If you are in business, there are some important software tools you need to know about. These technology solutions make your life easier. Whether you do the job yourself, or hire someone to help you, having access to these tools can dramatically reduce the time it takes to complete certain tasks.
Today I’d like to talk about software tools for small businesses . Software is a great way to automate certain simply tasks. Platforms like getSatisfaction make it easier than ever to get feedback from your customers – and next helps you get more of them!
Bitrix24
Bitrix24 offers a complete suite of social collaboration, communication and management tools for your team.
Top features:
- Social intranet for internal communication for chats and document sharing
- Project and work management including time and workload tracking
- Customer relationship management including sales funnels, website forms, interaction tracking and marketing automation
- Telephone integration – call directly from the CRM and record conversations
What’s special about this tool: Bitrix24 has a large set of features, from traditional project management to integrated telephone and HR system, or internal email.
Pricing: Free plan, paid plans with more storage from $39/month
OneSoft Connect
OneSoft Connect helps to simplify your teamwork – organize your customers, relationships, people or projects in one place.
Top features:
- HR management – keep records on your employees, jobs and organizational structure
- Track all business activities, manage customer relationships, projects, and contracts
- Create reminders for important tasks and deadlines
What’s special about this tool: OneSoft offers a set of predefined datasheets for essential business needs.
Pricing: Paid plans from $6 user/month
BlueCamroo
BlueCamroo aims to integrate CRM features with project management. It helps you manage your contacts, sales & projects in one solution.
Top features:
- Contact management
- Sales forecasting
- Visual sales pipeline
- Project management – tasks, stages, dependencies
- Budgets versus actual costs
- Customer Support opportunities
What’s special about this tool: BlueCamroo offers a unique Website Builder for websites, landing pages, microsites, and even eCommerce sites.
Pricing: From $41 user/month for a comprehensive solution
Deltek
Deltek is an integrated project-centric ERP solution designed to support the entire project lifecycle of professional service companies.
Top features:
- Finance management
- Time and expense tracking
- Job and task management
- Client management
- Business Intelligence
What’s special about this tool: Founded in 1983, Deltek has a long history in software solutions.
Pricing: Per request
Frank
Frank is a wholesome management platform for architecture and engineering studios.
Top features:
- Customer database
- Project management & documentation
- HR management & recruiting
- Accounting
- Workload, project and resource reports
- Vendor qualifications
- Project phases, and contractual deliverables
What’s special about this tool: Frank is a niche-oriented software for managing complex architecture and engineering projects.
Pricing: Free plan available, paid plans from $150 per month
Smartsheet
Smartsheet is a great tool for managing and automating collaborative work.
Top features:
- Project plans and schedule
- Program rollups
- Resource management
- Budget tracking
- Strategic planning
What’s special about this tool: Smartsheet enables you to create a hybrid, cross-data spreadsheets, and automated workflow
Pricing: From $15 month/user for teams
Podio
Podio is a flexible and highly customizable online hub for work and team communication.
Top features:
- Assign tasks, attach files and discuss details within the solution
- Automate the sales pipelines, project budget tracking, and more
- Get an overview of the company with visual dashboards
- Share encrypted & large files
What’s special about this tool: Podio’s workflow feature enables you to add if-this-then-that logic to Podio apps. For example, instruct your app to create a task or comment, when an item is created.
Pricing: Free for up to 5 employees, $19.20 user/month for the full suite
ClickUp
ClickUp is a productivity platform that offers more than just a task manager – allowing teams to use a single place to plan, organize and collaborate.
Top features:
- Assign comments, and nothing will fall through the cracks.
- The elegant hierarchy will keep projects simple as they grow.
- Task tray will allow you to minimize tasks instead of opening multiple tabs.
- Tools like ‘Smart Search’ and ‘Smart Estimates’ make you more productive over time.
What’s special about this tool: Whether you’re a manager, developer or anyone getting things done, with ClickUp you can choose between three different ways to view tasks.
Pricing: Free for up to 100MB, Premium for $5 user/month
ClickUp
ClickUp is a productivity platform that offers more than just a task manager – allowing teams to use a single place to plan, organize and collaborate.
Top features:
- Assign comments, and nothing will fall through the cracks.
- The elegant hierarchy will keep projects simple as they grow.
- Task tray will allow you to minimize tasks instead of opening multiple tabs.
- Tools like ‘Smart Search’ and ‘Smart Estimates’ make you more productive over time.
What’s special about this tool: Whether you’re a manager, developer or anyone getting things done, with ClickUp you can choose between three different ways to view tasks.
Pricing: Free for up to 100MB, Premium for $5 user/month
Best Cloud Storage – Dropbox
With great businesses, come great storage requirements. We just made this quote up, but hey, it fits 
! For any business, safe file storage and collaboration is one of the most sensitive matters. If you’re not properly utilizing any tool, good luck storing and retrieving your files.
This is where Dropbox comes into play.
It is one of the most popular cloud storage tools available in the market. Easy to set up, this business management software helps teams keep all their data in one centralized location for quick and instant access.
The software comes with multiple built-in tools to streamline other business operations too. For instance; Dropbox Paper allows for quick note-taking and to-do list management.
Key Features
- Files storage
- Files sharing
- Custom access controls
- Integrations with other applications
Pricing Plans
- Dropbox is a paid tool and the plans start from $8.25 per month for individuals and $12.50 per user/month for teams.
Best Cloud Storage – Dropbox
With great businesses, come great storage requirements. We just made this quote up, but hey, it fits ! For any business, safe file storage and collaboration is one of the most sensitive matters. If you’re not properly utilizing any tool, good luck storing and retrieving your files.
This is where Dropbox comes into play.
It is one of the most popular cloud storage tools available in the market. Easy to set up, this business management software helps teams keep all their data in one centralized location for quick and instant access.
The software comes with multiple built-in tools to streamline other business operations too. For instance; Dropbox Paper allows for quick note-taking and to-do list management.
Key Features
- Files storage
- Files sharing
- Custom access controls
- Integrations with other applications
Pricing Plans
- Dropbox is a paid tool and the plans start from $8.25 per month for individuals and $12.50 per user/month for teams.
Best Business Recruitment Software – BambooHR
BambooHR not only works as a nifty business management software for guys at the HR department, but it also serves as a great asset to professional head hunters. The in-house capabilities of this program can be surmised as a fully functional employee profile management tool.
You get to manage your “assets” according to their performance metrics, most recent peer reviews, employee onboarding, and off-boarding activities and vice versa.
It is safe to say that salient features of this software are to manage employee profiles through a centralized, constantly updated, cloud database alongside the added benefit of being able to update individual’s photos, certifications, etc.
With BambooHR, human resource managers no longer have to rely on storing important employee and organizational data in conventional cupboards anymore. Everything is consolidated, managed, and can be retrieved from the convenience of a few clicks.
Managers can further set permission levels, employee permissions such as; when they can take vacations off, benefits, enrollment programs etc.
Key Features
- The latest version comes with a bundle of reporting metrics
- Standard equal employment opportunity reports
- Ability to add multiple permission levels to employee cards for privileged peer review
- 3rd party benefits, medical plans, offboarding plans and much more
- Ability to track and consolidate individual employee performance reports
- A new applicant tracking system
- Employee absence and activity summary
Pricing Plans
- The basic plan starts at $99/month. Depending on the size of your organization’s needs, you can send a personal email to BambooHR representatives for a custom quote.
Best Business Recruitment Software – BambooHR
BambooHR not only works as a nifty business management software for guys at the HR department, but it also serves as a great asset to professional head hunters. The in-house capabilities of this program can be surmised as a fully functional employee profile management tool.
You get to manage your “assets” according to their performance metrics, most recent peer reviews, employee onboarding, and off-boarding activities and vice versa.
It is safe to say that salient features of this software are to manage employee profiles through a centralized, constantly updated, cloud database alongside the added benefit of being able to update individual’s photos, certifications, etc.
With BambooHR, human resource managers no longer have to rely on storing important employee and organizational data in conventional cupboards anymore. Everything is consolidated, managed, and can be retrieved from the convenience of a few clicks.
Managers can further set permission levels, employee permissions such as; when they can take vacations off, benefits, enrollment programs etc.
Key Features
- The latest version comes with a bundle of reporting metrics
- Standard equal employment opportunity reports
- Ability to add multiple permission levels to employee cards for privileged peer review
- 3rd party benefits, medical plans, offboarding plans and much more
- Ability to track and consolidate individual employee performance reports
- A new applicant tracking system
- Employee absence and activity summary
Pricing Plans
- The basic plan starts at $99/month. Depending on the size of your organization’s needs, you can send a personal email to BambooHR representatives for a custom quote.
Wave Accounting
Wave Accounting was created in 2010 by co-founders Kirk Simpson and James Lochrie who were frustrated by the lack of free and easy-to-use financial software for small businesses. Today Wave has more than 250 employees serving small businesses around the world. We chose it as the best accounting software because it lets small businesses track income and expenses, send invoices, scan receipts, track sales taxes, and more, all for free.
Wave helps users connect multiple bank accounts and credit cards and set up profiles for multiple businesses to help keep track of income and expenses. The software organizes accounts, payments, and invoices to make tax time easier and also offers robust reports to help identify cash flow trends.
Users can create and send professional, branded invoices from Wave’s dashboard or mobile app. The invoicing software can set up recurring invoices and automatic credit card payments for repeat customers and automatically syncs invoice and payment information with its accounting software.
Wave’s mobile app lets users scan receipts anywhere and sync them seamlessly with their Wave account to help keep track of business expenses. Users can also email invoices to their Wave account or scan receipts offline to be synced the next time the device is online.
Although Wave is completely free to use, it also offers additional paid services, including accepting credit cards and bank payments and setting up payroll for employees and contractors.
Wave Accounting
- Free accounting
- Free invoicing
- Free receipt scanning
Wave Payments
- All Wave Accounting features
- 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction for Visa, Mastercard, Discover
- 3.4% + 30¢ per transaction for American Express
- 1% per ACH transaction ($1 minimum fee)
Wave Payroll
- All Wave Accounting features
- $35 plus $6 per employee/contractor per month (tax-service states)
- $20 plus $6 per employee/contractor per month (self-service states)
Conclusion
We wouldn’t be where we are today without the amazing tools available to us. In this ever changing industry, it is important to stay on top of your game and you can do this with the help of some of the best business software tools. Chances are you probably use a few of these already but, if not, what are you waiting for?