Get your business organised with free online utilities

The best thing about the internet revolution that’s happened in the last five years is the productivity benefits for you and your business.

There’s been a huge amount of development with something called Web 2.0. It’s a trend in website design and development… and what it’s really meant is that hundreds of internet companies across the world have scrambled to build useful applications and gain market share. You’ll know this best as websites such as Facebook and YouTube.

Whatever type of business you run or want to start, there are a number of fantastic free online utilities that you can use.

Here’s a handy Bytestart guide to the best currently available.

Access email everywhere

Webmail is an old technology – in fact for many people, the first email they had was a free webmail account. But thanks to development driven by Google, webmail is now a serious consideration for small businesses. They do a version of Gmail called Google Mail for Apps where they use your business’s domain name to provide email for all employees.

People who get emails from you won’t know Google is involved. But you get all the benefits that usually go with Google Mail including powerful searching of emails, a shared calendar and instant chat. And of course it’s free (a premium paid for version is available for bigger businesses or those needing better support).

Google Mail is designed to be used through a web browser. But recently Google improved the way emails are exported, introducing something called IMAP. This means you can receive emails on your phone or in Outlook, and the emails you have read or deleted are synchronised with your webmail account.

Access documents without buying software

Google also provides Google docs - free online applications to read and edit documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Perfect if you can’t be bothered to buy Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Another online supplier is Zoho, which has a Writer, Sheet and Show tools, all free.

Organise your information

There are hundreds of websites to help you arrange and organise your information. For every type of info you have, there’s a job to do it. Remember they’re all free with many offering a paid for version if you want more storage or features.

If you want to get your information organised, try Backpack or Scrybe (currently closed to new signups but very much worth a look)

Need to organise customer data or keep track of sales? Try this powerful customer relationship manager (CRM) Highrise.

If you just need somewhere to store basic information, there are some simple notebooks available from Google and Zoho.

And if you need to collaborate with employees or colleagues in other locations, try Basecamp.

Achieve more

Whether you are a fan of the Franklin Covey time management system or Getting Things Done, the end result is that to achieve anything in an organised way, you need to build lists of tasks.

There are numerous online tools to do this. Some of the best are Todoist, Ta Da Lists, and the wonderfully-titled Remember the Milk. Google also has a to do list on its personalised start page iGoogle.

Track where your time has gone

Toggl will help you see what you’re spending your time on, and also track what you’re doing for clients. It’s great if you run a service business with billable time as you can generate reports. Another to look at is myHours.com.

Get your content in one place

With a Start page, you get a personalised web page containing all of your content. This typically includes the ability to bring in content using RSS feeds from website such as BBC News. You can receive customised business guides, tips and news with Bytestart RSS feeds. It’s called a Start page because if you rely on it, you’ll use it to start your browsing each day.

Some of the best include Protopage, Mygetgo and iGoogle.

Handy calculators

Finally, you can access this useful set of online business calculators. They include calculators for VAT, compound interest and profit margins.