be overwhelming especially when there is a lot to be done and being the only one running it or a small team. However, it can be a whole lot easier by implementing certain apps that have been deigned to help you with organization, finance, client relationship management and so much more. Using these apps in your small business will help improve overall productivity of the business, save time, establish good client relationships and reduce stress.
Here are 7 apps to start using to manage your small business operations.
#1 QUCKBOOKS
Quickbook is highly recommended to manage the accounting of your small business. It has amazing features that help with the following:
- Financial Management: Once you connect your bank accounts, it automatically tracks income, expenses and invoices.
- Invoicing: Allows you to create and send professional invoices through the app.
- Reporting: Provides insightful reports to help understand your financial health better.
- Tax Preparation: Easily tracks and identifies eligible expended and assists with seamless tax filing.
- Collaboration and Security: Allows multi-user access, automatic cloud backup and secures financial data.
- Integration: Quickbooks allows you to integrate with other apps like PayPal, Square and so on.
By using Quickbooks as a business owner, it helps you with:
· Time Management
· Reduces error
· Increased Productivity
· Financial Clarity
#2 Flodesk
Flodesk is an email marketing platform that helps you reach out to your customers. As a small business owner this could instantly elevate and drive sales to your business. Here are some of the amazing features of this app:
· Email Templates: Flodesk comes with a lot of beautiful templates that can be customized to your taste and need. Even as a user with no experience with creating professional emails, this app helps you with that.
· Automation: It allows you to send targeted emails to specific individuals, ensuring that you’re delivering the right email to the right customer.
· Analytics: It helps you easily track the performance of your emails
· Integrations: It provides integrations with popular platforms like Shopify, making promotion of your products easier.
· Advanced Features: It comes with features like personalization, email sequence and segmentation.
Flodesk takes away the stress of having to single-handedly send numerous email one after the other and provides a means for you collectively send emails at once, schedule them, personalize and customize. It also has a supportive community and resources to help you get the most out of this platform.
#3: Canva
Canva is such an amazing app when it comes to design and it is open and customable to anyone. There are so many designs that can be created using canva like; Pinterest Pins, Ads, Graphics, Ebooks, Invitations, Journal and more. With Canva, there are a lot of pre-made templates that can be customized to suit you. It comes in a free and paid version. Of course the paid version unlocks more features, but the free one is just as good.
Here are some of the benefits of using Canva:
· Design: It allows you create professional looking graphics and provides customizable templates for any content you might need.
· Brand Kit: Helps keep all your branding elements (Logos, Colors, Font etc) in one place and helps you achieve consistency across all your visuals.
· Cost Effective: Eliminates the need for an expensive design software.
· Collaboration Features: Allows you to work with members in real-time, making it easy to share ideas and feedback.
#4: HONEYBOOK
Honeybook is solely focuses on building client relationships. It helps to easily communicate with clients and send invoices, manage your workflow, meeting schedules and much more.
Here are some of the benefits associated with using Honeybook
· Client Management: Keeps all your clients details messages and contract all in one spot.
· Invoicing and Payments: Easily send invoices and get paid without having to worry about tracking everything manually.
· Project Management: Tracks and manages projects, tasks, assignments.
· Templates: Create pre emails and proposals to save time.
Using Honeybook helps create a work-life balance, increases productivity and client satisfaction.
#5: Notion
Notion is an app that mainly helps with organization. As a small business owner, it is normal to have a lot to do in a day, week or in a month, that is why it is important to start using the Notion app. It allows you stay organized crating spreadsheets for content calendars, budget, itineraries etc, and the best part is that it is completely FREE.
Features:
· Custom Spaces: Allows you to create pages for notes, tasks, databases tailored to your need.
· Collaboration: You can invite team members to edit and collaborate real-time.
· Templates: Use pre-built templates or create your own to keep things organized the way you like.
· Search Functionality: Quickly find information across all pages.
Using Notion as a small business owner helps you to meet up to daily to-do lists and has helps you stay on top of tasks improving organization.
#6: Square
When it comes to receiving payments from clients, square is a great option for small businesses. It provides a range of tools to manage sales and connect with customers seamlessly.
Key Features:
· Point of Sale(POS): With its user-friendly interface, allows the use of phone to process payments anywhere.
· Payment Processing: Offers secure, reliable transactions and accepts credit/debit cards, Apple Pay, Google pay.
· Inventory Management: Tracks stock levels and sales trends with ease.
· Customer Engagement: Stores customer information and sends targeted marketing campaigns.
The features on square makes processing of payments easy plus the analytic feature on the app helps you understand what products are selling more.
#7: Slack
Slack is a communication tool that helps enhance team productivity and collaboration. Here are some of the key features of the slack app:
Key Features:
- Channels: Helps to easily organize conversations by topics or by projects.
- Integrations: Allows connect with other tools, such as Google Drive and Trello, for a seamless experience.
- File Sharing: Easily share files and documents with your team.
- Task Management: Assign and track tasks easily.
Slack helps to boost overall communication in a team with the features such as direct messages, video and voice calls, file sharing, screen sharing and channels.