So I’ve been thinking of starting my own business. I’m still a little ways from starting it but I figured I’d try to search some aspects I don’t know enough about.
I was looking for recommendations on software to help log customer demographics, schedule appointments, track billing info, equipment info etc.
Basically looking for software that can do it all in one.
Thx
ERP software gets expensive fast, but there are a few freebies out there to try. This one seems to require the least amount of setup, and is free for 1 user:
I’ve never used it, but it looks interesting. I have a lot of experience with Microsoft Dynamics NAV, but that requires a ton of setup and customization and wouldn’t make sense for a small startup.
I have used Zoho for my business applications. Similar to Google type stuff.
If you’re generally an organized person you can get by without any kind of software. It can save you chunk of money. But if you’re not then it’s almost a necessity.
It will be a heating and air conditioning buisness. So it would have a lot of customers which each individual will have their own equipment I would have to log, and id have to be able to generate work orders/bills, collect payments.
Then I would have to be able to track everything for doing taxes at the end of the year so I’m just not sure how to track all these smoothly, doing it all in paper would be tough. I’m sure there’s a way, but I figured researching software which might be able to do a lot of it would help.
I’d be basically by myself and have a helper until the customer base/buisness grew to the point I would need to hire more people.
I would say Zoho has individual apps like a Finance platform that will handle your invoices and sales and tax reporting. A CRM type platform would be good but it may take some customization to run how you want it with your industry specific stuff for your client.
Depending on your budget and customer base, it would be simple to use something basic to get up and running and manage and then look at the future to have something custom that has your industry specific. For the interim, you may just be best to run a simple client portal with their specific information and then just use those customer IDs in an online Finance platform like Zoho Finance or Quickbooks until you get big enough to invest in something custom. Customer database apps are cheap and easy to build but once you drop in your own workflow, it may take some extra customizations to tie everything in and still wouldn’t be as good as integrating with a professional finance platform to manage your invoices and payments.
That is for the recommendations, I’ll probably start out with quick books once I’m ready to make the move.