Ensuring that your business gets off the ground and thrives is what being an entrepreneur is all about. Part of this comes down to the basic essentials of understanding your industry and your place within it. It also includes having the right kind of expertise to run the business. Another major part of success is having the right tools to keep you productive. Here is a list of tools and apps you can use to keep you on track, organized, and in control of your business and life.
Virtual Assistants and Testing Services
Managing your own entrepreneurial venture is far from easy. To improve productivity, try to outsource as much of the “busy work” as possible. This will allow you to dedicate your time and energy on the issues that require your unique skill set and attention. Virtual Assistant services are a great alternative to the traditional personal assistants. You simply pay a fee to an appropriate web service, and your hired VA in another city can answer your phones or even manage spreadsheets for you.
By the same token, testing services such as globalapptesting.com allow you to connect with a host of crowdsourced app-testers from around the world. In turn, the testers can provide invaluable beta-testing and market research feedback on the status of your app. In fact, the web is full of different services which allow you to cut out the middleman and streamline your business. You should, by all means, be taking advantage of these.
Time Tracking Tools
In a traditional office job, your boss and supervisors fulfill at least one vital function. They ensure that you to remain productive and be mindful of how you’re using your time. Unfortunately, as an entrepreneur, the odds are that you just won’t have the same kind of accountability mechanisms in place. This means that you’ll have to be the master of your own time and that your ability to govern yourself and stick to a schedule will be absolutely essential to your ultimate success or failure as a businessman.
If time management skills don’t come naturally to you, look into using time-tracking apps and tools to keep yourself on point. TimeDoctor and RescueTime are both services which allow you to track how you’re spending your time. RescueTime is based on a passive tracking feature, which will create a record of how long you spend on various websites or inside various applications during the day. Time Doctor involves a more manual approach. An app that is mostly focused on tracking billable hours spent on projects is Toggl.
Financial Management & Budgeting Software
Being able to budget properly is absolutely crucial in business, but also in private life. Financial responsibility comes down to how well you’re able to keep track of your income and expenses and balance the two.
YNAB.com is one of the premier web-and-app-based budgeting services and relies on “zero-based” budgeting strategies. Other widely acclaimed budgeting software includes Mint.com, Mvelopes, and Quicken. There are also tools to help you stay on top of your taxes and financial records. One of the top accounting services available online is Quickbooks. It includes a detailed suite of features for staying on top of your business finances.
Project Management Tools
An entrepreneur’s life is almost always busy. After all, running a business tends to be a pretty involved and energy-intensive pastime. It’s extremely important to have an effective system in place to monitor and track essential projects. There is a wide array of online tools designed for this specific purpose. These range from the fairly simple, such as “Remember The Milk”, which act as checklists with appropriate reminder features, to the more complex.
One of the most popular projects and tasks management systems ever invented is the “Getting Things Done” system created by David Allen. This system involves an “in-tray” and various methods for sorting the contents of that in-tray into projects, next-task, and deferred categories. Many apps have been created to operate along the lines of the GTD methodology, with one good example being Nozbe.
For team-based projects, services such as Trello can be invaluable. Trello allows you to create and assign tasks using interactive visual lists. You can also track the status of projects and communicate with team members. Whatever task management tools you chose, be sure it fits your business’ personality. They can truly the difference between chaos and order.
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