Looking for business tools that will help you run a more organized streamlined business?
You’re here so the answer is probably a resounding yes.
The thing is, setting up a business is no cakewalk itself. But it is sure easier than running one successfully
Not only is running a business equal parts difficult and stressful, but it can also be tedious and incredibly, overwhelmingly time-consuming.
This is especially the case with menial tasks that are the necessary evils for your business’s success: accounting, payroll, social media marketing (for some), email marketing (for others), customer support, website maintenance, customer management, and more.
By happy chance, we live in an age of automation, SaaS software, and cloud storage.
The digital marketplace is rife with robust (and often free) tools to help run your business like a well-oiled machine – beyond just automation tools.
Business tools that can help put small businesses on a more level playing field with larger, more established competitors.
With some upfront setup work, you can get your business running at full capacity with much less management and time commitment required.
From there, you can achieve your KPIs and business goals!
Use these 10 business tools to boost your productivity and organization:
Zapier uses “if this, then that” equations to automate actions in almost any aspect of your workflow. The system relies on triggers that kickstart the workflow, such as an email registration for a newsletter automatically sending a booking confirmation email.
With Zapier, you can build multi-step automation — called ‘Zaps’ — that begin with a single trigger.
The platform integrates with over 4,000 apps and services, including Google Sheets, Slack, Mailchimp, and more, supporting a variety of organizations and most any department.
From marketing teams to administrative tasks, software development, and accounting, Zapier benefits businesses that range from Enterprise-sized to small startups looking to automate the time-consuming tasks that eat into their day.
Pricing: Starts free up to $599 for enterprise bruiness
Best For: Any sized business
Google One, formerly google Drive, took note of the huge success of other cloud-based storage, such as Dropbox, and built a robust eco-system of business tools and services on top of their own cloud-based platform.
They haven’t looked back since.
The Google-created platform allows you to create, save, and upload files and access them from anywhere. That includes accessing the platform from a computer and also a very easy-to-use app for smartphones and tablets.
Any Gmail users automatically receive 15GB of free data storage, making Google One an extremely appealing storage and project management option for new and small businesses.
Entire teams or specific members of teams can be added to specific documents or projects to work together, edit, and collaborate on files, spreadsheets, and more.
Google One’s popularity is driven by the ability of teams to collaborate with ease and built-in integrations with Google’s suite of products and services. You can also integrate with other tools on this last such as Slack, Zapier, and more.
Pricing: Free (Need to pay for additional storage)
Best For: Small to medium-sized businesses
IFTTT, as the name directly refers to, is another “if this, then that” driven automation platform. Similar to Zapier, it can link nearly every process of your business.
This free business tool is simple but flexible and integrates hundreds of apps and services (though less than Zapier) to create automated, time-saving workflows.
For example, you can create an IFTTT so that leads from your website turn into contacts in GoogleSheets with all relevant contact data captured.
Just like Zapier, an IFTTT integration – also called an applet – starts with a trigger, which kickstarts your workflow by connecting two or more apps or devices together, and leads to an outcome set to your own parameters.
So if you design an applet to automatically send you a Slack message when a new task is assigned to you, the Slack direct message is the outcome while the new task is the trigger.
Pricing: Free
Best For: Small to medium-sized businesses
This platform is Microsoft’s answer to Google One.
You get a bit of everything with Teams, which is wrapped into the Micrososft 365 suite and now built into the Windows 11 operating system.
Teams is best known for its chat app, which has 44 million daily users per day. But Teams also offers video conferencing that is simple and easy to use. Skype for Business will soon be a memory of the past as Microsoft retires the app to shift clients to Teams.
Like Google One, team members can collaborate on, share and edit Powerpoints, Word docs, spreadsheets, and more. Teams allow you to keep everything and everyone on the same page, managed from one location.
Microsoft Teams plays nice with other Microsoft apps. If you are using Microsoft software for your business, you will find Teams a seamless integration. You probably already have.
If you’re on Zoom and Slack, you may not find Teams beneficial. And vice versa.
Pricing: Free, up to $12.65USD/month for additional features and storage
Best For: Medium to enterprise-sized businesses
Quickbooks is a go-to option for small business accounting.
The platform is a financial management suite replete with useful features. Quickbooks can turn the complex maze of accounting and financial management into a well-structured system.
One that you actually understand and could explain to someone if they asked. Accounting is the first love for many small business owners but services also include payroll, invoicing, expense management, payment processing, tax filing and more.
You can also easily generate month- and year-end financial reports that help give you a bird’s eye view of your cash flows and business finances.
Payment processing is another key feature of Quickbooks. The platform accepts credit cards, bank transfers, and PayPal. You can also create payment links to send in an email or through messaging apps.
Finances are your business. If you don’t know exactly where every dollar is spent, you have no way to make sure every dollar is spent well. Quickbooks takes a lot of the pain and frustrating out of the process.
Pricing: Starting at $12.50USD/month
Best For: Small businesses
Another cloud-based financial management suite has entered the chat.
What sets FreshBooks apart is intuitive double-entry accounting options and other tools that most small businesses need. You can also integrate the platform with many other apps and software such as Microsoft Outlook, Google Chrome, Stripe, Gusto, and many others.
These integrations allow you to import and export data between apps. This saves you time and increases you and your teams’ productivity.
Here’s an application example from FreshBooks:
“FreshBooks built a Google Chrome extension that can be added to your browser to help track your time. So when you’re working in project management apps like Basecamp, Trello or Asana, the extension will track that time and automatically pull those hours into FreshBooks.”
In short, FreshBooks helps automate and personalize your payment system and finances. The invoicing is straightforward to use and you can create customizable templates with your logo and brand kit applied.
Like QuickBooks, you can connect with your bank accounts and credit cards and get automatic updates with your most recent spending and cashflow.
Pricing: Starts at $4.50USD/month
Best For: Small businesses
In today’s digital-focused economy, your business need an efficient way to prepare, sign, act on, and record contracts.
Docusign hit the nail right on the head and now has over a million customers and hundreds of millions of users in 180 different countries. Simple, fast, easy to use, and easy to share.
The market conditions over the last three years for digital contracts were understandably strong.
DocuSign’s subscription revenue was $2.1 billion in 2021, an increase of 45% year-over-year.
DocuSign Agreement Clou accelerates business processes and administrative necessities. In fact, 80% of agreements are completed within 24 hours (44% in less than 15 minutes).
Perhaps most important is that DocuSign eSignatures are secure, lawful and court-admissible. This both reduces lawyers’ fees and streamlines the entire process of creating and signing contracts.
Pricing: Starting at $10USD/month
Best For: Small to large-sized businesses
You only get one first impression. That is the USP of PandaDoc.
PandaDoc helps you create customized brand proposals that actually match your brand. You’re letting clients, customers, and partners know you are a professional business that understands the importance of brand identity at every interaction.
The smart collaboration tools make it easy for a team to work on the proposal together. PandaDoc also integrates with most CRMs so it is an easy introduction to the workflow for many businesses.
Another key feature is custom notifications that let you know when your client opens the document, how much time they spent reading, and when the document is signed.
PandaDoc also helps in other areas such as contract renewals and as an HR solution to streamline and simplify recruiting and onboarding.
The main goal of PandaDoc is to make your business more organized and productive.
Pricing: Free up to $49USD/month
Best For: Small to medium-sized businesses
Slack is a chatroom for your business.
But it has become so much more than that.
The platform is now a single workspace that links people to people with useful tools to make communication a breeze.
Where other apps make it hard to read back into threads, separate groups, search for content, and generally understand, Slack excels.
There are hundreds of integrations available, including many on this list such as GoogleDocs, IFTTT, Zapier, and more.
Many businesses run their entire business, including project management, customer management, internal communication, video conferencing, and the list goes on.
Slack syncs with the apps that your company uses every day, like Google Calendar and Google One, to make it easy to manage your internal operations from one central location.
The apps for both desktop and mobile are very easy to use and understand, which is one place where other messaging apps, such as Microsoft Teams, fall short.
Pricing: Starts from $6.67USD/month
Best For: Any sized business
Deel is an ideal payment solution in an increasingly gig-focused, worldwide digital economy.
The software simplifies payroll so you can hire anyone, anywhere.
The platform makes it easy to pay people around the world, with low fees, and the ability for them to withdraw the funds with a few clicks to their bank account. Easy as could be.
You can also withdraw to online payment platforms like Wise (free) or PayPal (for a fee).
You can even generate legally binding contracts that cover local labor laws in over 150 countries. The team has put in the work to make this a viable payment processor for a globalized economy.
With the contract creation tool, Deel also allows you to instantly hire full-time employees or independent contractors across the world legally, in minutes.
They are doing something right… Deel now serves more than 4,500 customers, from SMBs to publicly traded companies, and are valued at $12 billion dollars.
Pricing: Starts from $49USD/contractor/month
Best For: Small to medium-sized businesses
This page last updated on October 3, 2022 by Dan Politz
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