In a business climate where there’s so much to do, it can be hectic scheduling your various tasks for the day – whether you work from home writing, or run a small business out of a rented office. It gets even more involved if you have employees, where now you become responsible for payroll and insurance to protect from in-office calamities. In the following, we outline some of the newer gadgets that are proving to be godsends for businesses and sole proprietors alike.
- Timetracking: Keeping an Account of Payroll
This is a relatively new phenomenon; in the past, you could be assured of your employees’ work schedules by evidence of their physical presence in the office. Nowadays, with so many jobs being much less restrained geographically, timetracking tools are crucial.
Clocskpot is leading the charge by facilitating all the aspects of payroll accounting, which helps your business run much more smoothly by allowing it to focus on your core offering. This mobile-enabled, web-based tool allows employees to login from any browser. You or your managers can then check everything and sign-off on it; overall, it saves you valuable time and money.
- Microsoft Note for Team Projects
This was in a close battle with Evernote; both are dazzling for workplace project collaboration. Microsoft won out only because full utilization of it is free, since the data usage is connected to your Hotmail account. The base version of Evernote is free, however, and is worth giving it a try.
Project collaboration has never been so easy and well-conceived as it is with these Note applications. The flexible workspace supports information from other documents easily, images, files and more. Jot down notes and invite team members – it syncs across all of your devices, too.
- On the Go with Uber
Do you have employees that are constantly traveling to recruit or attend conferences? Then Uber is an excellent time-saver, as well as record-keeper. Sign up with a business account/credit card, and you can track destinations. It makes things much easier for your employees, to – just click and book a ride and leave the waiting times for taxicabs in the past where they belong.
- DropBox for File Sharing
Although Google Drive is also available – and darn good, at that – DropBox isn’t in competition with other social sharing sites, and so you have more options when sharing links to files across your social networks than with Google Drive.
Upload business documents, videos, files – anything up to your data limit, which is specified on the monthly plan. Additionally, DropBox adds more storage for free when you perform certain tasks related to improving their presence; such as sending an email invitation to join your friend’s list.
- Google Hangouts
This is, of course, am Android-supported service at the moment; it is a very useful “container” for all of your separate Google endeavors. Of course, the service goes well beyond emails and text messages; the video is crisp and well-supported by one of the world’s biggest tech companies.
Start video calls with team members, clients, etc; think a more robust version of Skype, for example. Google Hangouts, more than any other productivity app, strikes down the barriers of the office room and connects you to the world.
