More and more small businesses are taking advantage of the cheap or free web apps and resources that are becoming available online. These online services can manage most aspects of your business, including invoicing, billing, payments, receipts, project management, forms and surveys, note taking and so much more.

Online services are the way the small business world is heading, and are the best way for your small business to stay organised and save money. These services have become an integrated part of our own business. A lot of business owners are skeptical about using online services, especially if you are from the days when all record keeping and invoicing was paper based. These online services are secure, trusted and relied upon by thousands of businesses around the world who use their services daily, so what have you got to lose (except a lot of paper).

Which online services are the best?

These are a few web apps that our business relies on daily and could help significantly increase your business productivity too.

Freshbooks – Online invoicing and billing

With Freshbooks you can send, manage and receive invoices online. You can also track time, expenses (more on that below) and set up recurring billing. It gives you professional looking invoices with your logo and branding but with the power and flexibility of the Freshbooks system. We have been using Freshbooks services for quite awhile now and couldn’t be more impressed. The user interface is easy to use and it has so many features. The best part has to be easily checking if you have been paid or a receipt has been viewed, saving you a lot of time chasing unpaid invoices. This is a great all round accounting system for small businesses. Plus there is an iPhone app for sending invoices on the go.

Wufoo – Contact forms, order forms, surveys, applications, mailing list sign up and bookings/registrations.

You no longer need to be able to write code to get the online forms that you want. With Wufoo you can create forms to easily embed on your website, set them as a pop up, link to them, or email them. You can create reports and graphs based on the data you collect. You can even use Wufoo for order forms and payments.

Shoeboxed – Never worry about losing a contacts business card or a receipt fading again!

Instead of keeping a box of receipts and sorting through them come tax time, hoping the ink hasn’t already faded, imagine you sent them away in an envelope for someone else to enter the data. You could then access all your receipts online and get overviews and reports. Sounds magical, doesn’t it.

Basecamp – Project Management

Anyone who runs a business will tell you that delegating tasks, project management and keeping track of your employees is no easy job. With Basecamp, project management becomes a very simple task. You can collaborate with clients and your own team on projects, track time, have discussions

Evernote – All-in-One Notebook

Have you ever found yourself with papers piled up on your desk to your eyeballs, post-it notes coming out your ears and your computer desktop looking like it just threw up PDF’s and screenshots? Yeah, we did too, until we discovered Evernote. You can store everything in Evernote: clips of web pages (easy with their web browser plug-ins), PDF’s, images, videos, text, notes, make lists, emails, recipes, scans… you can start to see how useful this web app can become. You can access Evernote online, on the desktop app or on the go with the iPhone (also available on other phones) or iPad app. Evernote starts to become a indispensable in your work flow.

Plus, if you use Evernote alongside Shoeboxed, you can access all of your receipts in your Evernote account.

Why use online services?

There are two main reasons why using these online services is a smart choice for your small business.

1. Save money: They are all FREE to use!

Yep, thats right. Totally free. You can try their services, and start integrating them with your business, and only upgrade to a paid plan when your business needs it.

2. Save time: They are all integrated.

All of these services can be easily integrated with the other online services. Here’s how it works. Let’s say you have set up Wufoo as an order form. When someone orders through your Wufoo form, Wufoo will send that information to your Freshbooks account. The buyer then gets sent to Freshbooks to complete their payment. Freshbooks then sends that information to Basecamp, which sets it up as a project. Voila! All automatic, with no effort on your part. Now, let’s say you then make a purchase for your business. You can then mail or email that receipt to Shoeboxed, who will enter in the information into your account. Shoeboxed will then send this information to your Freshbooks account under ‘expenses’, so your invoices and expenses are in one place (making tax time a breeze!). Shoeboxed will also send this information to your Evernote account, so all of your receipts can be found in one place.

Can you imagine how much time it would take one person to do all these tasks? Now of course all of these integrations have to be set up initially, but once this is taken care of you will find yourself saving a ton of time and money over the long term.

Note: Some of the above are affiliate links, but we only share things that we use and love ourselves.

Are there any online apps that your business can’t live with out? Please share in the comments below.