Useful Software and Online Tools For Small and Medium Businesses In Nigeria

If you run a business, even if it is a retail business, you'll benefit from using a few software and online tools to boost your business productivity and operate optimal.

Today, I'll be sharing the tools small and medium businesses in Nigeria will find valuable.

1. Quickbooks
This is perhaps the best and easy to use accounting tool for small businesses in Nigeria. It has the Naira sign, which you'll be surprised to see that some of the other accounting software do not have. But that's not the main reason I consider it the best. I think it's the best because of the ease of use and features it is packed with.

It will help you generate invoices and email them in a very payment-inducing way. This alone has helped me get paid more than when I was not using this feature. It also helps me figure out how much money I made month by month and the VAT that is due for each month. It generates a Profit and Loss Statement, Cash Flow Statement and Balance Sheet Statement. This alone will save you extra payment to an auditing firm for your yearly financial report filling as you'll be able to negotiate a smaller fee.

Quickbooks is number one on my list of tools small businesses should have.

2. Google Apps
One of the most frustrating things you'll experience as a business man is to have your business emails going to people's spam/junk box. And I once experienced it at the start of by business. I was using the email service of the hosting provider for my website.

I would send emails and the people I send them to would complain of not receiving my emails. And those are the small proportion that bothered to call me back regarding not seeing my email. 

After three agonizing months and not having enough space for my emails (so having to delete old mails) I decided to join Google Apps. Though it is expensive, $60 per year per email user, I get the assurance that my mails will land in the inbox of my recipients and I have almost unlimited mail space. It also comes with other Google products/apps: Google Drive, Google Doc, Hangouts and others.

3. Google Alerts
If you want to stay abreast of news in your field of business, about your major partners and biggest clients, then you need Google Alerts.

I use it to follow happenings in the Business Intelligence world, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft and a few companies. I can always tell you the latest about them because I have Google Alerts.

4. Base CRM
This is the best tool for managing your sales pipeline. Keeping record of your leads, prospective clients, conversion ratio, minutes/reports of meetings and interactions, clients classification and everything about your sales process. 

I used it and loved the practical functionality. If I call a client or prospect, after the call it asks me for the summary of our discussion and if there is a follow-up meeting/call scheduled and regarding what project did we discuss. It also aggregates all my mails and calls and meetings by clients. It syncs with my mail, phone and many other tools I use.

5. Asana and Basecamp.
I lumped them together because I haven't used any of them for my business but I have seen other people use them and give great recommendations about them.

Asana helps you manage your team while Basecamp help you manage projects.