Many small and medium businesses at their initial stages, struggle hard to manage their finances. Scuffling with time and manpower, most of these businesses end up buying expensive software or hire accounting firms that charge them a lot.
Here is a simple solution for these businesses, I stumbled upon this very cool application TopNotepad, it's a cloud-based invoicing, accounting and CRM software that has become quite popular among many small businesses and freelancer in very short period. Let me walk you through a few points about TopNotepad, which I feel are worth noting.
Will start with an Overview
This application has many modules viz., inventory management, invoicing, estimates maker, expense manager, accounting, and CRM. It is a one-stop solution for startups, freelancers and SMBs. One can create invoices, manage inventory, track payments, business expenses and manage business leads with this powerful tool, which has a clean and straightforward UI and UX. Let's dwell a little deeper into the user experience piece:
User interface and experience
A very well designed interface, the application has all its tools listed under relevant heads on the left-hand navigation menu. These menu items have a standard structure, with add button on the top right followed by filters, containing pertinent to the page. Here is a screen shot of the invoices page:
Whatever business you are in, you will find features that fit your purpose, making this software a flexible alternative that can be used as your scale. Some of the business/freelancers, I think, that must use this tool:
As listed above, there are many features and each of these functions have varied functionalities that are very exhaustive and beyond basics. I have taken liberty to pick a few screen shots from TopNotepad's website that list a few unique functionalities across each of these features.
- Online Estimations / Quotations
A feature, I liked the most: Invoice Style Switching
Invoice style switching is a fantastic feature, let's you choose the style you like and think suits your business the most.
We have seen there are many features, and you may feel it be overwhelming to learn all of these but guess what! Familiarizing with most of the features is pretty simple. The in-application tutorial walks you through the key features via a step-by-step guided tour.
There are help videos and tool tips that prompt you to ensure you do it right. You can trigger a guided tour as well by clicking on the 'question mark' icon, available on all pages just beside the title of the page located right above the search box.
Free Invoice Generator tool
There is a free online invoice generator tool that lets you create and download invoices in PDF format. You can easily add your company's logo along with other necessary details. The template does all the math; you just need to log relevant details. I strongly suggest you try this, click here.
I like the way they have named the plans. Pond, Lake, Sea, Ocean, so as the name suggests, Pond is the basic plan (single user) starts at $120/yr with unlimited cloud storage, unlimited invoicing, and unlimited leads management, etc., You can also check other plans below.
The platform provides many resources and support material to all of its users. You can watch video tutorials, read the documentation and for any further query email them or raise a support ticket.
All your data is secured and encrypted. They have a 126 bit SSL to ensure the secure data transfer between browser and server.
Conclusion & Final verdict
TopNotepad is a great invoicing, accounting and CRM tool for consultants, freelancers, traders and every small and growing business out there. If you are looking for such a solution, I recommend you to signup and try TopNotepad for free.