If you’re a one-person business or have few team members, you probably wear many hats. You may be a bookkeeper, marketing specialist, accountant, human resources manager, and many other roles. Luckily, for those of you spread thin with very few people and little capital, there are products you can buy to help automate, simplify, and outsource business processes that occupy a lot of your time. All of our suggestions have freemium pricing tiers so you can try them all for free and upgrade if you find value in the product. If you find yourself struggling to make time to get it all done, consider these eight tools to aid your business processes:
Marketing
If you’re just starting your business, chances are you cannot afford a marketing guru to help you market your business. It’s not uncommon for most founders to quickly learn by doing when it comes to marketing. Fortunately, there are some products that make marketing a cinch for new business owners.
HubSpot: HubSpot is a customer relationship management platform that allows you to manage contacts, send emails, and create forms and landing pages all for free. As your business grows, you can upgrade your plan to unlock more features. In addition, they have a wealth of free resources and content on how to market your business.
Canva: Canva is the perfect tool for creating professional, on-brand graphics without much graphic design experience. Choose from a variety of templates for almost any situation – social media posts, emails, coupons, flyers, etc. Upgrade for access to more template options.
Colorcinch: Colorcinch is a low-maintenance photo editing tool with tons of free features. It has an intuitive, one-click approach to design so you don’t have to be a pro to achieve stunning results. For more photo savvy users, it has AI-powered photo enhancers and top-notch photo manipulation. Get access to more great features when you upgrade to the paid plan.
Finances
Tracking your expenses and revenue as well as creating and managing invoices can be a challenge for most new business owners. But keeping your finances organized should be a top priority. There is an abundance of tools and applications to help your business manage its finances, but two stand out because of their affordability.
Wave: With Wave, you can track your income and expenses, create and send invoices, accept payments, and scan receipts – all for free.
Expensify: Similar to Wave, you can track receipts and expenses with Expensify. You can also track your mileage and the app auto-categorizes your expenses. Get up to 25 scans for free every month.
People/Operations
Whether it’s because you lack the time or skill, there will inevitably be times when you can’t do something on your own and have to hire a contractor or employee. Managing employees may seem scary, but there are tools out there to help reduce the time you spend on the processes related to hiring and overseeing employees.
Upwork: Whether you need a freelance bookkeeper or a web designer, you can find qualified help on Upwork. You can post a job and see candidates along with their pricing, experience, and portfolios. Once you find the right fit, you can manage the project and billing without leaving the site. Getting quotes from freelancers is free, but Upwork collects an additional 3% in fees at the time of payment.
Clockify: Clockify is a timesheet app that will help you track employees’ and freelancers’ work hours across projects. Approve timesheets, create invoices, and track how much time employees spend on certain projects, all from this free application.
Task Pigeon: Manage your work tasks and those of your team members with a variety of views with Task Pigeon. See your to-dos as a list, kanban board, recurring tasks, checklists, and more.
ZoomShift: Set up and manage your employees’ work schedules and manage payroll with ZoomShift. You can manage shift cover requests, allow employees to clock in, and see their schedules with this app. Pricing starts at $2 per active team member per month.
When starting a business, it’s easy to feel like you need to know everything before taking the first step. While the startup phase of any business can seem incredibly daunting, having the right tools at your side can make the journey a lot smoother and help you learn as you grow.
