Productivity Tools for a Smart Entrepreneur

Budding startups can truly be a bustling place with tasks lining up one after another. It can be really easy for entrepreneurs to get stuck in the whirlwind of every little task list, update, or decision. Although it’s a good thing to have a thriving startup, it is necessary to ensure that this hive of activities is goal-focused and productive in true sense.

To keep yourself on top of things, you must find appropriate startup tools that you can rely on.

But, finding these apps would be another task on your to-do list. So, to save you time, down below is a list rounded up to get the most done from your team and your startup with a growing workload.

ASANA- manage your projects

Asana is an outstanding management tool designed for entrepreneurs and founders. If you struggle to keep track of tasks that need to be done, deadlines, and who is responsible for what, Asana could prove to be a haven for you.

With Asana, You can make project lists, manage them, make team pages for project discussion, build task boards and conduct team communication in an organized manner. Automating processes with forms, workflow, and project templates is also available. What’s more, you can even integrate with other tools on Asana.

Let’s take simple examples to understand how Asana can help your life as an entrepreneur.

Asana is quite popular among brand developers, system engineers, and web developers. They use it to:
– Allow their clients and colleagues to keep track of the progress and what is in the pipeline.
– Use it for reminders.
– Solve communication problems for different teams and group chats- sales, designs, engineers, and marketing.
– Drag and drop functionality, tag teams, set priorities, and check teammates’ calendars/workloads.

BUFFER- manage your social media presence

A buffer is a startup tool that lets you manage your startup’s social media presence.

It allows you to – plan, arrange, publish and analyze your posts in bulk for LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.

With Buffer, you can measure your performance, get insights across multiple accounts, and even create reports from one analytic dashboard.

You can compare paid and organic results of particular hashtags, posts, and stories, plan and set reminders for the following posts, skip to critical comments with intelligent alerts, labels, and hotkeys, and view unanswered comments on a straightforward dashboard. All these functionalities help you turn your followers into your fans.

As an entrepreneur, it is essential to use the full potential of multiple social channels. However, it can only be achieved when you find sharing content and recognizing what’s working for you easy.

ZENEFITS- manage your HR

Being a startup, you will not be able to afford an HR team right from its inception. So naturally, hiring, paperwork, and compliance stress fall on managers.

This is where Zenefits can be your saving grace.

Zenefits is a Human Resource Information Management Platform that lets companies manage multiple HR functions such as payroll, taxes, stock options, compliance, health insurance, benefits, attendance, vacations, and paid time off in one place.

It’s an automated HR system that reduces workload by asking employees to fill in necessary information only once and remove them from payroll and benefits within a few clicks on termination of employment. This cloud-based platform acts like a self-service portal and an employee directory offering best-in-class insurance and benefits packages from third-party providers.

Zenefits is also partnered with Microsoft Teams, Slack, Google Hangouts, Asana, and Zapier to work seamlessly with varied and relevant HR information.

OUTREACH- execute your sales smartly

Outreach is a software designed for your sales team that can help improve your communication with your clients. This startup tool automates sales engagement using a broad set of interactions. It even automates components related to your buyer’s journey and customer lifecycle.

Outreach allows you to control mails, voice solutions, and social interactions. It works with an AI/ML toolkit that reduces the toil of manual CRM data entry and syncs data across various other tools so that your sales rep stays focused on selling.

Along with this, Outreach provides real-life assistance for customer interaction; stores lead insights in one place, forecasts with pipeline analysis, and team and rep level projections so that you can obtain insights and make data-driven decisions.

The software even alerts you about any potential risks in your pipeline. You can even measure team and individual rep pipelines by employing rep productivity scorecards.

The primary services offered by Outreach are as follows.
-Auto-Dialer Lead Management
-Sales Automation
-Lead Management
-Lead Scoring 
-Call Recording
-Contact Management
-Document Management
-Email templates.

UPWORK- find freelancers effortlessly

Upwork is software that connects businesses to freelancers from various fields. If you need a writer, developer, or designer for short-term projects, Upwork is the key.

Upwork provides you with a platform for work management, payment, posting jobs, and finding prospective matches. The app charges a processing fee per payment to your hired freelancer. As a result, you can approach a larger pool of specialized talent and get faster deliverables with easy hiring, finding, and scheduling flexibility.

For example, companies use Upwork to get higher-level assistance for general administrative work. Another popular freelancing job is data analysis and record keeping by marketing departments.

QUICKBOOKS- manage your finances

QuickBooks is popular accounting software that helps startups, freelancers, and Small and Medium-sized businesses keep track of their financial health. You can organize your cash flows, receipts, expenses, and custom invoices.

QuickBooks offers innovative automation options to help entrepreneurs save time, enabling the software to perform all financial tasks. As a result, you can use this software and spend more time optimizing your products.

You can employ Quickbooks for invoicing customers, managing those invoices, tracking cash flows, preparing taxes, paying bills, and generating reports.

Here’s a list of some primary functions that you can perform on Quickbooks.
Create and Track Invoices- record, print and email your income, and view your accounts receivables.
Simplify Taxes- Quickbooks can invite your tax preparer to access your account directly to let them review your statements or print information to prepare your return.
Print Financial Information- manage and print your Profit and Loss report, Balance Sheet Report, and Statement of Cash Flows.
Payroll- QuickBooks includes an automatic payroll function that calculates and runs employee payrolls. You can effortlessly fill your employee’s time and the hour’s flow to your invoices with a payroll module.
Track Employee Time & Expenses- Employees can enter their time, and the time entered and assigned to a customer is added to their invoice. Any expense entered can be marked as billable, just like time.
Accept online payments- offer your customers to pay online directly from their emailed invoice.

Conclusion

Starting a business can include swarming workflows and overwhelming projects. Any organization’s productivity relies on how you manage your time, information, tasks, and resources.

Therefore, a business owner must become a maestro of their time and adopt suitable productivity software. This way, entrepreneurs can have more time to focus on business advancement than just day-to-day operations.

These startup tools can automate several business duties so that you can run your firm without losing your mind.

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