Latest / The 3Bz Podcast - Building Better Business / EP09 - My Favourite Tools to Maximise Your Business' Efficiency

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EP09 - My Favourite Tools to Maximise Your Business' Efficiency · The 3Bz Podcast - Building Better Business

• 0:04
  Hi there business owner. Do you want a better
• 0:06
  understanding of business finance, what your numbers
• 0:09
  actually mean, and stories of the highs and lows of business
• 0:12
  where I'll be sharing my tips and tricks every week?
• 0:15
  Then you're in the right place. Welcome to the Three BS Podcast
• 0:18
  with Stephanie. Hi there.
• 0:25
  Welcome back to another episode of the Three B's podcast with
• 0:29
  Stephanie. I'm Stephanie.
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  I hope you're well and you've had a fantastic week and a great
• 0:34
  bank holiday. Now, I really wanted to discuss
• 0:37
  my top tools for efficiency this week because being efficient is
• 0:41
  so important, especially as a business owner.
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  Time is the one resource we cannot make any more of.
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  But what we can do is use tools, strategies and efficiencies to
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  make a better use of that time. So for example, if it takes you
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  an hour to complete a particular piece of work and you can find
• 0:59
  softwares or efficiencies, that means you can complete the same
• 1:02
  piece of work in 10 minutes. You can potentially multiply
• 1:05
  your output by 6 and hopefully increase your income and your
• 1:09
  profits by 6. Also, all of these software and
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  tools I'm going to discuss today are ones that I use personally
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  in my practice, but also that I've seen my clients use.
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  Now these aren't the only tools on the market and there is
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  obviously others available, but I wanted to give you first hand
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  experience of the ones I use and love on a daily basis.
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  The first piece of software the tool I want to cover is Dext.
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  Dext has. Two different solutions that
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  help you depend on what business type you are.
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  All of these solutions I'm going to talk about today to make you
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  more efficient and make your output higher in your business
• 2:00
  are suitable for any business type.
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  So there are a lot of specialized solutions out there
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  and I understand there may be one more suited to your
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  particular business type, but these ones are great for most
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  businesses and they're very affordable.
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  So dext Prepare is a receipt capture tool, which is great
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  because it has an app you can have on your phone and you can
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  take a photo of your manual receipts.
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  So for example if you go to the petrol station and fill up the
• 2:29
  company vehicle, that receipt that you're given at the till,
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  you can take a picture on your phone and you have a digital
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  receipt and you've not got any fear of losing that receipt.
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  Because if you're a VAT registered business, you want to
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  reclaim, rightly so, all of the that you are eligible to
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  reclaim, for example, on your business fuel.
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  But it also has something called invoice fetch, and that's great
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  for connecting with suppliers that you use.
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  A lot of suppliers are on there and you'll go in once a week or
• 2:57
  periodically and pull down all of the bills or invoices since
• 3:01
  the last import and put them straight into decks for your
• 3:03
  bookkeeper or yourself to reconcile them accordingly into
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  your accounting system. So if you have a phone bill,
• 3:10
  Amazon. Utilities.
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  It will go in and get all of those, which is 1 listing you
• 3:15
  need to think about, one listing you need to feel stressed about,
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  and it can make you more efficient, giving you more time
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  to concentrate on the income generating activities in your
• 3:24
  business. Another feature that my clients
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  really seem to love is that with your bookkeeper accountant, if
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  there's a receipt that's a bit blurry and needs to be taken
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  again or there's something missing, we can send
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  notifications directly to your app on your phone.
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  So you can quickly and easily find the transaction we're
• 3:44
  talking about and easily rectify that situation so no VAT is
• 3:48
  reclaimed and everything is allocated correctly in your
• 3:52
  accounts. Dex Prepare can start at £22.00
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  plus VAT per month if you're paying annually, and you can
• 4:01
  have up to five users on the app.
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  So if you have employees, they can also have the app and up to
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  300 transactions a month. Now there is higher plans, but
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  what I will caveat that is by speaking saying speak to your
• 4:14
  bookkeeper or accountant because they have access to partner only
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  plans which may work out more affordable for your business.
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  So DEXT also has an ecommerce solution.
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  Called Dext Commerce and that links together all your sales
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  transactions if you're an online retailer.
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  So if you have a shop with Etsy, eBay, Amazon, Shopify, if they
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  can all link together and every night.
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  Decks will download the transactions for the previous
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  day and automatically reconcile them and that's the key area
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  which can really make you more efficient and save you time.
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  It's the reconciliation of the sales transactions.
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  I have first hand had to manually reconcile sales from a
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  client with four different online stores.
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  So they have eBay, Amazon, Shopify and manual sales on
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  their own website too. And I've had some money to
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  reconcile every sales transaction.
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  So I can tell you just how time consuming and ultimately
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  expensive that is going to be if you're going to have to get
• 5:14
  somebody in to do that for you. Dexcommerce starts at $19.00
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  U.S. dollars a month, so that's 19.
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  So that's a really, really great way of making it more efficient
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  from a sales transaction point of view.
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  So the next efficiency tool software I'd like to talk about
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  is Jot Form. Now Jot Form can be used for a
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  variety of different things and my clients use it for things
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  different to what I do. But what we use it for here in
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  the practice is to collect our clients details securely as well
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  as the documents that they electronically sign over to us.
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  And we can have five different forms every month.
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  So we have a form to collect new client details.
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  We have a data collection form and review and sign once a year
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  to tell me that the details are still the same for anti money
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  laundering purposes. I also have a form for
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  collecting testimonials and reviews and feedback.
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  That's really great as well. And it is free for 100
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  submissions a month. So if it's a new business or
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  relatively small business or you're not going to use?
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  That many submissions then it's going to be completely free for
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  you to use. That does have the job form
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  branding, but again, you can upgrade to the different
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  packages if you want your own branding, your own colors,
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  logos, et cetera and also there's space so it stores the
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  data for you. What I really like is when my
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  clients fill in then your client forms all the details and their
• 6:55
  uploading copies of their ID for the for my me to do my anti
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  money laundering checks. They I can download that as a
• 7:02
  PDF and then I insert that into my CRM software so that I
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  securely have a record of all details and I'm not manually
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  typing it out. I'm not copying and pasting.
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  It's just much more efficient and much more of a time saving
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  solution. Which leads me really nicely
• 7:20
  onto my CRM software. So when I was at Account Tech
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  See of the Week, a lot of the. Exhibitors and the vendors were
• 7:29
  saying to me, what practice management software do you use?
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  I think they were trying to see if their software would link in
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  nicely, which I found a lot of them were.
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  But I built my own CRM so I couldn't find any on the market
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  I like. So I spent a weekend learning
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  how to and then building my own CRM software.
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  So I use Click Up and I'm now a certified click up expert.
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  I've done all the certifications with them.
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  I'm an affiliate with them because I absolutely love.
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  Software. It's a fantastic solution and
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  the best thing is, is there is a free forever version.
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  So if you are just starting out and you really do want to be
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  more efficient but not spend that money or invest
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  financially, then Click up is a fantastic tool.
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  And what I love about Click up is you can build it to suit any
• 8:17
  business. It doesn't matter what business
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  you're in, doesn't matter how many.
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  Different arms to the business. There is there will be a
• 8:25
  solution in click up for you. I built my own tasks, so it's
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  basically a task management solution.
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  You can do it via calendars, you can do it via tables.
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  There's a whiteboard for brainstorming element on there.
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  You can assign different tasks to different people.
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  So there's a confidentiality side of that because you can
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  keep certain records and documents separate.
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  And only the people that need to see them can see them.
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  It has unlimited members, so it doesn't matter how many members
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  of your team there are. Even in the free forever plan,
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  you can have every team member have their own account.
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  There's like chat functions, so you can keep a written chat log
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  so you can discuss everything in there.
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  You can have automations. So for example, when it's
• 9:14
  payroll time, all of my clients that I do the payroll for get an
• 9:17
  e-mail from me on the 20th of every month asking for their
• 9:20
  payroll details and any changes so that I can compile their
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  payroll and that's done automatically.
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  And if they reply to that e-mail, a copy of that e-mail
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  also goes into my CRM. So everything is kept in one
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  place and I know everything is at all times.
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  I also have A to do list, so it has.
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  Priorities. It has due dates, recurring
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  transactions, so payoff. For example it has a monthly
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  recurring To Do List. I have checklists in there,
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  subtasks. It really is my favorite
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  software and if you do want any more information on click up and
• 10:00
  how it can work for you, do let me know because I do build these
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  Crm's now for other businesses to help them be more efficient.
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  And lastly, the tool that I probably use second most to
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  click up in my business and most of my clients do too is that is
• 10:27
  Canva. And if you haven't heard of
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  Canva, it is a design tool that enables you to make profession
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  professionally designed looking social media.
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  Images, videos, presentations, documents, you name it.
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  It can be made marketing wise, media wise on Canva and it
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  always looks so professionally done, even if you're not
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  professional. I use it for everything you see
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  on social media. I use it for my proposal
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  templates. I use it for my letter, heads,
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  e-mail signatures, videos. Presentations.
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  You can even publish them from there into from camper or
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  directly onto a web page. So digital business cards.
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  I've used that for as well. It has, it is free but there is
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  a premium plan which is £10.99 a month, which I really recommend
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  because you get the extra images, videos and a lot of
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  extra features. They've just released a I as
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  well, so they now have Magic, right?
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  So a I, which I will cover in a later episode because I
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  absolutely love a I is so you can you can summarize and
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  rewrite text, which I think is really helpful if you're having
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  a bit of a mind blank. You can collaborate, you can
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  share them with people, people can comment on them, especially
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  with members of your team. Maybe you can share them your
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  design with the team and they can give you feedback on that
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  all in the app. So it's all in one place.
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  It's just a really fantastic tool.
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  I will share links to all these tools down in the description of
• 12:08
  the show and in the show notes because they really are going to
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  make your life so much easier and give you more time.
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  We can't make more time, but they will give you more time
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  because it's going to take you less time to do the jobs that
• 12:19
  you're currently doing. I just wanted to let you know
• 12:34
  about something that I've launched recently that is really
• 12:36
  going to change the way you do business, and that is Money
• 12:39
  Monday. Do you want to make more money
• 12:41
  in your business or do you want to keep a hold of more of the
• 12:45
  money you do make in your business?
• 12:46
  If your answer is yes to either of those, then Money Monday is
• 12:49
  for you. Money Monday is a free weekly
• 12:52
  newsletter packed full of expert insights, actionable strategies
• 12:56
  and viable resources that will really help you in your
• 12:59
  business. And there's a special thank you
• 13:01
  for joining. There's a free resource being
• 13:03
  gifted to you in the very first e-mail.
• 13:06
  The details in there in the description below.
• 13:08
  I really hope it helps. And that brings us to the end of
• 13:17
  another week of the Three B's podcast with Stephanie.
• 13:20
  Thank you so much for listening. I'd really appreciate it if you
• 13:24
  could like, subscribe, rate and reviews, podcast wherever you
• 13:27
  are listening to it so that I can reach more business owners
• 13:30
  and help them. Build better businesses.
• 13:33
  See you next week for the next episode.