As a small business owner (or freelancer) you need to use your time as efficiently and wisely as possible. Here’s a selection of tools I use to manage my business.
- Carbonite – Online backup of all my files. I also back up to external hard drives and DVD every week, but I love having the comfort of knowing a constant backup is in place. If my notebook dies in the next 5 minutes, I know I’ve got everything safely backed up.
- Freshbooks – Online time-tracking and invoicing. I use Freshbooks to manage all my clients, times, invoicing and online payment. I also use the iPhone Freshbooks app.
- Xero – Online accounting. I love Xero because it automatically brings in all my Freshbooks, PayPal and bank account updates and is super easy to use.
- PayPal – perfect for sending & receiving money.
- Skype – great for long distance calls of course, but the real bonus is video chat, and the ability to share your desktop as well.
- Growl & Prowl – awesome for automatically forwarding on select emails (eg sales notifications or payments received) to my iPhone