Aren’t we all looking for the best software for our business? Maybe you want to learn about utility management software. Or maybe you want to learn about best utility billing software. After all, your business has a lot going on, and you want to make sure that any software you decide to use helps you (and your team) keep everything track of in one place.
Technology is critical to any business. You need something to help your business become a success. Technology makes businesses more efficient and enables companies to grow beyond their wildest dreams. Are you looking for the best utility software or billing software? Utility management software, or billing software, or workforce management software or project management software are all being developed nowadays. Best software for utilities is surely also included here.
nTask
Forget about effective business management without using a dedicated project management tool. That’s why we’re starting off the list with nTask. A project management software coming with a multitude of features to help you complete your business projects successfully.
nTask comes with powerful native modules that provide a multi-dimensional solution to all your project needs. A single platform to plan, collaborate and monitor your project performance without switching applications. With nTask, you can get a holistic view of what lies ahead in your project lifecycle.
Through beautiful Gantt charts and built-in timesheets, the tool also allows you to track your project performance seamlessly.
Let’s see what you can accomplish through nTask:
Top Features
- Create and manage your projects through systematic workflow which allows you to add things as you move along with the project
- Use it as a to-do list app and assign tasks instantly to your team members and make roles transparent
- Automatically repeat tasks by setting task recurrence according to a frequency of your choice
- Execute successful team meetings through a powerful native meeting management solution which lets you take control of your meeting details with more precision
- Create and associate issues with your respective projects and resolve them proactively through smart issue metrics, like issue severity and issue priority
- Safeguard your project from potential hazards by documenting risks earlier in the project lifecycle
- Monitor your project performance through built-in Gantt charts and auto-generating timesheets
- Communicate with your team members and provide timely feedback through comments within tasks
- Create your own CRM with nTask Custom Fields
Pricing Plans
nTask comes with three plans:
- Free plan: unlimited tasks, unlimited meetings, timesheet reporting, and unlimited workspaces
- Premium plan: starting at $3 – unlimited projects and Gantt Charts.
- Business plan: starting at $8 – unlimited Risk management, and Custom Fields.
Slack
Slack is where team collaboration is. No matter at what stage your business might be, the chances of information slipping through the cracks is real. Save yourself the horror of miscommunication and choose Slack as a professional team collaboration tool.
Whether you’re onboarding a new employee, sharing critical files, planning your next meeting, or simply exchanging routine messages, Slack has you covered! With distinct channels for multiple teams, Slack not only makes team communication easier but better.
Not only this, but Slack also comes with hundreds of integrations to serve your respective project needs. Through these integrations, the software makes sure you don’t have to constantly switch applications for executing basic business functions.
Key Features
- Specific channels for teams, projects, or topics
- Hundreds of third-party application integrations
- Search option for instant access to desired messages
- Customized availability statuses
- In-app notifications
Pricing Plans
- Free and paid plans. Paid plans start from $6.67
FreshBooks
Quite a popular tool for invoicing and accounting, FreshBooks is one of the best small business management software when it comes to financial management. Coming with a complete suite of accounting features, FreshBooks provides a fast and reliable solution for creating quick invoices, tracking expenses, and much more.
Through native time tracking, you can easily monitor the time your team is spending on tasks and bill your clients accordingly.
Not only this, but the tool also facilitates project management through an elaborate feature set for effectively handling project-related activities. Few prominent features include centralized file location, team chat, and project assignment.
Key Features
- Expense tracking
- Time tracking
- Invoicing
- Cost estimates
- Accounting reports
- Dashboards
- Customized team permissions
- Team chat
Pricing Plans
- The tool comes with paid plans which start from $15 per month. All plans come with a free trial of 30 days.
Chanty
Chanty is aimed to boost team collaboration and productivity in all business segments. Chanty lets you stay in touch with your team in private, public, group and one-on-one conversations. The Teambook keeps all your messages, tasks, files, and links in order. Chanty offers audio calling and video conferencing functionality with screen sharing. It has a built-in task manager with the Kanban board, that allows you to turn messages into tasks, assign a teammate to perform the task, set a due date and priority.
Voice messaging lets you instantly communicate with your team in audio format. Chanty integrates with Trello, Asana, Zapier, Google Drive, Dropbox, Onedrive, Github, Gitlab, Bitbucket, Mailchimp, Giphy, and other apps.
Key Features
- Unlimited message history
- Private, public, group and one-on-one conversations
- Integrations
- Audio/video calls
- Voice messaging
- Built-in task management
- Kanban board
Pricing Plans
- Free basic plan
- Business plan starts at $3/user per month
Bitrix24
Bitrix24 offers more than meets the eye
Bitrix24 is a 100% free business management software that offers more than just project management.
It comes with over 35 free tools, including CRM, tasks, document management, time management, business process automation, collaboration, email marketing, virtual PBX, shared calendars, and so much more.
It is available in the Cloud – or as software that you can install on your own server right away – meaning, it’s ready to be used in less than 30 seconds.
With over 8,000,000 organizations that are active users of the platform, Bitrix24 has maintained its reputation as the best business management software. Here’s why.
Put a premium on your privacy
Bitrix24 is a company management software that offers top-notch privacy by design and has function-centered tools that teams can actually trust.
It uses state-of-the-art, HIPAA-compliant encryption methods to protect you and your customers’ information.
User-friendly and easy to adopt
As an IT business management software – or any type of business, really – Bitrix24 integrates a whole lot of solutions in just one platform.
With this, your team will never have to worry about not being able to adopt it in their daily functions. Each of the tools can be accessed within the platform, in just a click away.
Hence, with Bitrix24, you don’t let a confusing user interface hold your business back.
Remote-ready
Bitrix24 is a free business management software that provides one intelligent space for managing all business activities — from project management and employee performance to Marketing and customer relations.
It’s the smoothest way to keep remote teams visible and coordinated.
Proactive
No project ever turns out exactly as it was planned. Now, in order to minimize the chances of surprises, it’s necessary that everyone in your team is as proactive as possible.
Proactiveness encompasses being adaptive to changes to identifying project risks at first sight.
Bitrix24’s straightforward project management tool gives you and your team a bird’s-eye view of any project so you can easily spot any untoward changes and challenges as the business goes on.
Fluid communicate
More than 90% of a business manager’s job is communication. Help each member of your team stay on the same page, keeping goals and expectations aligned, eliminating risks, and keeping conflicts under check throughout any project.
Bitrix24 is a free business management software that comes with superb communication channels to help any manager or leader make sure that there is a smooth, streamlined flow of information across projects and processes.
Bitrix24 has everything you need to stay on top of your projects and team members. Add comments on tasks, collaborate directly on files during the review/approval process, create discussion topics for brainstorming and @ mention people to grab their attention.
Better Scheduling
Bitrix24 is a free business management software with a built-in CRM tool to help you organize, plan, and prioritize any work.
We understand how overwhelming it can be for a manager or a team member to keep their heads clear around so many tasks, events, milestones, and deadlines, so with this free CRM, you can keep your work life organized and sorted just the way you always wanted.
What’s more, you can mark all the important events in your Bitrix24 calendar. Set milestones in any project as well. Of course, you can schedule your meetings and keep an eye on the start and end date of any task.
Manage and grow your business with Bitrix24
Clearly defining goals and objectives
We’re all familiar with the saying, begin with the end in mind. It is a must to establish clear goals and objectives that need to be accomplished in order to keep any project on track and thereby successfully deliver the project.
With Bitrix24, you get a spot-on, streamlined view of any project, which helps in setting realistic goals and objectives.
Building a strong team
Managing a business is not a solo job. You need people or a team to help you run the business and accomplish any project. But how do you ensure you’re building a strong team?
As a free business management software, Bitrix24 can help you get a quick overview of each of your member’s work schedules – the projects they’re working on, the tasks they’re assigned, the milestones they’re expected to achieve.
Also, check their availability and be able to assign the available resources to a new task accordingly. Coupled with Bitrix24’s smooth communication channels, you are sure to know the whereabouts and whatabouts of any of your team in an instant.
Spotting the project killers
It is a fact that no project is ever problem-free. From workplace distractions like a chattering coworker to a serious concern such as back-to-back missing deadlines, any obstacle that prevents you (or your team) from completing a task on time has to be pointed out and eliminated as soon as possible.
Lucky for you, Bitrix24, as a seamless business management software, has all you need to tackle such situations. Bitrix24’s collaboration and project management tools let you have complete visibility across any project.
Analyze the current work process, spot key concerns to focus on, refine any workflow to adjust to any changes in the work environment, and get things done according to plan.
Keeping you updated
Want to get a quick update on any of the project progress? Instead of going through the pesky email threads, just go through the task reports.
Here, you can see who is doing what and how much workload team A has on their shoulders. With just a quick browse, you can also get a clear picture of how much time is spent by any team on any task.
In Bitrix24, you can just pick the details of the “work data” you’re interested in, create customized reports, and analyze them in your team discussions.
Stay agile and sane
Taking into account the need for agility in today’s work culture, Bitrix24 offers a free business management software that gives you the option to divide tasks further into stages using custom workflows and Kanban boards.
Divide a task into even more specific stages, and your team can further move them from one stage to another based on the progress made in them.
Bitrix24 is agile-ready by design to let you see how swiftly tasks are progressing and easily identify bottlenecks, if there are any, in a task. With this, things become even more transparent as everyone gets to see who is working on which tasks and what’s the progress status on their task.
But wait…there is more
All that’s discussed above is just the tip of an iceberg. There are so much more in the suite of features that makes Bitrix24 the ultimate tool to help you manage your business.
To get the real feel of how the best business management software – that’s Bitrix24 – helps you, take it for a spin as you sign up for a free account.
Download our self-hosted editions that come with API, CMS, and source code, which can be easily customized and integrated with other tools.
Visit our YouTube Channel too for an in-depth, step-by-step guide on any of our free tools.
* Please note that the information may have changed since the publication. For current prices and features please visit Bitrix24 pricing page.
Basic Features
- Unlimited free users
- Simple to use
- No system administrator needed
- Activity steam
- Cloud or self hosted
- Mobile apps for iOS/Android
- API and source code available
Client management
- CRM
- Quotes & Invoices
- Product catalog
- Email marketing
- Virtual call center
- Sales automation
Project Management
- Todo lists
- Gantt chart
- Unlimited subtasks
- Workload planning & management
- Checklists
- Task reports
Remote Collaboration
- Social network
- Group chat
- Videoconferencing
- Mobile messenger
- Online telephony
- Email server
HR and Employee Management
- Clock in & Clock out
- Work reports
- Company directory
- Absence calendar
- Leave requests
- Shared calendars
- HRMS
Trello
“Organize anything, together.” Trello is a collaboration tool that organizes your projects into boards. In one glance, Trello tells you what’s being worked on, who’s working on what, and where something is in a process. All your projects, all your tasks, all of your team–organized, accounted for, and easily visible at a glance. New users instantly understand the list and card metaphor and can be working on Trello within minutes.
Best For
Trello is for teams of all sizes, for the creators and doers, and for those who take dreams to done. Trusted by millions, Trello powers teams all around the world.
Jira
Jira is the #1 software development tool used by agile teams. Teams of 2 to 20,000 rely on Jira to manage every stage of their workflow, from planning to shipping and releasing. With native roadmaps, teams can ladder up their work to track the big picture. Jira’s no-code automation engine allows teams to save time and increase power by automating any task or process with a few clicks. And with a free edition, teams up to ten users can leverage all the power of Jira at no cost, forever.
Gmail
Email serves as a critical component of a robust business management system, which is why the 4th tool in our roundup of best business management software is Gmail. Powered by Google, Gmail is one of the most widely used email platforms around.
An easy to use application, coming with an array of free features, Gmail is a go-to option for most individuals for personal and professional communication alike.
With powerful spam filtering, the application automatically detects junk and keeps it out of your inbox. Furthermore, the program organizes emails into designated folders according to their type and categorizes them as primary, social, promotions, and others.
Key Features
- Spam filtering
- Email categorization
- Free storage
- Conversation threads
- Instant messaging
- Video chat
- Virus and malware scanning
- Search bar
- Language support
- Offline access
- Powerful sync with other applications
Pricing Plans
- Gmail is free for personal use. The business account plans start from $5 per user/month, with a free trial of 14 days.
Conclusion:
You see, the problem comes from these utilities not being able to find a good management software for their company organization. An efficient utility billing software can help them lower costs and improve their performance in the market. However, there are numerous options for utility management software and that means it’s hard for these companies to make the right choice.