The Best Systems for Business Productivity

If you’ve fallen short in your business goals in the past few years, take heart. Before resolving to “try harder” or beating yourself up for perceived moral failings, ask yourself how long it’s been since you last reviewed your business systems. Oftentimes, results have very little to do with the goals we set and everything to do with the systems we follow.

At Luneer Mgmt, we’ve researched the most popular business systems on the market to find the ones that work the best for us and for our clients. Here are 6 of our favorites for you to explore.

System 1: HoneyBook

honeybook is an all-in-one platform that allows business owners to create and manage work and cash flow in one place. With HoneyBook, you can create and send professional invoices, make secure payments, and draft and sign contracts. You can also use its calendar and scheduling features to confirm meetings and set up automated replies, follow-ups, and task reminders. For parts of business functioning that directly involve clients, HoneyBook allows you to design interactive, professional experiences that will make clients excited to work with you.

Incorporating HoneyBook doesn’t require you to throw out systems you already use and love. With integration options for Google Workspace, Zoom, QuickBooks, and more, HoneyBook works with your current tools.

While anything worth doing in life involves effort, HoneyBook’s intuitive interface makes it easy to set up and use. Customers have access to articles, resources, live chat support, and a help center. With monthly and annual pricing packages, you can find a deal that works for you. HoneyBook occasionally runs special deals (e.g., $1 per month subscriptions for the first 6 months), so be on the lookout for these. Or use our affiliate link for 35% off!

System 2: Asana

Used by 80% of Fortune 100 Companies, Asana is a project organization tool that helps businesses prioritize and plan with confidence. It involves a board system with a pleasing color palette that allows you to automate workflows, organize tasks, and assign due dates. On the boards, you and your employees can see current work tasks and where each task fits in the larger timeline of a project. This approach visually connects work activities with purpose and financial outcomes.

Asana offers these features not only for individual tasks but also for dependent, overlapping, and unscheduled tasks. These abilities make it ideal for projecting how your business’s work maps out over time. Asana scales with company growth, allowing you to spot risks and see how changes affect outcomes and allowing your teams to have more efficiency, clarity, and accountability while reaching deadlines. Like HoneyBook, Asana allows for product integrations (over 200, including Slack, Dropbox, Notion, and Google Drive). Asana also offers various pricing plans, including a free option, to meet all business needs.

Work feels meaningful when it involves plans that we know we can count on. By allowing workers to see the stages of each project and who is working on what, Asana allows everyone to know what they are doing and how their tasks contribute to the overall goal.

System 3: QuickBooks

One of the most important aspects of running a business is knowing where the money is going and what it is doing. Thanks to quickbooks by Intuit, you can track income and expenses, update inventory, and run payroll all from a user-friendly dashboard. You can also run custom reports for all of your accounting needs. The mobile app feature makes it easy to keep track of mileage and snap pictures of receipts while on the go. Plans are available for every type and size of business including team, individual, and small businesses.

Not only does QuickBooks organize your finances, but it also provides ample help for accounting and financial matters. QuickBooks offers a strong community with tutorials and webinars to learn all the tips and tricks of the program. It also links with TurboTax for easy preparation come tax time. While these features allow QuickBooks to act like a personal accounting assistant, you can also hire a real-life bookkeeper directly from the QuickBooks system if you prefer.

With lots of customer service and many pricing options, organizing your bills and projecting profitability has never been easier than with QuickBooks.

System 4: My Hours

My Hours is a top-rated time-tracking app used by 100,000 businesses worldwide. It allows businesses to track work hours, make reports, and coordinate projects and tasks. Oh – did we mention it is also FREE!!

If you have virtual assistants or employees, My Hours is a great way for them to log their work time. You can customize projects with assigned roles, descriptions, billable rates, and tags. You can also set administrative controls for such features as approving hours and running payroll.

My Hours has online and mobile options and also integrates with QuickBooks. Its ability to create beautiful reports and spreadsheets makes it a fantastic tool for audit logging, tracking profitability, and producing client reports.

System 5: Canva

While organization is essential, businesses also need a way to design and market their brand. Canva is an online publishing tool whose mission statement is “To empower everyone in the world to design anything and publish anywhere.” Launched in 2013, Canva is now used in 190 countries, offered in 100 languages, and has a 10B+ design track record. In short, you can have confidence when using Canva.

Businesses often use Canva to make the following materials:

• Logos
• Fliers
• Posters
• Invitations
• Letterheads
• Resumes
• Graphs
• Social media graphics and backgrounds
• Collages
• YouTube Ads
• Memes

Canva’s intuitive design makes it possible for you to start making any number of projects within an hour. Its features include tools for enhancing images, framing photos, recording and trimming online videos, and stylizing text. Most projects are available in both digital and print versions.

With free and professional subscriptions available, as well as individual and team options, Canva has something for everyone. It is the ideal tool for building and maintaining your brand.

System 6: Notion

Last but not least, notion is a highly-flexible online station for project management and workflow organization. Used by teams such as PIXAR, Loom, and Figma, Notion minimizes tabs and challenges the status quo of team management by going back in time to the days of file cabinet philosophy. With its all-in-one workspace interface, Notion allows businesses to organize projects into folders with endless customizations and task functions. Because Notion frees team leaders and members from needing to use multiple software and communication tools to get the job done, it helps prevent chaos and save time.

One of the best aspects of Notion is its ability to stay] out of the way. In other words, Notion provides options for a framework without imposing a specific structure. You get to arrange the Notion dashboard to build the workflow you want, using templates and options to keep your whole team aligned in one place.

Among the features Notion provides are:

• Team lists
• Policies
• Mission statements
• Goals
• Scheduling
• Directory
• Meeting Notes
• Documents
• Onboarding materials
• Calendar
• Weekly Agenda
• Business “roadmap”

With access to data encryption security, an online community, and mobile/desktop apps, Notion may be what you need to take your business to the next level.

The Bottom Line

The digital age is an exciting time for small businesses. New possibilities for organization and advancement are available from the comfort of your computer.

If updating business systems is one of your goals, you will have a learning and experimentation process ahead of you. Rather than doing nothing at all, we suggest that you chose a few options that seem right for you and stick with them. You can always adjust later as needed.

Each of the 6 systems mentioned above requires financial and time investment but will ultimately free your mind and schedule so that you can focus on money-generating activities.

Implementing new systems may be exactly what you need to reach your goals.

WRITTEN BY: KATIE BARNETT