New Small Business- CRM, Accounting, Project management

[bernieburger]

Hi,
Looking for some advice. Small manufacturing business 2 x owner/operators, looking for apps/software to manage accounts/invoicing/CRM, email, project management etc.

Want an integrated approach, making life easy using mobile apps as we (Owners likely to be workign apart from each other)

Shortlist so far:
- Xero - accounting
- Insightly - CRM
- Receipt Bank - managing expenses on the go
- Google apps -email, calendar syncing etc
- Evernote (Due to integration with above- use MS Onenote at work and love it)
- Mailchimp - communicating monthly newsletters etc

Any advice gladly appreciated!

Simon

[bernieburger]

Anyone?

[akirk]

it really comes down to personal preference and needs...

you either:
- find a cloud system such as those you mention - gain from cheap prices / lose in terms of compromise as it won't work quite how you work...
- have one written - gain from it doing exactly what you need / lose in terms of cost

[TwistingMyMelon]

Looks good choices, be careful with cloud apps, as your eggs are in a basket that you don't own. I would take regular downloadable backups if possible, in case of downtime or similar issues you have something local to fall back on

EG if you use an online cloud contact database, export it to spreadsheet and download once a week and keep on usb stick so you can fall back on it one day the online cloud app goes down for a period of time

Edited by TwistingMyMelon on Monday 3rd October 14:17

[Bikerjon]

I reckon it's a good move to have the accounting software at the top of the list and to a certain degree make things revolve around that. Xero now has loads of integrations and many of them have free trial accounts so you can test out how well they all fit together.

[jammy_basturd]

FreeAgent.

[KrissKross]

bernieburger said:

Hi,
Looking for some advice. Small manufacturing business 2 x owner/operators, looking for apps/software to manage accounts/invoicing/CRM, email, project management etc.

Want an integrated approach, making life easy using mobile apps as we (Owners likely to be workign apart from each other)

Shortlist so far:
- Xero - accounting
- Insightly - CRM
- Receipt Bank - managing expenses on the go
- Google apps -email, calendar syncing etc
- Evernote (Due to integration with above- use MS Onenote at work and love it)
- Mailchimp - communicating monthly newsletters etc

Any advice gladly appreciated!

Simon

Xero - we use this, all good. Binned Sage months ago.
Dear Inventory - Stock control / manufacturing etc.
Google apps (business account)- Still use outlook, I cannot get to grips with the gmail interface!
Entryless - for reciepts and all invoices. Only been using for a short time but seems to work well.
Satago - Credit control, just starting testing.
Dropbox for storing stuff ~ 1TB.
Hangouts for internal chatting.
Mailchimp - yes but how do you update data, directly from your CRM? This is a pain for me trying to keep up to date.

I am also looking for a map sharing or scheduling system for on the road, meeting customers. ie a visual mapping CRM that all staff can access.

What do you use Evernote or Onenote for, I like the idea but cannot see any good examples?

Other stuff... Shopify etc.