As a business owner, you can feel frazzled sometimes with the myriad of things you have to do to keep your business running. It’s hard to stay focused on your core business, producing goods and services, for your customers when there are so many other parts of managing a business.
Depending on the size of your business, you may not have the resources to hire employees to take care of various aspects of your business, such as accounting, HR, legal, sales, marketing, administrative services, etc. If you can’t afford to hire a full-time employee to manage these aspects of your business, you can usually find local accountants and lawyers to help manage tasks that require specific expertise. There are many ways to find local experts in your area, such as using an online directory site, like Superpages or DexKnows, Google, your local yellow pages, your local newspaper or many types of local advertising in your neighborhood. I also highly recommend the Superpages LocalSearch Mobile app to find local businesses on your iPhone, iPad or Android device.
There are also many online services that will help you with various aspects of running your business. A few of the options are listed below.
Project and Task Management
It’s not easy to make sure everything gets done correctly and on time. Services that help you assign tasks, create milestones and communicate with your team and with customers and vendors can help you organize and manage what is going on with your business. A couple of the best online applications that provide this service are Basecamp and Teamwork. Both of them offer ways to track projects by creating task lists, creating discussions, uploading documents and adding events to your calendar.
Time Tracking and Invoicing
Depending on the size of your business and what type of work you do, your accounting and payroll needs may vary. If you need a comprehensive invoicing and time tracking system, but don’t need to manage payroll, Freshbooks and Harvest are some of the best options available.
Payroll
If you need someone to help you with payroll services, there are a lot of options out there. Many banks offer payroll processing services, but they are usually just reselling or using Intuit payroll solutions or ADP, which you can connect with and use yourself.
Legal Services
For actual legal services, you should probably consult a local lawyer with expertise in the area in which you need help. However, for standard legal forms and basic legal information for your business, Nolo is a great resource.
How about you? What services have you found useful to help run your business?
