That Will Help you Win your Day Back
This article isn’t about CRMs or time and billing packages. All of these tools are easy to set up (<10 minutes), inexpensive and designed to remove the little hassles in your day to day running an accounting firm. In this list, I’ll show you how to capture contact info from emails easier, manage social media posts better and capture your time passively. Try them out for yourself and if they work for you, pass the list on to the rest of your firm.
We’d also love to hear from you. Let us know in the comments section below if you use any other productivity tools to make running your firm easier.
Got too many promotional emails flooding your inbox? If you’ve signed up to dozens of email lists throughout the years and don’t want to go to the trouble of unsubscribing from them one by one then try Unroll.me. This free app shows you all the lists you’re on and let’s you unsubscribe from them all in one click. If there’s still some you want to be on, then just uncheck the box for that list and it won’t unsubscribe you. This tool quickly gets rid of a ton of unnecessary emails every day.
Click here to check out Unroll.me.
Avoid the back-and-forth emails to schedule a time to talk or meet with clients. This tool automatically syncs up to your calendar. It then gives you a personal link that you can send to clients and colleagues so they can pick a free time in your calendar to talk (they can only see free times, not your entire calendar). You can also limit the length and number of appointments offered per day so you’re not overwhelmed with too many.
Click here to check out Schedule Once.
Contact copy is neat little Outlook plugin that takes contact info (name, email, phone, etc.) from emails and email signatures and adds them to your contact book in one click. Just highlight the contact info, click the Contact Copy button and the info will be added in the appropriate fields in your address book. You can quickly review the info before you save to make sure it’s correct.
Click here to check out Contact Copy.
Email Stopwatch is an automatic email time tracking software that plugs right into Outlook. Just install the plugin and it works completely passively to capture all the time you spend reading and writing emails. Email Stopwatch then sends you a simple report at the end of each night with the total time spent emailing each contact. Add the time right into your time sheet and avoid trying to track all the small 3-5 minute increments throughout the day. (Publisher's note: Laura is the co-founder of email stopwatch)
Click here to check out Email Stopwatch.
If you’re working from home or want to work with a client remotely, Join.me is an amazing and easy to use online meeting tool. You can share your screen to review documents, as well as video chat. The other user doesn’t need to download any software; they can just click a link to join the call. Join.me is also really intuitive to use and you can try it for free before committing.
Click here to check out Join.me.
If you’re doing social media marketing but hate logging into each of the sites you’re using (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc.) and posting updates one at a time, check out Hootsuite. This tool connects all your social media accounts onto one easy to use dashboard so you can write and schedule posts from one place. You can schedule posts to go out later so you don’t have to remember to login and do them 3x a day. You can do all your social media marketing for the week or month a one time.
Click here to check out Hootsuite.
Evernote is an amazing on-the-go notebook. It’s cloud based so you can access your notes on your phone or computer. It’s free for one user and really simple to use. You can create to-do lists, reminders, and include attachments. Really handy for when you think of an idea out of the office and want to jot it down to work on later.
Click here to check out Evernote.
Laura Berthiaume is the cofounder of Email Stopwatch, (http://emailstopwatch.com), an email management tool allowing managers and users to passively track all the time spent in Outlook. You can reach her with questions at laura@emailstopwatch.com