5 Must-Have Business Tools

Any tool that makes your business run more smoothly is worth having, right? Here are a few of our favorite online tools that can enhance your company’s productivity. Most integrate nicely with Quote Roller!

Basecamp
If you have teams that collaborate on projects, Basecamp is a must-have. The online project management software lets you assign tasks to team members, update milestones and share documents. You can also track each employee’s time spent on each project.

These days, it’s rare that an entire team is in the same building at the same time. Basecamp is nice because you can log in from anywhere and access the same information. And it integrates with Quote Roller. Bonus!

Cost: There’s a free plan that lets you manage one project with 10 MB of file storage, then plans start at $49 a month.

FreshBooks
Paper invoices are so five years ago. Software like FreshBooks let you bill clients online, receive payments online and track your time and expenses. If you’ve got clients all over the world, FreshBooks helps you bill in any currency. It also integrates with Quote Roller, so you can tie your proposals directly to invoicing.

Another neat feature is its mobile app. For many of us, we’re on the go when working for clients. Just open the app and log your time spent on the project.

Cost: You can manage up to 3 clients on FreshBooks for free, then plans start at $19.95 a month.

Capsule
There are many customer relationship management programs out there, but Capsule does a great job of simplifying the management of your contacts and tracking of your pipeline. You can even assign tasks tied to contacts so that the lead doesn’t go dry.

Capsule ties in with other applications (Quote Roller included) to make your marketing and project management easier: MailChimp, Google Apps, Wufoo and FreeAgent are just a few of the apps it integrates well with.

Cost: If you’ve got just 2 users, Capsule is free. Otherwise, it’s $12 a month per user.

DropBox
Emailing large files can be stressful: sometimes the recipient never gets them, or can’t find the file when he needs it. DropBox makes it easy to share documents, photos or other files in the cloud.

Users can access files from anywhere, make changes and update them to the shared folder.

Cost: Absolutely free!

Podio
Another great project management tool is Podio. You can manage project by client and assign tasks to your team members. Podio has its own set of apps built into the platform that enhance your CRM, social or product development capabilities. Think of it like Facebook for project management: you can like and share a post within the platform, and comment on it, just like you do on social sites.

Cost: It’s a free service, but there is an enhanced version starting at $8 a month.

Already using some of these services? See how easy they integrate with Quote Roller.

Photo credit: katerha