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Free Small Business Tools

10 Amazing FREE small business tools to help you work smarter.

For small business owners probably more than anyone else there is a never ending quest to find ways of working smarter and more efficiently.  Often as the business owner you find yourself squeezed on time and spread too thinly. How do you manage to remember to do everything, to find the time to do it and to do it well with the time constraints and resources that you have?  Fortunately there are a number of tools out there to help, and even better many of them are free.  Often you can pay to upgrade your service to get additional features but all of these that I have listed below are tools that you can use the free version of to still add real value to your business.

These are my 10 favourites, in no particular order.

  1. Mailchimp.com is an email marketing platform that enables you to manage your mailing lists and then send beautifully designed HTML emails and track the results.  There are a whole host of different templates to use, so even if you’re like me and not creative in the slightest it’s just a case of dragging and dropping images and text into the relevant boxes so it’s very easy to use.  You can have up to 2,000 subscribers on your mailing list and send up to 12,000 completely for free.  Once you exceed that level you will need to pay, based on the number of subscribers to your list, but it’s still pretty reasonable and starts from $10 per month.
  2. Canva.com is another marketing tool which makes it easy for non creatives to come up with unique professional standard designs to use in various forms of marketing.  Use Canva to design email headers, postcards, invitations, social media banners and posts all sized correctly.  Canva have a database of thousands of images that you can use as backgrounds for your posts, a large proportion of which are free to use, or insert your own unique photos or images, then drag and drop your text in your chosen font in.  There are also images that you can pay for, which are typically a dollar a time.  There are extra features if you upgrade, though to be honest the free version is so good I’ve never felt the need to use them.
  3. Google Analytics. Every business these days needs a website and if you’re not already using Google Analytics then you should be.  Google Analytics essentially helps you to track the performance of your website.  There is a whole raft of information available on there, which admittedly can be a little overwhelming the first time you look at it, but this can help you find out various useful pieces of information which can really help you assess what is working on your website and what is not.  If you’ve never used Google Analytics before on the main dashboard one of the key facts to stand out is the number of sessions/users. This tells you how many times and by how many unique users your website has been viewed within a particular timeframe. You will see how engaged these users are on your website, for example, the number of pages they visited, how long they spent on the website and what the bounce rate is. (Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who click through to your site and then click away straight away without interacting at all with the page) Delve a little deeper and you can start to find out a bit more about these users, for example where they accessed your site from, this can be broken down by country and then by city, this is particularly interesting if you are trying to target a particular geographic area.  Some of the most useful information I feel is under the Acquisition heading, this enables you to see how users ended up on your site, whether from a referral, an organic search, a paid search, direct, from an email or from social media.  This is enables you to see which marketing methods are driving traffic to your website.  Another thing you are able to track is User Flow, or in other words showing the way users navigate around your website.  You can see the page at which visitors arrive on your site and where they go from there.  This gives valuable insight into where visitors are looking on your website and crucially, where you are losing them, allowing you to consider making appropriate changes.  There are many many more features, but if you’ve never used it before that should give you a good starting point.
  4. Toggl.com is a simple but very effective means of tracking the amount of time spent on particular projects. This is markedly useful for anyone who charges for their service by time, but is also useful for anyone who would like to improve their time management.  (If time management is of interest you might also like to read my blog post on Time Management Tips For Small Business Owners here). Essentially there is a timer which you start and stop as and when you need.  It allows you to track multiple projects and clients and produce daily, weekly and monthly reports of how much time has been spent on each.
  5. One Note. This one is a phone app not a website.  It’s very basic but I use this one a lot.  It’s simply a place to keep notes and lists.  I find I live my life by lists.  Running a small business you might have a lot of to do lists, some business, some personal. One Note enables me to write notes of ideas that I might have whilst I’m on the move. I keep lists of anything and everything from blog post ideas, projects I’m working on, people to call to Christmas present ideas and home DIY projects.  Writing things down means I then don’t need to waste time thinking about these things again but I won’t forget anything.  Evernote is pretty much the same, but I’ve always used One Note.
  6. Freedcamp.com is a free online project management tool which also allows you to collaborate with others.  In it you can keep track of multiple projects, within each have task lists and due dates.  Each task can either be assigned to yourself or to a collaborator.  Freedcamp is entirely free, no upgrade to access additional features.  It can be useful for keeping track of smaller projects as well as looking at longer term business goals and breaking them down into smaller milestones that need to be met along the way, therefore helping you keep moving towards future goals.
  7. Hootsuite.  Social media may be a brilliant way to promote your business, but if you’re not careful it can take up huge amounts of time, both in terms of logging in to the different platforms and posting as well as getting sidetracked.  Hootsuite gives you a dashboard where you can manage multiple social media accounts in one place.  It enables you to schedule posts, so in other words you can go in once a week and schedule a week’s worth of content to go out.  It will also tell you if you’re mentioned in any posts by others, saving you having to log in to your other platforms and check.  You can also get some basic analytics to track your social media performance.
  8. Hubspot. A database is arguably a business’s most valuable asset, yet I’m always amazed by how what many small business owners refer to as a database can actually be simply an Excel spreadsheet, or sometimes even just a box of business cards. Your contacts can be worth a surprising amount with proper organisation and management.  Hubspot.com offers a completely free CRM, for however many users you need and for up to a million contacts.  Unlike other CRMs who charge for the CRM once you get above a certain level of contacts, Hubspot make their money from selling marketing software so the database will always be completely free.
  9. Whatsapp.  Although this app may be more known for its social use it’s certainly useful in a business context as well.  Download this app and benefit from free messaging and sharing photos and videos.  Whatsapp can be useful to aid collaboration between individuals and groups and is a useful way of sharing on the move.
  10. Dropbox.com offers free cloud based storage and sharing.  I use this every day to share files with colleagues and clients and to enable me to pick up my documents from wherever I am so long as I have an internet connection.  You get 2GB of storage space with a basic free Dropbox account.

So what have I missed?  These are my favourite free small business tools but what are yours?  Please comment with any other tips that you may have, and please share this post if you know think anyone else might find this useful.

Virtual Office

How to find the right virtual office for your business.

So you’ve made the decision to use a virtual office.  How do you then go about finding the right virtual office for your business?  It’s important to make the right decision as you could be partnering with your virtual office service provider for a number of years to come so spend some time in advance carrying out your research to make the right decision from the start.

There are a number of factors to consider and you should weigh up all of them.

 

Location

Location should be a major consideration for you in deciding on your virtual office.  The business address plays a crucial role in the impression of your business to the outside world.  You need to weigh up both the prestige factor that your business address will give as well as the likelihood of picking up business in that area.

Think carefully about who your ideal clients are.  Would they be likely to do business with a company in a more upmarket part of town or is something more modest appropriate?  Do your clients want to see you as a local business or is that not important.

 

The Premises

Although you will not be based from the virtual office it’s still important that the premises themselves, not purely the business address play a very important role.

Ideally visit the premises yourself, or if not at least take a look on Google Places to see the building and what sort of impression that conveys.

Again, just as you considered for location whether the location and address give the right impression for your business, think too of the premises.  Is the building smart, presentable, on a nice street?

Is it obviously a virtual office building or could it be conceivable that your business is actually based in there?

 

The services

Think carefully about the services you require from your virtual office.  Is it purely telephone answering and a virtual business address or do you require other services too, such as a virtual assistant service?

Make sure you clearly understand the services that the virtual office does offer.

Telephone Answering

What are the hours of business?  Do you need 24/7 telephone answering?  Most businesses don’t need this, but be clear when the opening hours are.  What happens if there is a call out of hours?  Is there a dedicated voicemail for your business?

How will messages be sent to you?

Mail Forwarding

Does the business offer same day mail forwarding?  If not find out how quickly any mail will be forwarded on.

Can you collect the post if you want?  If you do collect will you be informed if you have any mail to be collected?  How will they make contact with you? Will the mail be stored securely?

 

The size of the company

Think again about the impression that you are trying to convey of your company and choose an appropriate virtual office service provider to partner with.  A larger company with a bigger telephone answering team are likely to convey the impression of your business being considerably larger and busier with more of a call centre feel.  A small business answering service may be able to offer a more bespoke personal service.  Staff are more likely to get to know the businesses that they are working with and will often just know the information about the clients who they are answering the telephone for without having to look up information and may even get to know some regular callers, therefore becoming a convincing part of the team.

 

Make a phone call

Ring the business yourself and see how they answer.  A phone call to your company may well be the first contact a caller has with your business and it’s absolutely crucial that you make a great first impression.  Is the receptionist’s tone clear and well spoken?  Are they friendly, welcoming and professional?  Above all, ask yourself “Would you be happy if this person was answering the phone for my business?” – if the answer is no then go no further, but if the answer is yes give this company a big plus point as you continue weighing up your options.

 

Costs

Weighing up the costs is an important part of any business decision and this is no exception.  Are there pay as you go telephone answering options or are there virtual office packages available?  Think about how you are likely to use the service.  Are you likely to want them to answer every single call that comes in to your business, or just the overflow calls?  It can be difficult to estimate the volume of calls that come in to your business if you’ve never used a service like this before.  Try keeping a tally over the course of a week of the number of calls that come in to give you a rough idea.  Are you likely to experience periods of higher volume at certain times than others?

Pay as you go telephone answering will provide you with an accurate bill based on the number of call units you have paid – you are only ever going to get charged for what you use.

Virtual office packages offer bundles of minutes, and if you can reasonably accurately forecast the volume of calls you are likely to get this can work out cheaper, but not if you get it wrong.

Find out if the service can change and grow with your business.  If you are just starting up, the chances are you may not receive huge volumes of calls in the early days, but this may well increase as your business becomes more established.  Can you change your plan if needs be depending on your business requirements?

Find out if there are set up costs and what realistic monthly charges may be.

Cost is important but maybe not the most important factor.  If you estimate that one company may cost you £5 per month more, but the address is more appropriate and the telephone answering service is better it is probably worth paying the extra for.

 

Can you use the business as a both a trading address and a registered office address?

If your business is a Limited Company by law you are required to state your registered office address.  This is an address to receive formal correspondence from HMRC and Companies House.  Check if the price for the virtual office includes both trading address and registered office address if this is what you require.

 

Can you publicise the address?

Usually you can publish the address of your virtual office, but it is worth checking.  If you want to use this for marketing campaigns, listing on Google, your website, your business cards, any other marketing material do check that this is allowed.

 

Check the terms of the contract

Are you tied in for a particular length of time or does the contract work on a rolling basis.  If you are confident that you are going to be staying with your virtual office provider for some time there are often cost savings to be made by signing up for longer periods of time and paying up front, but paying monthly offers the opportunity for you to move on should you wish to.

 

There are quite a lot of factors to be taken in to consideration, but this is an important decision.  The address of your business and the way the telephone is answered is so influential in determining how the outside world views your business and you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

 

Unsure if a virtual office is right for you?  You might like to read this article on whether to work from home or an office to weigh up the pros and cons.

 

Do you use a virtual office?  How did you find yours?  Any knowledge you would like to pass on to our readers if you have been through this process yourself?  Please do let us know.

 

Credit Control

Credit Control: How To Get Another £20k In Your Business Bank Account

According to research by Tungsten, the average SME is owed £40,857 in unpaid invoices, with £20,937 of that total amount being overdue.  An amount which, according to the 1000 companies surveyed, places 1 in 5 of those businesses at risk of insolvency.

Even if it doesn’t put your business at risk of insolvency it certainly has an impact on your cash flow.  A recent article in the Telegraph summed this up well, saying that ‘Late Payment doesn’t just affect cash flow, it affects a small firm’s appetite for investment and growth’

Not only does this have a detrimental effect on finances, but it also wastes time, as the average small business spends 130 hours per year chasing invoices.

So what can you do to minimise the risk in your small business?  The answer is you need to get an effective credit control procedure in place.

Here are our tips for keeping on top of credit control and cash flow in your business.

  1. Do what you can do to avoid giving credit wherever possible. If it’s possible for you to charge up front, or at least get a deposit then do so. If you never give someone credit they are not going to pay you late.
  2. Invoice promptly. Send invoices straight away as any delay there is likely to cause a delay in payment.
  3. Clearly state your terms and conditions on the invoice.
  4. Also on the invoice clearly state your bank details and how you want the client to pay.
  5. Make it as easy as possible for your client to pay. Automating the process by setting up a direct debit can be very simple for both the client and you as a business owner. We use GoCardless to collect direct debit payments and we have found the service to be invaluable in terms of saving time spent chasing invoices for a nominal fee.  You will also be alerted if any of your clients cancel their direct debit arrangement which can alert you to any potential problems early on in the process.
  6. Ensure that someone, either a person within your organisation, or an outsourced service partner has responsibility for credit control. This incumbent should not only have dedicated time set aside each week to devote to your credit control, but they should also understand the importance of this role to your business.
  7. Don’t automatically assume that you are the best person to take on the task of credit control for your business. Often there are advantages to delegating or outsourcing credit control to either a credit control agency or a Virtual Assistant, which can include:
  • freeing up your time to concentrate on more profit making activities
  • separating you from the process of chasing the client can be good as business owners can often feel embarrassed or awkward about chasing money (although you shouldn’t).
  • It makes sure that it does get done every week, as as the business owner you may find yourself pulled in other directions.
  1. Be systematic. It’s important that you have a clear credit control procedure in place that you follow to the letter. Following a system, and keeping a record of this has a number of benefits:
  • You know exactly where you are in the process at any one time.
  • The process usually works, preventing invoices becoming overdue is always the best way.
  • In the worst case scenario, should you need to take this to a debt recovery company or take legal action you have shown that you have followed a legitimate process.

A procedure for a business with 30 day payment terms would be something like this:

  • Day 1 send your invoice
  • Day 14 make a courtesy call to check that invoice has been received and to confirm when payment is due.
  • Day 28 make another call to remind your client when the invoice is due.
  • Day 37 send a first gentle reminder that the invoice is overdue.
  • Day 44 send a stronger reminder asking for the invoice to be paid within a particular time frame to avoid further costs being incurred.
  • Day 51 send a final reminder letter giving 7 days to pay before legal action is taken.

We use Kashflow for our accounting software and this has sample letters within it which can be sent at the click of a button and also recording everything that has been sent.

  1. Throughout the process it’s important to maintain good relationships with your client. Not only will they be more inclined to pay promptly or even early in some cases if there is a good relationship, but it’s also important for future sales with this client, or anyone else they may recommend you to.
  2. Regularly review payment ledger. Make sure if someone has paid that you are not continuing to chase them in the interests of maintaining a strong relationship.
  3. Make sure your business maintains a good reputation for paying suppliers promptly, not only does this give you the higher moral standing, but word gets around in the small business community and you don’t want to be known as someone who is a late payer as this weakens your position when chasing late payments from others.

If you’re not already following the above steps if you do introduce them will have a dramatic improvement on the cash flow and financial health of your business, but should you have done all of the above and you are still owed money don’t hesitate to take legal action.

If you’ve found this article interesting please feel free to share with anyone else you think would benefit.

 

Business Address

This week in Virtual Head Office…a business address for an online retailer

Not all of our clients take up multiple services, some will use just one or two.  This week I’ve decided to talk about one of these clients, an online retailer that we provide a business address service for.

We’ve worked with this busy home based business owner for about two and a half years and have got to know him pretty well over this time.  As is often the case it’s getting to know our clients personally that often makes our work all the more rewarding as we get to find out what a difference our service means to them.

The first time we met the business owner, he arrived at our office seeming rather troubled, the night before his garage had been burgled and some of his stock had been stolen.  He explained that he had been looking at taking up a business address for some time as he was aware that having his home address on his website, as all websites are legally obliged to do, was a bit of a security risk.  Although his home address was not where he stored the majority of his stock he was worried that the outside world would perceive his stock to be held there and he felt that this put him at risk.  The burglary, unfortunately had been the catalyst for him making the move to actually finding a virtual office to work with.

So what do we do for him?  Quite simply, we provide a mail handling service, which means we let him use the address of our building as his business address.  He can use this address on his website, on his business cards, his headed paper, his marketing material, wherever he wants to use it.  The address is a realistic one as we are in a multi-occupancy building with lots of small businesses based within it.  It’s also a lovely Georgian building on a very nice street.

We receive his post for him and as he lives locally to us, he chooses to come in and collect the post rather than have us forward it on to him.  His post can be anything from usual correspondence to items that have been purchased via his website being returned.  We receive it all here, store it securely and then let him know he has items to collect and then wait for him to call in.  In the meantime, he carries on working from home, enjoying the benefits of being near to his young family, having no commute and in general having a good work life balance

We always enjoy seeing our clients face to face when they come in to collect post from their business address and especially nice to see the smile that is always on his face these days.

Formatting Documents

What we’ve been doing this week – Supporting an entrepreneur, completing tenders, formatting documents and reports and much much more

So here we are at the end of another busy week.  As usual it’s been hectic in the office!

The client I want to talk to you about this week is one that we especially enjoy working with as, not only is he a very inspirational person to work with, but also we really feel that our admin support service makes a massive difference to him.  The gentleman in question is a true entrepreneur, a multiple business owner, who happens to be registered blind.

If you run a business yourself, you’ll know that it is a constant juggling act, there is always something to do, in short, it’s hard work.  Well imagine that how much more difficult that becomes when you are blind.  Yes, there is software that can read out documents, but this doesn’t always work perfectly, particularly if information is contained within tables or graphs, so part of what we do for him is typing out information into paragraph form, formatting documents so that they can then be read out by his software.

We’ve also, this week completed some tendering forms for him.  Again as there are forms within the questionnaires we have been able to read them and take his information to compile his applications.  This further helps him, because not only is he registered blind, but also English is not his first language and so we will often also help by checking the grammar and spelling within documents that he has produced himself to make sure that what he sends out gives a professional image for his company.

The tender applications submitted this week needed to be supported by further documentation including various policies and procedures, so we’ve been through his policies and procedures and updating and formatting the documents.  Previously as they had been compiled at different times by different people so they were all in different styles, he now has a complete set all formatted identically, all with his new corporate branding on so everything is up to date and consistent.

This week we’ve also typed up some massive weighty financial reports for him.  Accuracy is crucial here is one digit wrong on a financial report can have a massive implication so we need to check that the accuracy of the content as well as the formatting of these documents is spot on as we’re trusted to be eyes of this busy entrepreneur.

Somewhere along the way we also managed to squeeze in updating his LinkedIn profile.

It’s all been good fun, if at times, a bit crazy making sure we hit the deadlines, but everything has been done in time so now we can take a breath and look forward to seeing what next week brings!

Save Time & Get More Done

Find more ways to save time during the working day

Find more ways to save time during the working day

September is here, the summer holidays are over and it’s back to business.  For most business owners time is an extremely precious resource that there is simply not enough of.  Using your time wisely can help you achieve more throughout the business day and stay focused on your objectives.

Here are some quick tips that you can adapt in to your daily working life to help you make the most of your time in your working day.

  1. Write a To Do List.  You probably all know that you should be writing a To Do List, but do you actually do it?  Make notes of everything you need to achieve during the day and then tick the items off as you achieve them. You will find that throughout the day things will be added to the list and equally you will probably also find that things get carried over from one day to another.  If there is something that continues to be carried over ask yourself why you keep putting it off.  Is it not important or just that you don’t want to do it?  If it’s not important then cross it off the list, there’s no point cluttering your list and your mind with things that are not important.  If it is important but you either don’t have the skills to do it yourself or you simply don’t enjoy doing it then delegate to a colleague or outsource the task.
  2. Carry out similar tasks in blocks.  For example, make all of your telephone calls in one go and block out time to respond to your emails all together as opposed to when they come in.  Performing similar tasks in a row means that you get in to a rhythm and actually perform the tasks quicker.  It also means that, for example you are not spending time logging in to different social media platforms multiple times when you could do it just once a week.
  3. Use only one calendar for everything.  Most people will have a work diary that is fairly up to date (if you don’t you should), but then sometimes you may find that you have another diary for personal life.  Combining the two, ideally colour coded so that you can see at a glance what is personal and what is business ensures that you can see everything at a glance so if you need to make an appointment you know straight away if you are free and don’t need to spend time comparing the two.  Google calendar is a useful free tool that I use and you can also share this with others.
  4. Use cloud based systems for sharing and storing files.  Tools such as Dropbox enable you to share files easily without the need to email or print off ensuring everyone has all the information that they need instantly.  You also know that information stored there is secure and backed up, therefore minimising your risk of losing important information.
  5. Keep your desk tidy.  Organise your desk with trays so that you know exactly where everything is.  Only keep things on your desk that you are actually working on.  Keeping your desk clutter free helps you stay focused and minimises your stress levels.  At the end of each day have a quick tidy of your desk so that when you come in to work the next morning you are starting with a clean desk, which will help you get the day off to a positive start.

You will find that these steps are quick and easy to implement and make a surprising amount of difference to your productivity levels so give them a go and see how you get on.

If you have any interesting and useful tips that you’d like to share we’d love to hear them.
Have a great September!