Running a Small Business – Free Tools
Running a studio is more than recording bands. It’s scheduling, project planning, invoicing, and everything else that goes into any other small business. But producer/engineers have to be cool while doing the business side of things. Otherwise you lose your aura of awesome. When we first started out, I signed up for just about every web account I could get my hands on that might potentially help us run our business smoothly. There wasn’t really much business to manage, but I sure was ready for it. The running joke became, “Hey Dan, I found this website that…” After two years running Wizkid Sound, we’ve got the tools down. I’ll briefly introduce the tools we use in this post, and go into some more detail later. All of these tools are completely free or free for the basic accounts. Look carefully for the free account links on the Basecamp and Highrise signup pages.
Scheduling – Google Calendar
Dan and I share two Google Calendars, one for scheduling at the studio, and the other for sharing events that we might both be interested in, like concerts. We also share the studio calendar with Ken over at Soundstep Productions so he knows when he can schedule time to record here. From a desktop or a mobile phone we can check and add events to the shared calendars, so we can schedule from anywhere and the other two know what’s going on and when. For the tech savvy bands, we can send them the event to add to their calendars.
Project Planning – Basecamp
Basecamp from 37Signals is an excellent project planning tool. I’ve tried pretty much all of them and like the way Basecamp works the best. Their web interface is fantastic, and it’s almost fully functional on the iPhone too. We use the Milestone feature to set date-specific deadlines (finish mixing by x date) and To-Dos to set unbounded goals (get new mic cables). We try to finish the To-Dos on a weekly basis. We use the Writeboard feature to brainstorm and to lay out our weekly meeting agenda, and occasionally use the Messages feature to share files or links that we don’t want to lose in emails.Contact Management – Highrise
Highrise is 37Signals’ contact management tool, and it’s ideal for us. It’s really quick and easy to add contacts, and we have people tagged as ‘band’ and sometimes more specifically as ‘bassist’, ‘violinist’, etc. so we can quickly find someone if we need a session player. We also tag bands as ‘prospects’ so we know who to follow up with. The great thing about Highrise is that it’s free for 2 users and up to 250 contacts (you have to look carefully for this plan on the signup page, it’s in small text). We’re close to 250, but when we hit the limit we have to clean contacts out, which is a great way to keep our lists up to date. Another neat feature of Highrise is their ‘Dropbox’. When you’re emailing with someone who’s a contact, you can copy your personal dropbox email address on the message, and it’s automatically added to the contact as a note.Invoicing – Freshbooks
Yawn. Invoicing is boring. But not with Freshbooks. It takes just seconds to set up a new client, make an invoice, and send them an email with the invoice attached along with account information so they can log in and see their latest bill at any time. The invoices look great printed out, too. The Estimate feature is handy for keeping track of what we quote bands for a project. If they decide to go with it, we convert it to an invoice and bam, no more work to do. Freshbooks has a lot of awesome features that we don’t use all the time (ability to mail invoices from the web, recurring invoices, online payment, extensive reporting, time tracking) but the features we do use are awesome. I have a personal Freshbooks account too, where I keep track of my contractor hours at WeTheCitizens.
Taxes – Outright
Part of running a small business is dealing with taxes. Outright is as straightforward as you can get. There’s four tabs: Income, Expenses, Taxes, Reports. Simple enough? Outright lets you know how much tax you owe paying annually or quarterly, and lets you break items down by category (advertising, business expenses, travel, etc.). It also gives you a snapshot of your total income so far this year. Though we haven’t set these up yet, Outright can integrate with other services – Freshbooks to calculate your taxes automatically, and Shoeboxed to keep track of your expenses.
Sharing Income and Expenses – Billmonk
We split all of our income and expenses right down the middle, which makes things fairly simple to keep track of. Billmonk is a very simple service that helps with that task. Any time one of us pays for something, we log it in Billmonk, where there’s a running total of how much we owe each other. You can enter items on the web, by mobile phone, or by email. You don’t have to split things 50/50 – you can decide how much each person owes, and even have more than two people in a transaction. There’s also a log of all recent events, and the ability to export all transactions as a spreadsheet document.
In Conclusion…
You could probably do all of this with a set of spreadsheets, but that would be quite a headache to set up, and not nearly as appealing as these awesome websites. There are other solutions out there that will handle all these tasks and more, but at a price. We’ve found that this set of tools lets us keep up to date with the business side of the studio with minimal effort and cost.
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Thanks for listing both Basecamp and Highrise! Glad they've been useful. Let us know how we can make them even better.
Agree 100%, would also recommend Backpackit (also from 37 signals) we use this for our intranet and idea tracking. Haven't tried Billmonk yet but plan to now. Thanks
When I go to the Highrise site, it appears that the deal you mention (free under 250 contacts and 2 or fewer users) is no longer available. Am I missing something? Thanks!
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Paul and Wizkid Sound. Wizkid Sound said: Our post on Free Small Biz Tools (http://pea.to/biz) mentions @freshbooks @37signals @outright @googlecalendar. Thanks for the great tools! [...]
My bad, I see it now.
[...] Read more here: Running a Small Business – Free Tools | Wizkid Sound [...]
[...] View original here: Running a Small Business – Free Tools | Wizk... [...]
Thanks for the comment, I added a note to the section about Highrise saying that the free plan is in small text.
Thanks for reading Jason!
Hey Jetprint, we haven't checkd out Backpack yet, will do so. Thanks for reading!
[...] Read the original here: Running a Small Business – Free Tools | Wizkid Sound [...]
All the basecamp stuff is pay. Couldn't find a free link anywhere. They used to have a free version. Just so happens I went to use my free account a few month ago but it would take me to the pricing page. Did I miss something? I had a free backpack acct.
NVRmind. I found it via googling basecamp free.
Added a note to the top of the post about looking carefully for the free plans on the signup pages. Not easy to see!
LOL - now I see it. I'm an idiot. :)
Its nice to see a list of tools that can be used to manage the business & time. I often use Google's online tools to keep a tab on my appointments and work shedules.
Thanks for reading Nancy!
Great list for small business owners, Robert! We would like you to try the Zoho suite of apps & let us know how we fared.
Nice list. Of course, knowing how to USE all those tools is another good thing . . .!Jeff YablonPresident & CEOAnswer Guy and Virtual VIP Computer Support, Business Coaching and Virtual Assistant Services
Thanks for reading Jeff!
Hey Aravind, I do have a Zoho account, but haven't checked you out in a while. I'll have another look. Thanks for reading!
Thanks, Robert :)
What about a solution for stock control... I'd love to have something that can tie in with a 37signals or similar CRM...
Great list, FreshBooks simply rocks, I love it. You mentioned it once above, but the key thing I love about a lot of these web apps is integration, and the APIs are getting better and better. Thanks for the post.
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This looks good useful info for any small business owner/manager. So thanks for sharing it.
Thanks for reading Eric!
Agreed. We need to look into integrating Outright and Freshbooks. Thanks for reading!
Hey Isaak,I haven't looked into stock control or asset management as we don't currently have a need for anything beyond a simple spreadsheet. However, Basecamp does integrate with many other solutions. Check out their Extras & Add-Ons page at http://basecamphq.com/extras.Another place to check is the FreelanceSwitch blog and forums at http://freelanceswitch.com.Hope that helps, thanks for reading!
You should also try out www.cannybill.com as it lets you create web based order forms so you can sell anything from a digital download to a membership or web hosting account.
[...] use is open source or free. I use Google Docs for my word-processing and spreadsheet needs, several free tools for running the business side of the studio, and free web-based software for pretty much everything [...]
It's that easy? Well, then I guess I can do that too. I have some ideas, I just haven't had the courage to start yet, although I know that all you need at first is the idea, take Apple's Steve Jobs, or Trianz, both high tech companies that started from scratch. Great piece of writing, cheers!
It's that easy? Well, then I guess I can do that too. I have some ideas, I just haven't had the courage to start yet, although I know that all you need at first is the idea, take Apple's Steve Jobs, or Trianz, both high tech companies that started from scratch. Great piece of writing, cheers!
Finally, an alternative to Billmonk! Check out Finally, an alternative to BillMonk, check out SplitTheRent. http://t.co/6IAD8br