Day-to-day business operations can be overwhelming, especially for startups and sole enterprises. Besides limited manpower, tight budgets can be a factor with the workload piling up and bills rolling in. You need to be able to focus as much energy as possible producing whatever it is your business specializes in. With the right small business tools you can get a handle on your business expenses, finances, and customer support. Small business owners are always looking for tools to help get the job done cost effectively. Here’s a short list of some products that are free or low-cost to use to help better run your business in six key areas. If you are not using at least a few of these tools you are missing out.
Legal Advice
Legal Zoom Business Attorney Plan provides attorney reviews of your contracts and other legal documents for a fraction of the price of hiring a law firm. For a low monthly fee, starting at $23.99, you can talk to an attorney on an unlimited number of legal matters.
E-Commerce
Shopify lets you set up a fully hosted and customizable online shopping cart that accepts all global currencies. Their website boasts that its businesses earn four times more in online sales than the nearest competition. The site also provides free live support.
Customer Support
SurveyMonkey allows you to build free surveys and questionnaires to conduct market research and keep a pulse on customer desires and satisfaction. You can review results graphically and in real-time. The site is designed for small businesses with little to no market research experience.
Accounting Services
Expensify is a free expense report mobile app that enables you to import credit card transactions, cash receipts, and invoices for all of your business expenses. You can capture mileage, time, and other billable expenses with your iPhone, Android, or other mobile device and store it on the site.
Payroll
Intuit offers low-cost payroll services, ranging from $20 to $36 a month, for small businesses. This service lets you create paychecks instantly, calculate payroll taxes automatically, and avoid tax penalties. Intuit also offers a workers’ comp payment service.
Human Resources
Intelius is a people search site for running background checks on prospective employees. Intelius lets you browse through criminal records and other information to help with hiring. The company has more than 20 billion records in its data bank and produces more than 3 million reports each year.