6 software solutions we love

Everyone loves tools to help them in their daily lives. Here are some of ours that we think you’ll find helpful.

LastPass

If you must remember one password, make sure it’s for a secure password manager like LastPass. To have this managed effectively, our IT manager handles the setup and admin access ensuring that the right people see what they need to see.

We take IT security seriously and have recommended and set up LastPass for many clients for their Business Password Management.

You’ll have complete control through an admin console, reducing the reliance on human behaviour and minimising human error. 

Your staff will love that they only need to remember one password to their LastPass vault.

Password managers always need to be one step ahead, so watch this space for further advancements in password protection.

LastPass could be right for you if you’re looking for a way to manage access to multiple accounts across multiple staff. If you’d like more information to see whether this is right for you, give our office a call on 09 963 1897.

Clockify

Since we need to maintain accurate timesheets each day, having a system that is quick and easy to use is super helpful.

Some of our team use a free version of Clockify and it has been really valuable. There’s no more clock watching or writing down your start and end times on paper.  You can switch between jobs and if you have to go back to a job, you can easily restart the time. There’s a lot more you can do on Clockify if you need extra features like reporting, managing projects or teams, but for what we need it for the free version is sufficient.

It’s easy to sign up and start using – just hit the start button for the timer and begin your job. Once you stop the timer for that job, it’ll be added to a list and you can see the time spent across jobs over the day and a week.  Check it out: https://clockify.me/

Microsoft Teams

We operate on Microsoft so MS Teams was an obvious integration for us. Multiple channels keep everyone updated on general business to channels for specific tasks or teams.

This has provided us another avenue for communicating companywide announcements or specific hub notifications that isn’t email. In fact, we would hate to see the number of emails that could be easily missed in the Inbox without Teams!

MS Teams is our preference for online meetings, and we’ve also setup and hosted webinars which have been easy to manage guests and presenters. The great thing is that your recipient doesn’t need to have Teams set up for an online meeting to work.

If you need Microsoft 365 set up for your business, give us a call and our IT manager may be able to help with this.

Google Spaces

Anything to help reduce the number of emails across the day is a winner. Google Spaces is the Google version of Microsoft Teams. Loved by one of our senior staff, she has set up multiple channels for the different teams she works with. This keeps communications central for everyone, as well as making them a lot more concise, reducing the number of emails and  the risk of a missed communication. You can hold meetings online and more. If you love the Google Suite of products you’ll most likely know all about it but if not, check it out as an alternative to MS Teams: https://workspace.google.com/intl/en_nz/

ApprovalMax

ApprovalMax seems to pop up whenever I ask the question on what seems to be working well for our team. We’ve integrated this for more of our clients and it ensures the right people are reviewing the right bills prior to payment.  This is handy for clients that have jobs that incur multiple costs.

ApprovalMax removes the need for paper / email-based approvals with automated approval workflows for Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable. 

As Bookkeepers, it means we do not need to send you an email to make you aware of items requiring your approval for accounts payable. Instead, the approval process is housed online within the Xero / ApprovalMax system.

Last year we wrote a blog on why we love ApprovalMax. It simply remains easy to use and does what we need it to do!

We’ve now got 3 of our bookkeepers certified so if you’d like to learn more or have this integrated in Xero just let your bookkeeper or accounts manager know.  

Monday.com

For those wanting a project management tool, Monday.com is definitely worth reviewing.

This is currently being used by our marketing administrator and we’re not even using it to its full potential yet, as there are so many great features we haven’t tapped into.

To get you started there are templates to choose from, then you customise those or create your own board for whatever job you want to manage. Colour coding everything helps visualise what is outstanding and what is complete. You can invite team members to specific projects when you’re working across jobs with other people.

Easily plan your day, your week or month, even your team and check off those items that need to get done. If you have a to-do list that is always changing, we think you’ll love Monday.com.  We recommend starting with the free version and work up to what you need.