A few years ago, I scanned an online business survey that had more than 12,000 businesses take part. Of the businesses surveyed, over 55% reported that they used only one location to provide their services. By using this factoid alone, it is easy to assume that most small businesses are service oriented. However, with the right tools at your disposal most small businesses can benefit from processing work remotely with job tracking software for small business.
Job tracking software allows businesses to save time and keep accurate records of job progress. It also helps to ensure that you always get the necessary information from contractors, such as how much money has been spent or how long each job has taken. Its accuracy ensures that your financial records are in order, making it much easier to manage your business finances in a timely manner.
monday.com – Best for flexibility & integrations
Small teams can easily keep track of each other’s work, timelines, and upcoming tasks.
monday.com is an easy-to-use project management tool that saves small businesses money in two ways: offering free/affordable entry-level plans and being super user-friendly to cut back on money lost on training and onboarding. They are used by teams at Uber, Adobe, Hulu, and Unilever, so your SMB can feel like its playing in the software big leagues.
monday is flexible and scalable with 5 pricing plans available so that it can grow with you. With their freemium plan, you’ll already have access to unlimited project boards, 200+ free project/task templates, 20+ column types, and their iOS and Android apps. Pay particular attention to the free project template library—here, you’ll find pre-made outlines for editorial calendars, marketing campaign planning, CRM charts, event planning, HR forms, and more. The usefulness of this section for small businesses can not be overstated.
monday.com’s integrations include project management apps like Slack, Google Drive, Gmail, Google Calendar, Jira, GitHub, Trello, Dropbox, Typeform and many more, accessible through a paid plan with Zapier. They also have an apps marketplace with free and paid add-ons to boost your functionality. Again, I cannot stress the level of flexibility and scalability with this form.
monday.com is free to use for up to 2 users with some feature limitations. They also offer a free 14-day trial of their paid plans.
CROOW – Best for workflow customization & automation
Project teams can plan projects with customizable Kanban, Gantt, calendar, and list views.
CROOW is a project management platform with a simple and flexible structure for project collaboration. The tool supports waterfall and agile methodologies, offers multiple views such as Gantt and Kanban, and automates workflows through customizable templates.
The tool includes project planning features for managing to-dos, timelines, and deliverables. Users can also create tasks, assign due dates, and communicate with team members through comments and message boards. Another great feature is the option to create custom workflows that correspond with specific project plans.
CROOW offers additional project and business management features such as automated processes and notifications, forecasting and reporting on dashboards, and Kanban and Gantt views. Users can also manage workloads with resource scheduling capabilities, as well as manage digital assets within the platform. CROOW also provides users with the use and integration of their Agile Management System framework.
CROOW offers a freemium plan, as well as paid plans starting at $20 per month.
Zoho Projects – Best flexible work allocation tools
Zoho Projects includes a portfolio dashboard that includes Gantt charts, project status insights, and an overview of project ownership.
Zoho Projects is an online project management tool that lets teams plan, track, and collaborate on project work. The tool is scalable for small businesses and mid-size businesses.
Zoho Projects allows users to set up project plans, as well as create and assign ad-hoc tasks across the team. The tool also includes features like flexible work hours, baselines, and critical paths in Gantt charts, team based work allocation, and task reminders. Time tracking and resource utilization features help managers ensure that employees are not over or under worked.
Users can automate task transitions and workflows, track activities and progress by using the advanced reports, and manage budgets with expense management features. Collaboration features include team-wide and individual discussion management, a meeting tab to facilitate virtual meetings, a social feed to interact with and keep track of all your project activities, a forum to discuss ideas and solutions, and a central document management module to manage all information. Mobile applications are also available.
Zoho Projects has several integrations with Zoho apps like Zoho CRM, Zoho Cliq, Zoho Meeting, as well as with other third party apps like Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Teams, Google Drive, Zapier, Zendesk, and ServiceNow.
Zoho Projects offers a free plan as well as a 10-day free trial for paid editions, which start at $4 per user per month.
Asana (Web, iOS, Android)
In a cluttered world of modern project management software, Asana stands out as a profoundly effective tool that supports multiple project management styles, giving you full control over how you want to visualize and organize your work.
Its interface is intuitive and well-designed, with an easy hierarchy of elements. On the far left is the navigation sidebar, where you can access the various projects, stats, message inbox, and your personal task list. The main area displays a list of tasks, their due dates, and who each task is assigned to. Each task can be assigned to multiple projects in case of overlap and can have an infinite number of subtasks.
Where Asana shines most is in its flexibility: there’s no right or wrong way to create your project, project sections, or tasks. The default view is the list format, which is clean and easy to scan for due dates and assignees. But you can also switch to a board, timeline, calendar, or dashboard layout.
Asana allows you to create task and project templates, but its default setup is completely open-ended: the only required part of any task is a title. After that, you’re free to add a description, organizational tags, custom fields (available with paid plans), due dates, assignees, and more. Still, with all the possibilities for adding information to your tasks, Asana’s interface is relatively clean. This helps to keep the focus off the project management tool and on the work itself.
For even more flexibility, use Asana’s Zapier integrations to connect Asana with your favorite apps, like Gmail and Slack. For inspiration, take a look at how other teams are integrating Asana into their workflows.
Airtable (Web, macOS, iOS, Windows, Android)
If you love the clean, ordered appearance of a spreadsheet but wish it had a little more power, try Airtable. It’s a versatile spreadsheet-style database app that can help you manage any project, from editorial calendars to Scrum sprints for your product development projects.
Airtable projects are managed in bases. To create a base, you can choose from dozens of premade templates, import an existing spreadsheet, or start from scratch. The premade templates are well organized by project type, and are pre-filled with sample content so you can easily visualize how to run your project. Each row in a base constitutes a record, which can include any kind of customized field you can dream up.
Airtable offers all the things you love about spreadsheets (filters, equations, and pulling in data from other sources, to name a few) but in a format that’s much easier to navigate. Each column has a specific designation, whether that’s short or long text, file attachments, multi-selection tags, or checkboxes.
The best part for project management is that you can add multiple views, so you can toggle between the spreadsheet and other formats like a Kanban board or calendar. That means you can put all your detailed project data in the records and still view that information in several easy-to-scan formats.
With Airtable’s Zapier integrations, you can connect Airtable with your favorite apps, so you can do things like automatically send form responses to a project management table. Try one of the automations below, or read about 3 workflows that will help you be an Airtable expert.
Wrike
End-to-end project management software Wrike is a robust solution that provides practical collaboration. Its excellent features and capabilities make it one of the top 20 project management software for the small business list because. The system is built to scale for your growing business, and it drives results by being flexible on managing multiple teams and projects in a single tool. Apart from letting you see the bigger picture, Wrike features let you break down large goals into manageable units such as folders, tasks, and subtasks. This easily tracks individual contribution and project progress. Request forms and automation, live editing, and file management organize the project for easier completion.
Its core features also include Gantt Charts, resource management, built-in templates, time and budget tracking, email and calendar synchronization, live activity stream, proofing and approval, and personal dashboard, among others. Its excellent set of tools makes it a good investment.
You can use its full features at no cost through a free trial plan.
Try out Wrike with their free trialVISIT WEBSITEFREE
The system is available for different sizes of teams. It even has freemium plans with basic features, while higher-tiered subscriptions (starting at $9.80 per user per month) are packed with more advanced functions and capabilities.
Pros
- Freemium basic project management for five users
- Scalable software that grows with your business
- Real-time editing ensures the team gets updated with the latest information
- Gantt chart functions as a visual timeline for viewing schedules
- Time and budget tracking features for accurate budget management
Cons
- Needs improvement for UI (user interface) customization
- Lacks integration with some popular solutions like BaseCRM and Xero
- No built-in chat app
Conclusion
Whether you’re a small business owner, entrepreneur, solo-preneur, or telecommuting professional, you probably have a lot on your plate already. Managing your time and tasks is vital to the success of any small business—especially when it comes to getting paid.