5 Digital Tools To Help You Save Time And Manage Your Business Efficiently
Let's Find Out The Best Small Business Tools To Save Time.
Like any small business owner, there are always a million things to do. From managing the daily tasks to tackling accounting, we are all busy bees trying to use every second of our days to build and grow.
To help you manage your business better, we wanted to share our top 5 small business tools that we frequently use to be more efficient. Most are free business tools since we know every dollar matters when starting or managing your small business.
Unsure what’s right for you? Send us an email, and we’ll be happy to help!
1. Avoid The Annoying Back-and-Forth by Using A Scheduling System (Calendly)
Platform: Calendly
Goal: Let people select the best time for them to connect with you!
Cost: Free Plan Available
Calendly is one of the small business tools we don’t work without. It’s effortless to set up and can instantly remove the back-and-forth pain of trying to schedule a meeting. We use Calendly for booking new client meetings – as often, you don’t want to miss new opportunities because of a scheduling issue.
Its free version allows you to book one type of meeting, which is often enough for small businesses.
Once you set up your meeting types (e.g., 30-minute consultation), you can share your Calendly link with anyone, and they can book a meeting that works for them without assistance!
Why it’s our favourite scheduling platform? We love their email time selection integration (see image), where you can directly offer times within your email.
2. Stop Repeating the Same Messaging Over And Over With Email Templates (Gmail)
Platform: Gmail
Goal: Use templates and standardize your emails.
Cost: Free tool if using Google Workspace or Gmail.
Gmail is an excellent way to stay on top of your game with tools that help you be more efficient! One feature we love and find ourselves often using is their templated email responses. This allows us to create templates for commonly asked questions or statements without repeating the same thing every time somebody asks about something new.
To turn on this feature, visit your settings > add-on > templates.
(Pssst, if you aren’t using an email address with your domain name ([email protected]), it’s time to change that. Gmail offers an $8/month plan that allows you to not only use your domain name in your email but also give you access to all the Google Workspace small business tools. You can read more about Google Workspace here.
Why it’s our favourite Gmail feature? It’s a very underutilized function, and we wish more people knew about it!
3. Let's Make it Better And Use Questionnaires + Forms (Google Forms).
Platform: Google Forms
Goal: Use questionnaires and forms to make your business efficient.
Cost: Free tool if using Google Workspace or Gmail.
We do love a good questionnaire that asks relevant questions and covers all the information needed to book a new client! Whether it’s for a cake order or planning a wedding, forms can significantly help you receive your client’s data in a standardized way, making it easier to organize and deliver your services/products. Small business owners need to be organized and efficient- if you start creating processes from the get-go, you can save many growing pains.
Why it’s our favourite form feature? It’s so easy to create forms with Google Forms that you do not have to be technology inclined to achieve this level of efficiency! Bonus: it’s FREE!
4. Project Management System aka Tasks List (Asana)
Platform: Asana
Goal: Create lists for projects/clients and avoid losing track of things!
Cost: Free plan available
It’s incredibly easy to lose track of tasks, especially involving a team. Asana is one of the best project management tools for small businesses and is FREE for small teams! It helps us keep track of our clients deliverables and has multiple views available to help visualize your workload. Using Asana allows us to stay in sync, hit deadlines, and reach our clients’ goals.
Why it’s our favourite Asana feature? Discussing a task within the platform ( = avoid sending tons of emails to get answers!)
5. Let's connect it all and reach an expert level of efficiency (Zapier)
Platform: Zapier
Goal: Connect your tools to automate your client information!
Cost: Free plan available
Let’s Zap it, a sentence we often use to help with small business clients’ tasks. With the help of Zapier, you can have your various digital tools speak to one another and create automation in your processes. That way, you can cut down on spending long periods completing redundant work, which takes up valuable productivity minutes for us as business owners!
Why it’s our favourite Zapier feature? Zapier is the definition of efficient. Work smarter, not harder = zap, zap, zap! We can connect two apps in seconds, which helps us automate processes that can become time-consuming with growth.
Bonus Tip: Free Small Business Software For Accounting (Wave)
Platform: Wave
Goal: Manage your accounting (invoice, quotes, payroll) with this free tool.
Cost: Free plan available
If you are starting a business, one of the most important (but also, let’s face it- not so fun) tasks is accounting. From invoicing to quotes and payroll, keeping track of your finances is crucial to ensure the longevity of your small business. Wave offers free software that can help with all these accounting tasks- definitely worth checking out!
Why it’s our favourite Wave feature? Free + easy to use = we love it!
We hope you’ve found this list of digital efficiency tools helpful. What are your favourite digital efficiency tools for small businesses? Send us a message if you think we’ve missed crucial small business tools, and we will add them to our list!
As always, if you need help implementing any of these tips or finding other solutions for your small business, we’re here to help.
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L8P Digital Marketing
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 1-604-848-4104
Mail: BOX 598, Garibaldi Highlands (Squamish), British Columbia V0N1T0