In this modern fast paced world, its sometimes very easy to find yourself swamped with stuff to do (work and personal) and it can feel very overwhelming and dis-jointed at time, which is what lead me on to find some services/tools that would help me and my businesses become both more organised, and ultimately more efficient.
KashFlow – Online Accounting!
One of the main areas of our business that wasn’t performing well was the accounting side of it. We had sage installed on Daves PC, and it was fine for a while but if i needed to issue an invoice, i had to get Dave to do it. Its also a huge program and we were probably using 10% of it.
It just didn’t suit our business.
So we browsed the web, and found a product called KashFlow – and we have never looked back!
Its hosted on their servers, so no issues if your servers go down or whatever, it contains a full quoting, invoicing and purchasing system that allows you to easily be your own bookkeeper! So that’s a saving straight away!
It also ties directly in with the VAT man, so one click and you can publish the info directly to the VAT office, no messing about!
It also fits in with how we work SO much better…
WHMCS – Hosting Automation!
For years and years and years we have hosted peoples websites, and spending time chasing payments of £60/£120 once a year from the millions of customers we have is not only an admin nightmare, but also a pain in the bum!
We looked about at a few packages that integrated with WHM (our hosting software) and WHMCS was found to be the best, by far!
It pulls all existing accounts from your server, and you can set pricing and renewal dates so it automatically emails people an invoice when it is due.
It also integrates with KashFlow which is pretty damm awesome!
Google Mail, Docs and Calendar
We’ve used these services for quite a while, but now ALL our documents, emails and calendar entries are stored “on the cloud”. We have totally bitten the bullet and now store all our spreadsheets, word docs and any other form of document on the Google servers.
We decided it was more likely to be our servers that had an issue, not Google’s – also the sharing options of the documents are amazing. If i shared a document with you, i could edit it at the same time you had it open, and you would see it appear in front of your eyes.
It makes collaborating on documents so much more efficient as you don’t end up with duplicates etc.
The mail is also super reliable, compatible with all modern smart phones and just, well, works!
We also schedule meetings on each others calendars, which automatically sync with our smartphones as well.
From a more personal angle, i use a Google Spreadsheet as my “To-do” list, as i can open it on any PC and its always 100% up to date, i can access it via the Docs app on my phone, and my business partner can also add things to it if he needs me to do them – its a great (very simple) way of staying on top of your workload!
These tools have made an incredible difference to both my own productivity, but also the efficiency of our company.
And an efficient, organised company, is a more profitable one 🙂
