The software/apps that a company utilizes will change and grow as a company evolves. The core tech stack usually remains in tact, but as a business scales, more software is typically added to the mix. The right apps are critical to businesses because the right suite of tools provide companies with efficiency gains in some of the following areas:

Workflow and planning (i.e. distribution of work)
Communications
Reporting and metrics
Customer service
Personnel management (HR)

Here at ConnectCPA we use a variety of tools - probably around 40 to 50 - to ensure we get work done. There are a bunch more that our clients use that we have got to know over the years.

Here are some of our favourites:

WORKFLOW AND PLANNING

1. Asana

Asana provides a sleek visual representation of projects and workflows. Their feature set is rich and powerful and we’re amazed at how quickly they deploy new features. Asana is an all-encompassing tool that can scale with most companies.

Quick tip: Aside from setting up projects and tasks, check out the ‘timeline’ feature, which gives you the ability to set up a planning workframe for your projects, broken down by time-frame.

2. Salesforce

Salesforce is a tried, tested and true CRM (customer relationship management system). Although it requires a more elaborate implementation, it’s robustness is hard to beat. Salesforce helps companies manage almost every facet of their business: from sales and marketing to customer service and reporting.

Salesforce’s ‘appexchange’ portal is an app marketplace where one can find over 5,000 solutions to streamline processes within Salesforce to an even greater degree. If your company has a need to improve a process, most likely there’s already a pre-built solution that you can plug into Salesforce.

Quick tip: You can connect Breadwinner to Salesforce and Xero and have your sales team generate invoices in Salesforce and have your finance team see it/pick it up in Xero through the integration.

3. Zapier

We started using Zapier early on - so much so that we still remember one of the founders answering our support tickets. Zapier is core to our internal workflow and we’ve even helped some clients deploy it as well. For those that don’t know, Zapier connects 1,500+ cloud-based applications together and allows for unprecedented automation. In fact, you can probably connect most of the apps on this list together.

Some great features include: replaying a ‘zap’ when an issue occurs; segment your flows into organized folders; and building advanced workflows with the ‘Paths’ feature.

REPORTING AND METRICS

4. Online accounting software and integrated apps

Xero or Quickbooks Online
Receipt Bank - reduce data entry and automate your payables function
Hubdoc - reduce data entry and automate your payables function
Expensify - expense reimbursements
Float - cash flow forecasting
Fathom/Spotlight Reporting - reporting
Practice Ignition - engagement management (proposals, payments, etc.)

This is a topic we know a little bit about. It goes without saying that understanding where your business is at and where it’s going/can go provides you with the transparency required to make quick and sometimes difficult decisions. In most cases, the more data and information that is readily available in a concise format to decision makers, the better.

Every category of app usually has other competitors in the field that do things just as well, so it sometimes can take time to find the right tech stack for a business.

The first building blocks to any finance team (whether it’s a one-person operation or a built-out team) is a robust accounting system - our suggestion is a cloud-based tool. The goal is to then sync various apps as a secondary layer to provide various enhancements to your accounting system (automation over data entry, fetching of certain key documents, reporting and cash flow forecasting, etc.). You can even get more fancy and start implementing inventory systems, payment apps and Zapier. With an open API, the options are endless.

5. Baremetrics or ChartMogul

For SaaS companies that use major subscription billing providers (Stripe, PayPal, GoCardless, Braintree, etc.), we highly recommend an app that connects to said providers and gives scaling companies granular details over important metrics, such as: MRR, growth rate, churn, new business, expansion/contraction, sales by geography and more. Refer to our other blog post about KPIs, here.

It is critical to track important metrics and monitor the progress and health of your business using these apps or similar ones. If you’re ever looking to raise capital, having this information at your fingertips goes a long way in telling the world your story.

Quick tip: One common accounting matter with SaaS businesses is the recognition of revenue and deferred revenue. ChartMogul allows for deferred revenue reporting and recognition.

6. Power BI

Advisory and dashboards are buzzwords we frequently hear. True competent advisory is a value-added service, but with the combination of data, it becomes powerful. Power BI is a live dashboard tool that connects to various data sources (CRM, accounting system, social media accounts, spreadsheets, etc.) providing teams with visual representations over important metrics in their business. Be warned though, implementation requires thorough planning and expertise.

The variety of visuals are endless and unique. Major companies rely on Power Bi for real-time analytics.

COMMUNICATION

7. Zoom (video and phone)

Zoom is a video chat tool that is as reliable as they come. It’s easily scalable across teams and is super-easy to use.

Quick tip: Make sure to turn on the ‘waiting room’ feature. That way, if someone has your Zoom link, they can’t enter your Zoom room until you admit them in. This is especially important if you’re in a video chat and someone arrives early!

8. Slack

Slack is an instant messaging tool that is a must-have for teams, especially for remote ones. It’s built with organization in mind (‘channels’) and has useful features (file uploads, integrations, built-in video/voice chat, and more).

Slack makes it easy to toggle back and forth between various Slack organizations. Suppose you’re working on a project with a company and they require your on-demand support - ask them to invite you to their Slack channel - and you can speak to them in real-time. You can then easily switch back to your original Slack account.

9. Calendly

Calendly made it to the ‘communication’ section because it helps reduce communication via email. Gone are the days when you had to go back and forth via email to set up a meeting based on availability. Calendly connects to most mainstream calendars (like Google Calendar) and with a simple link, others are able to see your availability. From there, they can choose a day and time to book a meeting. All parties will receive a notification and corresponding calendars will be updated.

Quick tip: The ad-hoc feature is a great tool to book meetings separately from your current availability. It can be accessed through the Chrome extension and allows you to embed your availability directly into an email.

CUSTOMER SERVICE

10. Zendesk

Responding to customer inquiries and feedback has always been critical to business success. These days though, it seems like it’s at a whole other level. Customers expect lightning quick responses and if they don’t get it, they may look elsewhere.

Zendesk assists teams with customer support. From multiple inboxes to specific triggers (i.e. when Customer X emails, automatically assign Rep Y) Zendesk can solve the majority of customer service pain-points.

Zendesk’s reporting is very thorough and allows you to assess your team’s response times, ticket volume by agent and customer satisfaction.

11. Forms (Google Forms, Jotform, Formstack)

It’s almost inevitable that at one point in time your company will require customers to complete a questionnaire or submit information to you in a streamlined fashion (i.e. not by email).

Online intake forms can help by collecting necessary information that you or your team needs. Form apps are really easy to use and provide you with pre-built templates to deploy (i.e. feedback forms, invites, address information) or they allow you to build your own.

Quick tip: Most forms include the ability to add ‘conditions’, which is really useful if you want to build a more comprehensive intake form.

12. Typeform

Although similar to #11 above, Typeform brings some unique attributes to it. The main one is it’s beautiful UI, and through it, it provides a different user experience (in a great way).

PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT

13. BambooHR

As a company scales and headcount increases, there will be a need to track personnel information, including vacations, holidays and leaves. BambooHR is a platform that can easily support hundreds of employees and provides various user-permissions to various individuals at the organization.

Every team member has credentials to log in (web or smartphone app) to view and update their personal info. The app makes it convenient to book time off, and if set up correctly, the approval process is seamless too.

14. Humi

As an all-in-one HR platform, Humi is gaining tons of traction. They recently acquired a payroll company to become a true one-stop-shop for HR. The UI looks good and there are some unique features that are done really well.

The performance section and surveys stand out - they are easy to customize and build - and deployment is only a click away.

15. 7Geese

7Geese is a niche people management platform. They stay away from the typical ‘HR’ functions that other apps have built out. Instead, 7Geese’s core function is performance and feedback. Through ‘goal setting’ and ‘360 degree feedback’, 7Geese stands out from traditional HR platforms.

Quick tip: One amazing feature is the ‘Career Management’ tool. It provides for extreme clarity and transparency over specific roles, growth plans and development in an organization. Engaged and loyal team members will love this.

SECURITY AND COMPLIANCE

16. 1Password

This app list is just the tip of the iceberg when compared to the number of apps out there. Regardless of how many apps are used, a password manager will be key as a company’s app list and team grows. You want to ensure that you have quick access to your tech stack and you want to be able to provide similar access to your team. 1Password, fresh off a $200M Series A (November 2019), will look to continue to build out its product to add to its suite of features.

Quick tip: The ‘Vault’ settings are fantastic - you can create individual ‘vaults’ and add various individuals within them - which then allows for granular permission settings by individual. This is a really useful feature for growing teams.

17. E-signature apps (DocuSign, PandaDoc, Dropbox Sign, RightSignature, Adobe Sign)

E-signature apps are not new but it’s worth reiterating how important they are to a business that deals heavily with documents that require signatures (contracts, compliance filings, various sign-offs, etc.). We’ve been using e-signature software since 2014 and I don’t know how we’d operate without it.

Quick tip: Common to most/all e-signature apps is the ‘signing sequence’ functionality. It’s a great tool to use if you need certain individuals signing in sequence (i.e. Person B will not receive an email to sign a document until Person A signs first).

18. Spanning Backup

It is so important to ensure that your integral apps are backed up. We live in a time where hacking is prevalent and cybersecurity is mentioned daily. Although many SaaS products provide backups as part of their offering, you still need to worry about your cloud storage provider, CRM and emails. It’s a cost that nobody wants to incur but we all know that peace of mind is priceless.

Spanning is a cloud-to-cloud Saas backup product that connects to G-Suite, Office365 and Salesforce and will back up virtually everything (emails, contacts, calendar events, G-Drive and OneDrive files/folders, Salesforce data and more).

The beauty behind Spanning is that it runs in the background. Set it up to back up daily and hopefully you won’t need to visit it ever again. Spanning provides permission controls, reporting and email notifications with status updates.

OTHER

19. Audible

Audible is a mobile app that allows you to listen to audiobooks and podcasts. What better way to grow your business and make decisions by learning from the successes and failures of other business owners.

Here are some of our recommendations:

Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business
Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose
The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon

20. Collection of funds: Stripe, Rotessa

One process that every business should nail down early is how they collect payment for their service or product. There are a variety of payment gateways out there but two of our favourites are Stripe and Rotessa. Stripe makes it easy to collect payment via credit card and Rotessa allows businesses to collect funds through direct debit. Both have nice user interfaces, are easy to use and integrate to Xero.

21. Payment of funds: Transferwise, Plooto, Veem

Figuring out an efficient process to make payments is important too. Although using apps like Receipt Bank, Hubdoc and Xero can help the payable process, some of the apps that can streamline the actual payment process include Plooto, Transferwise and Veem.

Plooto and Veem integrate well to Xero and can really round up your payables function. Transferwise is newly integrated to Xero, although not in the same manner as Plooto and Veem. The Xero UK product will have Transferwise embedded within Xero allowing you to make payments automatically from within Xero (scheduled for 2020 as a beta launch).

FINAL THOUGHTS

There you have it! An extensive list of a variety of apps that can streamline the processes of a scaling company. We just scratched the surface here - there are tons of apps that we didn’t mention - and some categories that we didn’t get into at all (Marketing, for example). The key is to research and experiment and settle on something that works for your specific company.

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