What do you use to manage your business?

[CanadianExpat]

I use Excel for invoices (as well as contacts, etc), Quick File for bookkeeping, and thepayrollsite for PAYE. Quick File is free, thepayrollsite very cheap. Both were recommended in a book and have served me very well, although I haven't tried alternatives.

So I haven't used any CRM, as such, although between QF and Excel I feel I've got all the data I could want.

[tomtomagain]

FreeAgent - absolutely awesome. Fantastic service, cannot rate it high enough.

Trello - vital for managing several simultaneous projects and custom developments

Azure - hosting of a number of VM's

Skype - for my London "Office Number", and phone calls.

Avangate - online payment processor for my software sales, license key distribution and renewal processing.

Campaign Monitor - email marketing tool.

Join.Me - for teleconferencing and "Web Ex" style demo's & troubleshooting of customer problems.

Office 365 - for documents storage, collaboration, email and of course the Office application suite

Mozzy - for offline backup.


Those are the main ones. I did used to use Desk.Com. It's very good, but I couldn't really get into it.

The service missing is a good CRM. I've tried a couple but never really found one that I think would help me. It is my major project for 2015. Get a good CRM and processes in place.

Anyone got any recommendations?

[BolshieBastard]

1 Excel
2 Word
3 LinkedIn
4 See 1,2 & 3
5 Dunno what else you need so can't comment

This is what I used to use. Except for LI. Which is crap so just use Word.

Dont know why people want fancy dan crap that makes life so complicated.

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

FreeAgent. Worth every penny, or it would be, if I paid for it.

[northernladuk]

SJD spreadsheet

[SimonMac]

Curious as to what people use to create invoices, record expenses etc.

I'm looking at having a CRM style software running that I can dump information into. I'd like to perform the following tasks:

1 - Record expenses.
2 - Create invoices with a few mouse clicks (to save me having to do the calculations manually everytime)
3 - Record details of the people I can within a client organisation so I can contact them in future for work! (Most crucial hence why I chose a CRM)
4 - Be able to do this all this from a mobile/tablet.
5 - Flexible enough to do anything else I need it to.

At the moment I'm thinking sugar crm or vtiger - not really interested in paid, unless it's very good.

What do you guys use?

1 Excel
2 Word
3 LinkedIn
4 See 1,2 & 3
5 Dunno what else you need so can't comment

[rashm2k]

Just noticed your cheapskate last paragraph. ;-) Xero and FA both cost money so I guess they're out.

Well freeagent looks pretty good.

But being a dev I may want to tweak it for my own personal needs. So although paying is fine, doesn't offer quite the same flexibility that i want.

[Alan @ BroomeAffinity]

Just noticed your cheapskate last paragraph. ;-) Xero and FA both cost money so I guess they're out.

[Alan @ BroomeAffinity]

There's loads of options out there. My fave is Xero (I use it to run my practice books) but for freelancers and contractors FreeAgent probably shades it. Both will do what you need and more.

[cojak]

FreeAgent.

[rashm2k]

Curious as to what people use to create invoices, record expenses etc.

I'm looking at having a CRM style software running that I can dump information into. I'd like to perform the following tasks:

1 - Record expenses.
2 - Create invoices with a few mouse clicks (to save me having to do the calculations manually everytime)
3 - Record details of the people I can within a client organisation so I can contact them in future for work! (Most crucial hence why I chose a CRM)
4 - Be able to do this all this from a mobile/tablet.
5 - Flexible enough to do anything else I need it to.

At the moment I'm thinking sugar crm or vtiger - not really interested in paid, unless it's very good.

What do you guys use?