flevyblog

Flevy Blog is an online business magazine covering Business Strategies, Business Theories, & Business Stories.
MANAGEMENT & LEADERSHIP STRATEGY, MARKETING, SALES OPERATIONS & SUPPLY CHAIN ORGANIZATION & CHANGE IT/MIS Other

10 Useful Online Small Business Management Tools

Editor's Note: Take a look at our featured best practice, Five Stages of Business Growth (25-slide PowerPoint presentation). This presentation introduces a framework for entrepreneurs to use when building and navigating their business from a nascent, startup state to an enterprise with a global footprint. This framework, called the 5 Stages of Business Growth, is based on the fact that all businesses experience common [read more]

* * * *

Whether you run a small business or a major corporation, you will know that with so much going on, it is difficult to keep things from turning to chaos. However, there are some great business management tools that make a huge difference to the running of your business. Some make life so much easier and many of them do not have to cost any money.

Take a look at our list of the 10 best small business management tools designed to make the running of your business so much easier.

A Paystub Generator

One tool that every small business owner should have is a free Paystub generator which can save you a ton of time. This tool allows you to create pay stubs for your employees. These stubs contain all your business info, important information about your employees, and give them a full breakdown of their earnings and deductions for the month. You then just email the pay stub to your employees or download a free PDF.

Slack

Any online small business needs tools to help with communication. Messenger tools such as Slack play a big role in letting us communicate with our online teams, clients, and potential clients. These tools also make it far easier to handle projects involving numerous people. Aside from Slack, other options include Discord and Skype.

Zoho Desk

Quality customer service is vitally important for the success of any small business. Zoho Desk makes this part easy. This helpdesk tool allows you to manage your support tickets in an organised and professional manner. Your customers will appreciate such an efficient system that leads to the successful resolution of complaints or other issues.

PicMonkey

Not all of us can be masters of powerful content editing tools such as Photoshop, but sometimes we do need to create images for our blog posts and social media posts. Fortunately, PicMonkey is an easy-to-use tool that offers just that. While there is a premium version for a small annual fee, the free version of this excellent tool will be enough for most of you.

MailGenius

Ever wondered why your emails always end up in the spam folder of your customers? Well, email testing tools help you to identify the reasons why. There is nothing worse than seeing your emails wasted because they end up in the spam folder of an email client. MailGenius inspects your emails to find out if they include obvious spam triggers.

CyberGhost

Another vital tool that all online businesses need is a VPN. A virtual private network aids your online security and makes it difficult for anyone to snoop on you. You have quite a lot of choice as many top VPN providers exist. However, one of the very best is CyberGhost. Try to avoid free VPNs as they may sell your online activity rather than help protect it.

Wrike

Project management has never been easier thanks to Wrike. This tool helps you to share files, stay updated with the activities performed by your team, and generally just makes it easier to collaborate on business projects. This platform offers a free version but for larger teams, you may need to subscribe to a higher tier.

HootSuite

If you run a number of social media profiles, HootSuite is a fantastic tool that lets you manage them all from a single place. You can schedule posts, listen for brand mentions and monitor which of your posts attracts the most views and interactions. The great news is that HootSuite offers a free version which is adequate for most small businesses.

Google Drive

Working as part of a team online means you need a central cloud storage platform. These allow everybody to have access to files. While there are some good alternatives, Google Drive is the best simply because you also have access to tools such as Google Docs and Google Sheets. Everyone in your team can make changes to the very same files.

Timely

Because many of your teams will work remotely, knowing what they are doing and when is very important. Timely is a time-tracking app that lets you know if your team members are working or slacking. The tool tracks the activity of your team and records everything for you to check. Aside from making it easier to spot those not pulling their weight, this tool also makes it easier when it comes to paying your team. You can see the hours put in!

The Final Word

There is a good chance that you have heard of some of the tools we have mentioned but we can also bet that there are some you didn’t know existed. Each offers benefits that help with the day to day running of your business. Many will go on to become essential tools that you cannot live without!

28-slide PowerPoint presentation
The Greiner Growth Model (Stages of Evolution and Revolution), developed by Larry Greiner, is a maturity model describing how organizations evolve through 5 stages of growth. Each stage requires appropriate strategies and structures to cope. The Greiner Growth Model is a descriptive framework [read more]

Do You Want to Implement Business Best Practices?

You can download in-depth presentations on Small Business and 100s of management topics from the FlevyPro Library. FlevyPro is trusted and utilized by 1000s of management consultants and corporate executives.

For even more best practices available on Flevy, have a look at our top 100 lists:

These best practices are of the same as those leveraged by top-tier management consulting firms, like McKinsey, BCG, Bain, and Accenture. Improve the growth and efficiency of your organization by utilizing these best practice frameworks, templates, and tools. Most were developed by seasoned executives and consultants with over 20+ years of experience.

Readers of This Article Are Interested in These Resources


29-slide PowerPoint presentation
The Consolidation Curve, or Endgame Curve, is a framework based on the theory that all industries consolidate and follow a similar course through the 4 stages of: Opening, Scale, Focus, and Balance & Alliance. This framework is based on a study of 25,000 firms globally, representing 98% of the [read more]


 
66-slide PowerPoint presentation
 
 
24-page Word document

About Shane Avron

Shane Avron is a freelance writer, specializing in business, general management, enterprise software, and digital technologies. In addition to Flevy, Shane's articles have appeared in Huffington Post, Forbes Magazine, among other business journals.


Complimentary Business Training Guides


Many companies develop robust strategies, but struggle with operationalizing their strategies into implementable steps. This presentation from flevy introduces 12 powerful business frameworks spanning both Strategy Development and Strategy Execution. [Learn more]

  This 48-page whitepaper, authored by consultancy Envisioning, provides the frameworks, tools, and insights needed to manage serious Change—under the backdrop of the business lifecycle. These lifecycle stages are each marked by distinct attributes, challenges, and behaviors. [Learn more]

We've developed a very comprehensive collection of Strategy & Transformation PowerPoint templates for you to use in your own business presentations, spanning topics from Growth Strategy to Brand Development to Innovation to Customer Experience to Strategic Management. [Learn more]

  We have compiled a collection of 10 Lean Six Sigma templates (Excel) and Operational Excellence guides (PowerPoint) by a multitude of LSS experts. These tools cover topics including 8 Disciplines (8D), 5 Why's, 7 Wastes, Value Stream Mapping (VSM), and DMAIC. [Learn more]
Recent Articles by Corporate Function

  

  

  

  

  

The Flevy Business Blog (https://flevy.com/blog) is a leading source of information on business strategies, business theories, and business stories. Most of our articles are authored by management consultants and industry executives with over 20 years of experience.

Flevy (https://flevy.com) is the marketplace for business best practices, such as management frameworks, presentation templates, and financial models. Our best practice documents are of the same caliber as those produced by top-tier consulting firms (like McKinsey, Bain, Accenture, BCG, and Deloitte) and used by Fortune 100 organizations. Learn more about Flevy here.
  


OUR CORE OFFERINGS
Flevy Marketplace: Top 100
· Strategy & Transformation
· Digital Transformation
· Operational Excellence
· Organization & Change
· Financial Models
· Consulting Frameworks
· PowerPoint Templates
FlevyPro (Subscription Service)
KPI Library
Streams (Functional Bundles)
Flevy Executive Learning (FEL)
PowerPoint Services

FREE Resources

About Flevy
Management Topics
Marcus (AI-Powered Consultant)
Partner Program
LinkedIn Influencer Marketing
FAQ / Terms / Privacy / Blog
Contact Us: support@flevy.com



CONNECT WITH US!
       
TOP 100 TRENDING TOPICS
Acquisition Strategy
Agile
Analytics
Artificial Intelligence
Balanced Scorecard
Best Practices
Big Data
Breakout Strategy
Business Continuity Planning
Business Plan Financial Model
Business Transformation
CMMI
COBIT
Change Management
Cloud
Communications Strategy
Company Financial Model
Competitive Advantage
Competitive Analysis
Consulting Frameworks
Continuous Improvement
Core Competencies
Corporate Culture
Cost Reduction Assessment
Customer Experience

BROWSE BY FUNCTION
Strategy, Transformation, & Innovation
Digital Transformation
Operational Excellence and LSS
Organization, Change, & HR
Management Consulting

Customer Journey
Customer Service
Cyber Security
Data Privacy
Decision Making
Digital Marketing Strategy
Digital Transformation
Digital Transformation Strategy
Due Diligence
ESG
Employee Engagement
Employee Training
Enterprise Architecture
Growth Strategy
HR Strategy
Hiring
Hoshin Kanri
ISO 27001
ITIL
Information Technology
Innovation Management
Integrated Financial Model
Kaizen
Kanban
Key Performance Indicators

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Business Strategy Frameworks
Case Studies
Consulting Training Guides
COVID-19 Trend Data
Digital Transformation
Financial Advising Services (FAS)

Knowledge Management
Leadership
Lean
Lean Manufacturing
Logistics
M&A (Mergers & Acquisitions)
Manufacturing
Market Research
Marketing Plan Development
Maturity Model
McKinsey PowerPoint
McKinsey Templates
Operational Excellence
Organizational Change
Organizational Design
Performance Management
Post-merger Integration
Pricing Strategy
Process Improvement
Process Maps
Procurement Strategy
Product Launch Strategy
Product Strategy
Project Management
Quality Management


Free Resources
KPI Library
Lean Management
Lean Six Sigma Training Guides
Marcus Insights
Operational Excellence

Real Estate
Remote Work
Restructuring
Risk Management
Robotic Process Automation
SWOT
SaaS
Sales
Scrum
Service Design
Six Sigma Project
Social Media Strategy
Strategic Planning
Strategic Thinking
Strategy Development
Supply Chain Analysis
Sustainability
Target Operating Model
Team Management
Total Productive Maintenance
Value Chain Analysis
Value Creation
Value Stream Mapping
Visual Workplace
Workplace Safety


Product Strategy
Small Business Owner
Startup Resources
Strategic Planning
Strategic Planning Process
Value Innovation Strategy


© 2012-2024 Copyright. Flevy LLC. All Rights Reserved.