Outsourcing Your Office
Topic: Business Management,Small Business Marketing,Small Business Tech Recs,Tech Tools,WorkingPoint News | Comments Off on Outsourcing Your Office
Small business owners have a lot on their plates; invoicing, expenses, inventory management, payroll, marketing, business development, accounting, the list goes on and on. At WorkingPoint we believe we offer a great service to help you manage your finances. We also know that there are many other aspects of your business that you could use some help with. Below are some of our favorite services and products to help make your SMB lives more manageable.
Receipt and Document Management
Shoeboxed – We recently teamed up with Shoeboxed to offer you a great integration with their service. We are excited about this partnership because they have a fantastic suite of services. Essentially they take all of your paper receipts, business cards and other documents, digitize and analyze them and then send them back. Once you have the digital version you can quickly create reports and summaries, which will save you hours during tax season as well as allow you to have a better overview of your expenses. We encourage you to give their free trial a shot.
Neat Receipts – Neat has a slightly different take on document digitizing. Instead of shipping your paper documents away, you scan them all yourself. After buying one of their scanners you can quickly and easily feed in all of your documents to be recognized (OCR) and ordered. Their products have rave reviews and can definitely help you to get more organized.
File/Document Management
Dropbox – A relatively older player in the online document management game, Dropbox allows you to effortlessly upload any type of digital document which can then be viewed on all the devices you own. A real strength of their system is the ability to share folders and files with others, making collaboration with coworkers near and far a breeze. You receive 2GB of space for free, and can pay for more.
Google Docs/Drive – If you are a user of Gmail or Google Apps, then this is the solution for you. Similar to Dropbox you can easily upload files from your computer which are then available anywhere. In addition to being able to share your files with others, one of the major pluses of Google drive is the ability to create and edit documents from any web browser. You get 5GB free; 25GB will set you back a measly $2.50/month. A great tool that we enjoy at WorkingPoint!
Outsourcing Tasks
TaskRabbit – If you haven’t heard of TaskRabbit, then listen up! They offer an amazing service where you can hire individuals near you to complete mundane or repetitive tasks that you don’t have the time/interest in doing yourself. For example, scanning all of those documents into your brand new Neat Receipts! Check out their website to see if they offer services near you.
Elance – Elance in an online marketplace where professionals can post their services and you can hire them. For small business owners the on-demand nature of the service can be invaluable. If you need a logo/website redesign you need look no further. Web design is just one example of the huge number of different things you can get accomplished for your business. There is a bidding system, where you post your job and the approximate amount you are willing to pay and then can review all of the bids that come in.
Website Creation
OnePager – OnePager is a fantastic tool for those of you that don’t have a website yet (you really should!) and want something that is simple and elegant. As the name suggests they can create a site for you that is one page displaying your info and anything else you want people to know about your company.
WordPress – Another website creation tool, that is more powerful than OnePager but at the same time easy for a layman to use is WordPress. They have been around for quite a while and have a huge community of people who create themes, plug-ins etc. for you to optimize your website.
This is just a small sample of the ways that you can leverage the web to streamline and optimize your business. If you have any other ones you use please feel free to post them in the comments. As always questions/feedback /comments are welcome!
Thanks and Happy Optimizing!
-The WorkingPoint Team