Running a startup means wearing a lot of hats. You’re a busy woman, and you have to worry about finances, product, hiring and investors. One of the things you learn about being an entrepreneur is just how much decision making and legwork there is to do before you can even begin to run your business. Finding the right account system, figuring out if you’re large enough to need an enterprise resource program and documenting how you onboard new employees are all things that might not be on your to-do list as an executive, yet.
But there’s a method to be found in all the madness. There are tools out there to help you run your business efficiently without having to spend an arm and a leg. They’ll scale up with you as you grow, bringing in the resources and volume that you need after you get to a certain size. Here are a few of these tools we’ve found that are working for fellow female entrepreneurs:
Finances
A company’s backbone is its finances. What do your unit economics look like? Do you have enough cash for more inventory or a new hire? How close are you getting to your revenue goals? Many of these key questions can only be answered by an organized accounting system.
Business News Daily named Intuit Quickbooks Online the best accounting software for small businesses a few years in a row, and it’s not hard to see why. The software can be scaled and customized with advanced capabilities to fit growing business needs.
No matter which plan you get, Quickbooks doesn’t make you compromise on key features that aren’t negotiable for running a business. These include financial reporting, income tracking, expense tracking, year-end tax preparation, automatic data backups and the ability to download bank and credit card transactions.
Communications
One of the biggest differentiators between a big company and a small company is how communication happens. Are you still calling your customers on your cell phone? Is text support really you answering as customer service? Are you still on a free plan for web conferencing that doesn’t have the features you need? Those little things can feel unprofessional.
Purchasing a telecommunications service might sound expensive, but you can get around it by minimizing your initial investment and only paying for the features you need. To do this, you can use virtual meeting software that only charges you for what you use and can scale with your business.
Social Media
Social media is taking over the world, and if you’re not on that train, then how will your customers hear about you? But trying to manage multiple accounts turns into a huge headache and time-suck quickly. To solve this problem, try a social media manager.
Buffer, for example, is social media management for marketers and agencies. It makes scheduling posts over multiple accounts and multiple platforms easy, helps you choose the best times in the day to post, and gives you the ability to share anything you see on your web browser with one or two clicks.
