Helpful Applications for Small Businesses

As our business has grown, we've needed to acquire more knowledge and tools to be able to manage everything that we juggle, from finances, to planning, to keeping up with the kids on social media ? Finding resources and phone or web applications has been a humongous help to us. So, we made a list of the ones we use most often to keep us going.

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Quickbooks Online

Small Business Accounting

We believe this is a great accounting product for small businesses. In addition, Josh created a method to use the QuickBooks products and services to help us build more accurate estimates for customers. Finally, it also can link directly to your business bank account, business credit card account, and applications like Square, which makes record keeping a lot easier.

Square

Point of Sale Service Provider

Josh had a lot of experience with Square with his former job and has brought that experience to The Sociable Home. There are many Point of Sale Applications out there, but we believe Square provides an easy way to develop a library of items for sale and process any sales.

Box

Cloud Storage

We love Box for many reasons, but mainly because of its mobile capabilities. We tend to move really fast with everything that we have going on, so the ability to upload items like photos directly from our phones to the Box app saves us a lot of time. We also like that Box plays nicely with Adobe, Microsoft, Google, and many other applications, which allows us to edit some of our documents from within Box (again, a huge time saver). Additionally, Sydney can use it for counseling service documents because it can keep HIPAA compliant documents in private folders separate from other business use. Finally, Box has a drive that can be downloaded onto your computer so that you can access your folders without having to open a web browser.

Weebly

Website Host

Back in 2016, when we started The Sociable Home journey as a side-hobby, we developed a website using Weebly. Weebly has its limitations, but it is fairly easy to use for those like us that are not full-scale website developers. We've added a lot of content to it over the years, and now we even have a storefront on the website thanks to their new connection with Square. 

Adobe Lightroom

Photo Editing

Sydney uses this and can upload photos from her DSLR or from her cell phone through the app. Lightroom was easier for her to pick up naturally than Photoshop and has served us well as we take pictures for our blog or social media.

ClickUp

Project Management

We recently were introduced to Click-Up through social media and have started to use it as a way to keep our projects on track. Click-Up gives us the ability to create tasks (and subtasks) and deadlines attached to those tasks. We haven't had enough experience with it to develop a full opinion, but we like what we have seen so far.

Canva

Graphic Design

Canva is a popular application many people use to design high-quality graphics without hiring a graphic designer. Most of the awesome graphics that our social media followers see are created by Sydney using Canva.

Hootsuite

Social Media Planner

Hootsuite is an app that we implemented in our business at the beginning of 2022. Hootsuite allows us to manage most of our social media accounts from one place. The software helps with scheduling posts, tracking data, and managing interactions with our audience. ​