Small business tech to help you master the new financial year

As the end of the financial year approaches, small businesses across Australia are gently emerging from lockdown. They’re returning to a ‘new normal’ in which many restrictions will still apply, so to adapt and identify competitive advantages to help them navigate the coming months, businesses are relying on technology to help them work smarter,” writes Colin Birney, Head of Business Development for Square Australia.

Whether you’re in retail or hospitality, beauty or the trades, putting the right technology in place now, to streamline operations and ensure a smooth and safe customer experience, is critical. Here are some tech tools to empower your business in the financial year ahead.

Cloud accounting

If, as you’re tackling your tax this year, you spent too much time digging through boxes of receipts or locating invoices, it’s time to invest in cloud accounting software. Having your back-end processes streamlined is a massive time-saver. Especially now, when a lot of time is being spent on front of house operations and ensuring you are meeting your customers needs in a safe way. Once your cloud accounting is set up you’ll no longer need to worry about accounting errors and manual data entry.

Team management

Keeping track of your staff and their schedules on a paper calendar can be complicated. Employee management software that lets you manage schedules, track time and set permissions straight from your mobile device makes everyone’s lives easier. Some platforms also enable you to manage multiple employees across different locations, which is useful today if you’re managing staff remotely to reduce the number of people at any given location.

Pickup, delivery

If you run a hospitality business, chances are you’ve shifted more of your business online recently. Make sure your online ordering system has the options you need to keep your customers safe and happy. Adding the ability for customers to choose between in-store or curbside pickup is a great way to do this. Square’s eCommerce solution has a self-managed contactless delivery option for those businesses who would prefer to run their own service, rather than pay the order ahead app fees.

Online bookings

With the return of in-person dining has come a range of rules that restaurants and cafes must follow to ensure the health and safety of customers. Restricting the number of customers in your space at any given time will be challenging, so why not give customers the option to book? There are many free and low-cost options for setting up an easy online booking page that integrates with your website, so you can take your customers’ details ahead of time and communicate with them through text and email reminders.

Online checkout

If your small business is retail-focused, an online presence is likely a key channel. But there is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to online selling – what works for one business won’t necessarily work for another. So, if you don’t want to invest all your time and resources into an immersive online experience, there are still plenty of options when it comes to easy and safe online payment solutions. Try an online payment portal or checkout so you don’t have to worry about redirecting customers to a website. This enables you to generate a unique checkout link that you can add to emails or social media posts for specific products, allowing customers to pay you instantly online.

Contactless card reader

As cash continues to decline, and customers shift towards options that follow social distancing guidelines, contactless payments are a must for any business right now. Outside of e-commerce and online payment portals, if you have a brick-and-mortar store, or interact with customers face-to-face, make sure you have a mobile card reader that accepts all types of payments – including mobile options like Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay.

E-invoicing app

E-invoicing apps can help get you padia 80 per cent faster than traditional processes like formatting an invoice in Excel or emailing a PDF attachment. So if you’re a tradesperson or a graphic designer, for example, with online invoicing tools you can send e-invoices straight from your phone or tablet, wherever you are. Specialised e-invoicing apps also enable customers to pay you instantly and securely straight from the invoice, so they don’t have to worry about logging into separate banking apps.

Analytics tracker

Businesses rely heavily on their sales data to make important decisions about everything, from marketing strategies to inventory and staffing needs. That’s why it’s important to have good analytics tools that integrate with your payments system so you can easily pull insightful data. Data tools that enable you to see historical sales reports, your busiest times of the day or week or year, and what returning customers are purchasing, will be the most helpful for making smarter business decisions as you focus on doing what you do best in the financial year ahead.

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