Running a business certainly presents plenty of challenges, from finding the right staff, to attracting much needed clientele.
Then of course, you have to equip your company employees with the right tools and keep the tax man at bay with effective accounting.
Fortunately, for the modern business, there are a range of helpful tools and services available.
The internet has made finding information much easier for startups, and has fully established services and applications for startups to more developed businesses.
Apps and integrated software are making it easier to run a business efficiently, without so many headaches.
Top Software for Tracking your Business Finances
Let’s start by looking at some of the applications that can be used to make company accounting a far less stressful process.
#1 Freshbooks – This app constantly ranks well, as it helps make accounting easy by fully integrating with many other systems. From carts to payment processors, this little app makes all aspects available in one easy-to-manage place.
#2 QuickBooks Online – An easy to use and well designed accounting platform. Flexible plans, integrated invoicings systems, and payment processing make this a useful tool, one that can grow with the business. However, inventory tracking is currently not included.
#3 Zoho Books – Zoho Books integrates well with many systems and is a pretty complete accounting app. However, payroll accounting is not included.
#4 Wave – Wave is a famous free invoicing, receipts and accounting system. It is widely popular, particularly with self employed and startups looking to keep costs low at the start. The free services are good enough for many small businesses, and can later be upgraded as things grow.
There are many more accounting platforms available, but the above have good ratings and cover most of the features needed for fully developed companies, while also being easy enough to use by a novice entrepreneur.
Ways to Protect and Expand your Business
While accounting software is great for keeping track of everything and avoiding possible fines and headaches later, there are other ways to ensure the business stays on track.
Nowadays there isn’t as much of a need for the manager to be standing behind staff and checking what is being done. With today’s systems, everything from task setting to productivity monitoring can be done remotely.
Tools that allow for project management and collaboration remotely have revolutionised business. They allow for companies to use work-at-home employees, contractors, and even have staff on the other side of the world. Reducing costs and increasing productivity.
Then there is task and employee monitoring, allowing business owners or managers to track employee uses of computers and monitor productivity times. These systems can track everything that a staff member does on a company computer, raise alerts, and create reports: providing levels of security and boosting productivity (as they know that the boss knows when they are slacking).
Customer service is also becoming easier with customer support service desks that allow for easy management of emails, support tickets, live chat, and social media from one place.
Cloud storage now means that the days of not having your files with you are gone. Most are available so that whatever you have on your laptop or phone, can be accessed from any other device that you connect, or even via the web.
With secure online payment processors, staff monitoring, collaboration apps, video chat and more, it has never been easier to run a business and stay on top of your company’s finances.