What Tools Do You Need for a Business

This post contains affiliate links.

Starting a business is not an easy task. Many entrepreneurs find it very challenging at the beginning. But in the end with a great effort and confidence they succeed. As a business owner you too have experienced many challenges along the way of your business. But it does not end even after you started your business.

For your business to run smoothly, you are going to need some tools and systems in place. So that you can manage your business tasks without feeling stressed. And also, your team can function easily with using these tools.

So, I curated a list of tools that you will need in your business to coordinate day to day tasks.

Website

All startup businesses are required to have a website nowadays. If not, you’ll miss many opportunities. Most people search online to buy products and services and if your business does not have a functioning website, you will lose all the customers.

Creating a website is not a big deal. If you are overwhelming about building a website, refer my article on How to Create a Website for My Business.

In that article I explained how you can create a website without spending huge money on web developers. Most importantly how you can create the website by yourself without any prior experience.

Having a website for your business is a must. Because people tend to buy things online and get services online. You need to showcase your business with a nice-looking website to attract customers.

There are many ways to create a website. But I recommend you to use WordPress to create your website. Because its FREE and have many options to customize your website as you like. And it is used by many website owners. To learn the whole process,

Read How to Create a Website for My Business.

TRY WORDPRESS

Note: Although WordPress is a free software, you need to purchase a domain name and web hosting for your website. You can use Bluehost platform to get domain names and web hosting packages for a reasonable price.

Email Marketing

In simple terms, email marketing is sending emails to a list of people who gave their permission to receive emails from you. In a business perspective, this can be a huge benefit for acquiring more customers and sales to your business.

The reason why email marketing is so important to your business is, you are not sending emails to a random list of people. You are sending emails to people who gave their email address willingly to you. And that proves the fact that they trust you enough to get any promotions or latest product news from you. That is the power of email marketing.

So, the question is, how can you get the emails from people in the first place? You can get their email addresses by providing a survey, or when they sign up to your newsletter or when they purchase something from you, they leave their email address in the checkout process.

If you want to know more about email marketing,

Read What Is Email Marketing and How Does It Work.

For businesses that are considering to use email marketing, I recommend Get Response. It also provides a FREE plan which you can maintain up to 500 contacts. So, if you want to try things out, start with the free plan and learn how to implement email marketing to your business.

After you get comfortable with using Get Response and email marketing, try to switch to a plan which has more premium features. Because businesses need more options to manage operations.

Here are the top features you can get by choosing Get Response as your email marketing tool;

• Email Marketing – Send great looking emails that can engage customers and acquire sales.
• Website builder – Create AI powered, code free website builder with drag & drop features.
• Marketing automation – Ready-made templates to welcome, win back, and upsell options.
• Webinars – Connect with your customers from anywhere anytime.
• Paid ads- Build in tools to run and manage ad campaigns.
• Landing pages – Tools to design SEO optimized pages.
• Live chat – Connect with your audience with this live chat option.

TRY GETRESPONSE

Since email marketing is the best digital marketing strategy that any business can benefit from, you must use it to increase your brand awareness and eventually get more sales.

Accounting Software

Whole point of you starting a business is to make profits. In the same way you will have to face losses. In order to keep track on your income and expenses you’re going to need an accounting software.

The financial information of your business is so critical and you don’t want to share and allow people to access that data. So, first of all you need to select a good accounting software that suits your business and have the ability to manage all your financial activities.

For that purpose, QuickBooks is the most suitable accounting software. Best of all it is a cloud software. So, you don’t need to store any data on your computer. Because if your PC gets damaged and hard drive corrupts you lose all your financial information. For that you definitely need to use a cloud software to store crucial data.

All the QuickBooks plans include a FREE 30-day trial. So, you can try things out in the trial period and get to know about the software. If you feel this isn’t the right fit for your business you can cancel the plan.

QuickBooks offers many features such as,

• Accountant access – invite your accountant or bookkeeper to manage finances
• FREE iPhone and Android apps – download the app and manage finances from anywhere you go
• Reports and dashboard – See your business’s performance
• Invoicing – Create custom invoices and match payments to invoices automatically
• Bank feeds – Connect you bank and view your finances
•  GST and VAT – Easily organize expenses into tax categories and track sales tax on income & expenses.
• Inventory – Manage your orders and inventory in real-time.
• Capture and organize receipts – Use your mobile to take photos of your receipts and match them to bills to get ready for taxes.
• Multi-currency support – Send invoices, manage transactions and prepare reports in different currencies
• Switch to QuickBooks – Switch to QuickBooks software online from any accounting software

TRY QUICKBOOKS

These are the top features you get when you do your financials through QuickBooks. So, you can learn about QuickBooks software and consider using it for your business.

Payment Gateway

When you are selling products or services through your website, you need a payment gateway to accept customer’s payments. You can easily integrate any payment gateway to your website and start receiving payments right away. But when it comes to payment gateways, you need to consider some things before selecting a payment gateway for your website.

• Supporting countries
• Supporting currencies
• Fees associated with the payment gateway
• Allowed integrating platforms

If you want to accept payments from customers easily and securely, I recommend using 2checkout. This software is currently known as Verifone. However, it has many features that can help your payment accepting process.

Some of the major features are below,

• No startup fees. (You only have to pay only when you use)
• API integration
• Accept payments from 200+ countries
• 45+ payment methods are included
• Available in 30+ languages
• get payouts via multiple methods (wire transfer, ACH, payoneer, paypal)

• Recurring billing function

• Low transaction fees for successful sale (3.5% – 6%)

TRY 2CHECKOUT

Selecting a payment gateway is a huge factor for any business. So, make sure you can get the expected outcome from the payment gateway software.

Cost Breakdown of the Tools

For your ease of understanding and to save your time going through all the tools I mentioned in the article, I have prepared a cost breakdown. You can use this to get a rough estimate on how much budget should you invest on these tools.

Software	Subscription Plan	Price
WordPress	–	Free
Get Response	Email Marketing Marketing Automation E-commerce Marketing	$186.96/yr $580.56/yr $1170.96/yr
QuickBooks	Simple Start Essentials Plus	$183.60/yr $280.80/yr $388.80/yr
2checkout	2Sell 2Subscribe 2Monetize	3.5%+$0.35 per sale 4.5%+$0.45 per sale 6.0%+$0.60 per sale