Running a business can be a lot of hard work, especially if you are a one-man army. Time is one of the biggest constraints for an entrepreneur.
You can make more money by selling more goods. But it is difficult to get extra time. Thankfully, there are several free online tools you can use to minimise the efforts sent on administrative and accounting work. By using these tools, you can reduce your efforts and manage your time in a better way.
- Google My Business
Use Google My Business to advertise your physical store or website. You can specify your opening times, your products and even have your testimonials on their free listing. If you set up all the information correctly, it will also help your site show up on the local search results.
- Bplans.com
If you need a business plan to showcase your start-up to investors, check out Bplans.com. They have sample business plans in almost all industries which you can swipe and create your own.
- MailChimp
Thinking of creating an email list of your customers? Use MailChimp’s free tier to create your list and build an email funnel. For many small businesses, their free level is enough to make money from their existing customer/visitor list.
- Hootsuite
Use Hootsuite to manage all your social media presence from one place. You can schedule posts, engage with your customers and track the effectiveness of your social campaigns. And all of this can be done for free.
- Wave
Accounting can be a nightmare for many entrepreneurs. Use Wave’s free accounting software to keep track of all your expenses and income. It is easy to configure and has a robust reporting system in place to meet most of your needs. And it can integrate with many other ERP tools for convenience.
- Free Calculators
If you need to keep track of your gross margins and other numbers vital to the business, take advantage of the Margin Calculator, Percent Off Calculator and other business calculators available at Free Calculators. They have an easy-to-use interface and about two dozen business calculators. And all of them are free to use.
- HubSpot CRM
HubSpot offers a free level of its award-winning CRM. It has a neat design, is easy to use, and you can customise the details to a certain extent. It integrates well with several other business applications and makes it easy to keep track of your customers.
- WordPress
WordPress offers a great content management system. It is the easiest publishing platform, and with most hosting platforms, it can be deployed at the click of a button. You need not know coding to host a simple WordPress site.
There are a dozen other useful tools which can help you minimise your admin, accounting and social media work and most of them have a free version or offer a free trial. So try it, and if you find it useful, you can even buy it. We suggest you integrate these tools one a time as it can get quite overwhelming if you try to set up all at once.
