Business Owner’s Toolkit

Running a business is hard enough getting clients and making them happy. Knowing what software to help you run your business adds another layer of confusion and stress. Here’s some of our favorite apps to help run our own business.

Payroll Software

WagePoint

WagePoint helps you manage your cash flow while keeping your business clean with the IRS—all from your own computer. WagePoint helps you customize your payroll by letting you define income types, deductions, and payroll schedules. It also allows you to build a detailed customer database with each employee’s pay rate, specific deductions, and date of hire. Available is a free 30-day trial and a monthly membership that includes tax services and setting up direct deposit for your employees.

LegalZoom

LegalZoom helps entrepreneurs register their businesses as LLC’s and other corporate entities by guiding users through a simple questionnaire. This service can potentially save business owners thousands of dollars by eliminating the need to pay attorney fees. LegalZoom’s individualized price depends on several factors such as the package that fits your business and the state where you will run it.

SignatureFiling

An alternative to LegalZoom, with probably better service, is SignatureFiling. They handle all sorta of business formations, saving you thousands of dollars.

RocketLawyer

RocketLawyer helps business owners designate their companies as LLC’s, S Corps., or other entities directly from their computers. A questionnaire featuring simple questions such as “How will your business be financed?” guides users through the form-filling process and RocketLawyer takes care of the rest.

Team Communication

HipChat

Built with the needs of small-business teams in mind, HipChat allows you to communicate with individual team members or establish multiple chat rooms with their own privacy features. You can also loop team members into any conversation through an “@mention” feature and you can drag files from your desktop, email, or anywhere else online to share with anyone. All files, text, and links are archived and searchable.

Slack

Slack provides a warm and straight-forward interface where one can chat directly with another team member, discuss topics with several individuals through “channels,” and share files via desktop and mobile. Slack also plugs into several applications including Google Drive, DropBox, and Twitter.

E-Signature Apps

Docracy

Docracy is the web’s only open collection of legal contracts and the best way to negotiate and sign documents online

HelloSign

Sign documents yourself or request signatures from up to 20 different people in any order, or all at once. And when the document is fully executed, everyone gets a copy delivered to their inbox. See your documents progress with status notifications that keep you in the loop throughout.

Docusign

DocuSign allows you to collect legally-binding electronic signatures, while creating a full court-accepted audit of all correspondence. You can also set documents to expire and send out reminders to your recipients. Through the dashboard, you can mange documents by filtering which have been signed and which will expire soon.

Bug & Issue Tracking

SifterApp

SifterApp provides a straight-forward interface, where teams can discuss solutions to different software issues. Its features allow team members to sort projects based on assignee, priority, completion date, and other categories. You can also keep track of progress toward individual milestones.

Domains and Hosting

DNSimple

DNSimple smoothly guides users through the process of registering or transferring domain names as well as buying SSL certificates and updating DNS records all in one elegant interface. DNSimple currently offers an iPhone app but unfortunately lacks one for Android.

ServerBeach

ServerBeach runs thousands of servers including dedicated servers. The company’s value servers start at $159 a month along with a $159 set-up fee, and it boasts 10 TB of bandwidth per month for websites that generate low-to-medium sized traffic. The Beach also offers cloud-based servers for which you are charged a rate based on the amount of traffic you receive. These servers are offered through its cloud-hosting division Zunicore.

Webbynode

Webbynode is an app-hosting platform designed for developers. It automatically sets up server stack for each app. based on its particular needs. Its “Gem” component helps you deploy your apps with a few commands and it also helps you manage any changes to your apps. Plans start at $39.99 a month for 4 cores, 4GB of RAM, 450GB of file storage, and 600GB transfer.

NameCheap

With offers starting at $4.98 a year for a “.biz” domain name, NameCheap allows you to register or transfer domain names at prices that few others can match. You can choose from hundreds of extensions (.com, .org, etc.) and more are on the way.

Customer Support

HelpSpot

HelpSpot is web based help desk software for managing all your customer support needs. Email, self service knowledge base, full reporting and so much more. Unlike other systems, HelpSpot is infinitely flexible

GrooveHQ

GrooveHQ Assign tickets to coworkers, add private notes and easily see the status of every ticket. You’ll never waste time wondering who’s responding to which support ticket.

Time Tracking

Freckle

Freckle is designed from the ground up to help you & your team get every last drop from your daily allotment of 480 business minutes… without stress, without nagging, without wasted seconds.

Web Design

320ny – Squarespace design with support

Get a modern Squarespace website professionally crafted for your business with on call support. 320ny has built and supported over 125 Squarespace websites in the last 5+ years so you never stress about design or coding. Everything is handled for you.

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