An exciting part of doing business in the twenty-first century is the wide availability of free or inexpensive and very useful computer programs and apps. Here at CSR headquarters, we try to stay on top of the coolest tools available. The market is flooded with free or inexpensive software and apps that can really make a significant difference in how smoothly and effectively we use our time. This week, I talked to Alex and Maria about their favorite programs.
Alex immediately referred to
X1, an indexing tool. It indexes all folders, files, and their contents on a computer, including emails. It is essentially what the search feature on the computer should do. It is a time and effort saver—instead of having to look back through emails or old documents to find a piece of information, a user can quickly find what they’re looking for via X1. “Any small business needs productivity enhancement,” Alex said. “Either you or someone you hire needs to do this.”
Another great program that Maria loves is
Shoeboxed. This service allows you to photograph your receipts and business cards on the spot and add a note. Shoeboxed not only saves the receipt images, it categorize the expense and provide a list of expenses with merchant, amount and payment method. This information can be downloaded to a number of financial software programs like Quicken or straight into Excel. Those who need to file expense reports can produce them directly from their Shoeboxed account. The service is free unless you want to be able to mail stacks of receipts to Shoeboxed and have them do the digitizing. Maria loves Shoeboxed because it eliminates the hassle factor of organizing and saving receipts for expense reports and tax purposes. In other words, this program allows for the leveraging of a scant resource.
These productivity-enhancing programs are only two of many computer tools that we like using. Stay tuned for future product reviews!
~Rosi Muñoz~