If you’re a small business, the beginning of the year is usually spent finalizing future projects and initiatives, completing budgets or even playing a bit of catchup from last year.
Even with good resolutions and intentions, sometimes throughout the year, new projects come up, plans change and while you try your best to stay organized, we could always use a little bit of help.
To help you out and make the most of your 2021, we’ve put together some top recommendations of digital tools to help you save time and stay organized in the year ahead. Let’s take a look!
Scanner Pro
If you’re looking for a tool to help you save time from photocopying or organizing paper documentation, check out Scanner Pro. Scanner Pro by Readdle allows users to digitize documents, receipts and more with their own camera. The app enables users to quickly scan a paper document and upload a digital copy to Google Drive, Dropbox, and other cloud services.
No matter the document type or size, Scanner Pro can help you capture and share contracts, articles, resumes, receipts and more.
Looking for a free app? Try their sister app, ScannerMini. This version offers similar functionality but is restricted to sharing documents only to iCloud.
Snag It
Find yourself sending lengthy emails when providing feedback or explaining existing processes?
Snag It by Techsmith is a great tool to power your workflows and improve overall collaboration. With this software, you can easily capture screenshots, web pages, text or video, and share with others or use it to create new content. Key features like layout templates, screen capture and recording, annotations, and text extraction help organizations provide clear feedback, establish new processes, create training documentation and more.
MileIQ
Did you know that you can claim mileage as a business expense? If you’re already doing this, you may know it can be a tedious process. In 2020, ditch your mileage tracker forms and try MileIQ by Microsoft. This app automatically runs in the background, tracking your miles and creates weekly reports for your driving. Need to separate business and personal driving? No problem, this app allows users to easily edit and categorize their trips. Additional bonus – this app is included with Office 365 Business subscriptions and is available across all devices, including desktop.
Slack
If you find yourself struggling to stay on top of hundreds of emails and keeping them organized, then Slack could be the app for you! This instant messaging application allows users to create channels for specific conversations, projects or topics, make phone and video calls, upload, share and store a variety of file types without size restrictions and more. With integrations into over 2000 apps, Slack can work alongside the programs you use and love, keeping everything organized and preventing organizational silos.
RescueTime
For those looking to keep better track of their time spent on specific tasks, make sure to try RescueTime. This app works in the background on your computer, phone, or tablet, and monitors how you spend your time. Users can set time limits for specific tasks – ie. answering emails, scheduling social posts and more, to help them manage their time more efficiently.
Expensify
If you’re looking to take control of your expenses in 2020, try Expensify. With multiple pricing tiers, this app can support smaller to medium-sized businesses, all the way up to enterprise organizations. This app helps users manage and track their expenses, with automatic sync between Expensify and their accounting software, automatic updates to existing expense reports, expense categorization, approval reminders and more.
Sync
If you’re looking to move to a cloud-storage provider in 2020 to help organize and share your digital files, Sync is a great solution. Unlike common cloud-providers such as Google Drive, or Dropbox, Sync offers Canadian data residency, geo-replication, and end-to-end encryption. This cloud provider makes it easy to store, share and access your files from anywhere, saving time and enabling your entire team.
17 Hats
Our last recommendation is a personal favorite, 17hats. This software is an all-in-one platform that helps businesses with booking coordination, lead management, financial reporting, online payments and more. With everything in one place, 17hats supports your entire workflow from initial lead generation to customer surveys, ensuring entrepreneurs always have insight into their business.
We hope these tools can help you with the year ahead! If you’re looking for other ways to stay organized and free up some time, start by looking at what a bookkeeper can do for you.