Favorite Business Tools of 2019
Each morning during my busy work week I jump on my laptop and sign in to a few important applications that help me stay organized and on top of things. Yes, I'm a business owner, but also a mom and my brain gets full just like the rest of us. I lean on these tools to get me going and keep me organized day after day.
Let's get started, shall we?
17hats
I've used 17hats on and off for years, but finally invested in it when I decided to go into my business fulltime. It is great for solopreneurs and creatives with a client base. I use it to organize my clients, projects, invoices, contracts, and bookkeeping. And there are many aspects of the application that I don't even utilize! It offers time tracking, client scheduling, work-flows, and more. One of my favorite things 17hats has is the ability for clients to digitally sign contracts and quotes. I can email them right from the app, they sign and I get to countersign and all is happy.
Why I love it:
Client Portal with invoices, quotes and contracts all in one place
Bookkeeping
Connects with my email and calendar
Digital signatures for quotes and contracts
Clients can pay for invoices and payment plans available to set up
Detailed Quotes and Invoicing
Shift App
Most days I have a million tabs open in Chrome and Shift's workstation helps me organize the important ones. It keeps my email addresses, and all the applications I use daily in one place. I can switch between them and see new notifications at a glance. My current workstation includes Asana, Upwork, Facebook and Facebook Messenger, Yahoo, Slack, Toggl and Everhour.
Why I love it:
It clears up my Chrome browser so I can use it for research and designing.
It has hundreds of apps integrated and they add more all the time.
View new app notifications super quick
Great if you use lots of apps throughout the day.
Asana
Asana keeps my business on track like no other. I seriously recommend it to everyone. It's basically one giant to-do list. You can set up different teams and list projects under each team. For example, I have a few clients that I share my Asana lists with, we can assign tasks back and forth, make comments and share files. I mostly use it to keep me on task with clients, set due dates for myself and keep smaller files organized. I also have a "New Website" workflow template that I duplicate every time I get a new web client. This workflow keeps me on task and also makes sure I don't forget the little things, like invoicing my clients. ;) Did I mention the best part? It's FREE! Yes, it has a free plan. This is the plan I currently use, but I could see how using their paid plan would also be really beneficial.
I hope this post can help you in one way or another. And as always, let me know if you have any questions or comments. Or let me know if you use any of these and what you like about them and why?
