Ways for Small Businesses to Save Money: Part 1

Ways for Small Businesses to Save Money: Part 2

Ways for Small Businesses to Save Money: Part 3

Today’s post focuses on online web apps that you can use to save money and create efficiencies in your work flow.

Collaboration

Finding easy-to-use tools to communicate and collaborate with clients and staff can create more cost-efficient processes.

Zoho – Zoho provides a whole host of ways to work and collaborate online. I’ve tried many of their products in my own business and I mentioned their project management tool in Part 1 of this series. Prices vary by product, all have a freemium level to try out.

OfficeMedium – A web-based collaborative suite built with efficiency and convenience in mind. $6 per user per month, $1 per GB per month.

Basecamp – One of my favorites for collaborating on and managing projects. Pricing starts at $24 a month, first month free.

Wizehive – Another file-sharing, project-managing, collaboration portal that gets high marks from the likes of TechCrunch and Lifehacker. First workspace is free.

Google Wave - Innovative way to have small team discussions and develop documents. Free.

Meeting and Presentations

Clear communication between all parties and coordinated focus from all levels is a big win in getting actual work done. Nothing really gets done in meetings, but sometimes they are a necessity. Many modern products facilitate the ability for remote conversations to happen in real-time, making them more informative and saving time.

TinyChat – It’s simple. TinyChat is awesome. Meet with clients or friends in your own browser-based video chatroom. Just create a room and invite people. You can even require Twitter/Facebook ID for login. Save yourself a drive, a flight, or many unnecessary phone calls. Free.

WebEx and GoToMeeting - I think most people are familiar with these sort of online meeting tools, but it’s worth making sure.

Dimdim – Claims to be the iPod of web conferencing, by which they mean to say that it’s the easiest way to have online meetings. They also claim that “Dimdim Pro – our flexible, professional version for up to 50 participants – or Dimdim Webinar – our powerful, event version for 1000 participants is available for about 1/10th the cost of WebEx.” That’s a mouthful, but it sounds good. Dimdim Free is (you got it) free, and let’s you meet with up to 20 people. Paid upgrades (for meetings with more than 20 people) start at $19 a month.

Marketing

Need a website? Business cards? Don’t have much to spend? Here’s the cheap way to ride in style.

Squarespace – This platform is becoming hugely popular with businesses large and small. Create your own website and host it for $8 a month. They look good and do good.

Wix – Oh, did you want to build your own Flash website? Oh, and you want to be able to design it with a simple drag & drop interface? Okay. Wix lets you do that. Or, designers can use it to give their sites a little something-something. Free entry level site.

Moo - Make your own business cards — and make them memorable. Customized business cards start at $21.99.

FreeCRM.com – Free Customer Relationship Management and sales team automation tools.

Highrise - Another product brought to you by 37Signals, the makers of Basecamp. Highrise is a popular CRM platform for managing leads, contacts, and deals.

Chatter – Salesforce.com’s innovative new social network and brand monitoring tool, that simultaneously lets sales teams and customer service teams engage in social media while also providing business managers with ways to track those teams. Pricing hasn’t been released yet, but the guess is ~$50 per user per month.

Promote

If you want to take advantage of social media channels to get the word out about your business, here are 3 awesome and affordable ways to do so.

Emma - Create, send, and track email marketing campaigns and online surveys. Pricing varies by business size.

Wildfire Interactive – Get more leads by creating a social media campaign to engage with online audiences. Pricinge starts at $5 per campaign.

Animoto – Create stunning, ‘killer’ videos that are automatically generated via your images and a couple of clicks. Use them to explain or promote your service. Create a personal account and spend $3 per full-length video, or $30 to create an unlimited number of full-length videos. For higher quality, upgrade to the business solution for $249 a year, or $99 for a 3-month trial.

Research and Knowledge Sharing

If you’re a researcher or have ever been part of a collaborative research group, you know how much time you can save by have the right approach to organizing and documenting research. With the proliferation of online content, this is especially true.

Diigo – Provides powerful research and sharing tools to analyze, organize, and archive. Price = free. Plus, free upgrades to premium accounts for educators.

MindMeister – real-time brainstorming and mind-mapping tool with offline and mobile access. Free Basic account, upgrade for unlimited mind-maps, enhanced security, and business-level solutions.

File Sharing Tools

For when you need to share really big work files that are too big for email.

Dropbox – I love Dropbox. It’s the easiest way to share and sync files ever. Get 2GB of space for free and use it to sync files on Windows, Mac, Linux, and iPhone.  Upgrade to the Pro 50 for $9.99 a month or $99.00 a year and get 50GB of space.

SendSpace – Unlimited uploads and downloads of a file, secure exchange, use for files up to 300MB. Ad supported Free version works great, Premium levels are ad free and faster.

Finance and Timetracking

Outright – Like Mint, but for small businesses. It’s free! Provides online bookkeeping, help managing taxes, 1099 e-filing, tax estimates, and support services for entrepreneurs and bookkeepers.

Freshbooks – A terrific way to track time and invoice clients. Send estimates, track contractor and employee hours on projects, track expenses, build reports, and bill your clients with professional invoices. Upload your logo and customize with your company’s branding. Manage up to 3 clients for free, or upgrade to manage additional clients or give access to staff.

Harvest – Great time tracking device for freelancers, small business, and professional services. Nice design, easy to use. Pricing ranges from $12 – $90 per month.

LessAccounting – Stress-free accounting for small businesses. Invoices, taxes, accounts receivable, accountant access, and integration with Highrise, Paypal, and Basecamp. Plans start at $12 per month and up.

Feedback and Surveys

Wufoo – Makes forms easy, fast, and fun. Create application forms, contact forms, registrations, surveys, and more. Free for up to 3 forms, $9.95 per month for 10 forms.

Usabilla – Usability testing without all the drama — and expense. Free for 5 pages and up to 25 participants per test, then it goes up to $49 a year for 10 pages and 250 participants per test.

Development

Atlassian - Collaboration and code development tools, $10 per product for 10 users.

Komodo - Open source multi-language code editor. 21-day free trial.

And That Ain’t All

There are so many great web apps out there that can be helpful to small businesses — there’s no way we can cover them all here. Please feel free to share your additions to this list with a comment.

Define Your Goals

What are you saving money for? What are your financial goals? Do you want to be able to buy a house? A new car? Go on a trip? Save up 6 months of emergency funds? Put more towards retirement? Pay off your credit cards?

Whatever it is, you need to define your goals, prioritize them, and project exactly how much money you’d need to achieve them.

Break it Down

Once you know how much money you will need to save to achieve your goals, break them down into microbits.

Let’s say you want to save $2,000 to go on a trip to Hawaii next year. Instead of thinking, “Oh, I should save money for that,” you should break it down to exactly how much you will need to save per month, or per paycheck, to make it happen.

It goes back to defining your goals. If you know you need to save $167 every month, that’s a much more concrete goal that just trying to ‘save more money’ or even focusing on saving $2,000. By breaking it down, you’re also more likely to achieve your savings goals. Why? Because knowing you need to save $42 a week is more actionable than the more distant and vague idea of trying to save $2,000 over the course of a year.

Be Realistic

We all want to have a million dollars sitting in the bank, but it’s simply not realistic. Based on your financial responsibilities, your debt, your income, or your lifestyle, you may not be able to put aside as much as you like. This is understandable and something everyone deals with, regardless of their income or debt.

The important thing is to be honest with yourself about how much you actually can put into savings per week, per month, or per paycheck, in order to achieve the savings goals that you’ve set. By being realistic about what you can accomplish, you’re more likely to stick to your savings plan.

And hey, if you are able to save more than you expected, so much the better.

Plan it Out

Once have set your goals and know how much you need to put aside each week to meet those goals, you need to plan out where that money is going to come from and where you’re going to save it.

Did you need to increase your income to meet your goals? Is that possible? If not, where can you cut back on your spending? Are there changes you can make this year to help you meet your savings goals?

If you are able to increase your income with a raise or taking on new clients, save that money. Don’t make more just to spend more.

Track Your Spending

Whether you know where to cut back on spending to save, or already think you’re as frugal as can be, tracking your spending is a great way to find out where your money is really going and what changes you can make to keep more of it.

This could mean actually writing in a journal what you spend money on every single day. By looking back over it every week or month, you’ll see trends and areas where you can save. You can also use websites and applications like Mint.com to automate this process and to dive into deeper analysis.

Start Early

If you wait until May to start saving for that trip to Hawaii, you can see how much harder you make it for yourself. When you get paid, pay yourself first by putting money into savings. Start now, don’t wait.

Same thing applies for those longer term savings efforts, like saving for a house or for retirement. The earlier you start, the more you will save, and the more likely you will be to achieve your goals.

Leave it Alone

Once that money is sitting somewhere building interest, let it stay there. Emergencies happen which can’t be controlled, so if you find yourself needing to use that money for an unexpected circumstance, just be glad it’s there. If this does happen, make a concerted effort to pay it back as quickly as possible — you can even put yourself on a payment schedule.

Look Towards the Long-term

A savings account is the most common way to save money, accrue some interest on it, and still have it on-hand in case you might need to access it.

However, if you make those funds harder to access, you’re more likely to leave the money invested. Long-term investments such as CDs, retirement accounts (IRAs and 401(k)s), bonds, and even stocks offer ways to invest your money at a higher rate of return — but you won’t have same-day access to your funds (in most cases). Also, if you make a withdrawal, there may be a penalty for doing so. Investing in stocks also carries the risk that you can completely lose your investment. On the other hand, if you bought 1 share of Google at its initial stock price of $85 a share in 2004, that same share would be worth over $600 in today’s market.

Happy New Year!

In general, most people are saving more and spending less these days, which is great. I hope this continues and I hope these tips help you to save even more.

I also hope you enjoy a very happy and prosperous new year.

I don’t know which one these is the most popular, and I’m not much of a betting man, but I’m willing to bet that those are the two most popular New Year’s resolutions made each year.

Obviously, here at Gaucho, we’re going to focus on helping out with those resolution to save some cash. Here are 7 resolutions you can make that will help you to save money, and maybe even do some good for you and your family.

1. Stop Eating Out

Most people enjoy going out to eat, but behind rent and mortgage payments, restaurant bills are frequently the most costly monthly expenses for individuals, couples, and families.

Get some old cookbooks at a local thrift store and learn to cook a few quick, simple, healthy meals. Limit eating out to 1 time a month, 1 time a week — or whatever is right to help you cut back and save money. Set a per month limit and stick to it.

2. Only Buy the Basics

If it can’t be harvested or hunted, don’t buy it. I’m not suggesting that you have to grow your own food, but hey, if you can do that, then that’s a solid way to save money on groceries.

Don’t buy packaged and processed foods, which are overpriced and overladen with sugar and salt. If they aren’t laden with sugar and salt, then they’re even more likely to be overpriced.

Buy only goods that are in a farm fresh or natural state. You can always find good deals on frozen vegetables, too, but stay away from the pre-baked, pre-cooked, pre-packaged frozen entrees and other dinners in a box/bag.

Buy beans, rice, nuts and similar items from bulk bins for the best pricing. Purchase meats from a deli, butcher, or meat market and avoid packaged meats, which are usually more expensive and offer a lower-quality product. Visit ethnic neighborhoods and aisles for cheap prices on spices and exotic produce, and use them to liven up your flavors.

3. Quit Smoking, Cut Back on Coffee

It’s another no-brainer. A pack of cigarettes costs almost $4 a pack. How much could quitting save you over the course of a year? You’ll probably feel better, too.

Instead of spending $1.25 – $4 every day on coffee, make it at home. Or, get a regular cup of java and skip all the fancy-schmancy expensive drinks. If you use a commuter mug, many coffee shops will often charge you for the price of a small coffee, regardless of mug size.

4. Conserve Energy

Bonus, it’s good for the environment. Doublebonus, using less gas and electricity — by making sure you turn off lights, shut doors, insulate leaky spaces, unplug unused appliances, and walk or peddle instead of drive — will save you some cash.

5. Downgrade and Consolidate Your Utilities

Do you really need 7,000 TV channels? And in HD? If you can reduce your cable bill by $5 to $10, that’s an extra $60 to $120 you could be putting in a savings account instead of giving to the cable company. Every bit helps.

Also, take advantage of packaging bundles for phone, cable, and internet. If you don’t know Skype, you should introduce yourself. Use it for international calls and for long family and business calls.

6. Set an Entertainment Quota

Instead of going out to see the over-hyped-by-Hollywood movie of the week, rent or download a new one to watch at home. Or pick up a classic you’ve never seen.

If you’re jonzing to get out of the house and really craving the theater experience, go during the day for the matinee prices. Be selective about concerts, and spend time exploring the outdoors instead of the malls.

7. Stick to a Budget

I’ve heard many people promise this one to themselves, especially during the last few years. It’s impossible to save money without a budget. To really save money, you must have a plan, and you must follow through and really stick to your plan. Set a budget for yourself and discuss one with your family. Let everyone understand the goals of the budget and the reasons. Ask everyone for ideas on how to spend less.

Make it clear that being on a budget doesn’t mean that no fun will be had. Create activities that focus on having fun together, but don’t cost too much — like board games, walks, bike rides, or throwing a football around — and reduce the frequency of more costly outings.

You, Resolved

These are 7 achievable resolutions. If you commit to any one of them for a full year, you will spend less money, and hopefully, that money will sit in a bank.

Of course, there’s an 8th resolution you could make, too. And that’s to check out the Gaucho Savings Stream every day. If you do that, you’re sure to save money throughout the year.