For small business owners, creating a budget can be difficult. There are many considerations: operational costs, advertising costs, products and services, insurance, staffing, and more. Without a budget, a small business runs the risk of failure, as you’ll be spending money you don’t have or failing to grow an emergency-only fund.
Another thorn in business owner’s sides is resource management, which covers the same ideas. What resources do you have, and how should you use them wisely?
Keeping these two things in mind, we’ve compiled a tell-all guide that focuses on free resource management software. These applications should help you understand how to use your resources well — financial, informational, production, and more — for an affordable (read: free) cost!
Wrike
Pricing plans: Free & Paid
When it comes to resource management, it’s all about allocation and planning. With Wrike, their focus is these two things, allowing you the time and freedom to concentrate on other tasks.
Wrike can understand how much time it takes to complete a particular project, as well as the effort and the right person for the job. This insight means things are getting done more practically and efficiently. Their intuitive solutions can optimize everything from project scheduling to workload balancing.
Their free plan allows up to five users — perfect for small teams.
Streamtime
Pricing plans: Paid only
Streamtime is the self-professed ‘creative’ software of the bunch, ideal for creative businesses (think: graphic designers).
They can help their users do all the things vital to proper resource management, such as project management, time-tracking and scheduling. Essentially, they promise to help your team do it all, regardless of their nuances.
They offer all users a free 30-day trial to see if the intuitive software is worth upgrading for at the end of the month.
Mavenlink
Pricing plans: Paid only
Mavenlink is a software that helps businesses through the entire scope of resource management.
Their software lets you gain invaluable insight into things like productivity, team collaboration, and project timelines from planning to execution. They also understand what resources are required for each area, meaning your budget, time, and effort are being properly allocated.
There’s nothing worse than assigning a task to the wrong person and having it take double the time. Mavenlink ensures that the right person is always getting the job that’s best for them, guaranteeing that no time is wasted teaching or re-doing.
It also integrates with platforms you already use, such as Slack, GSuite, Salesforce, and others.
Float
Pricing plans: Paid only
If you’ve ever wanted to manage a project while on the go instead of at the office, Float can accomplish that. You can try Float from anywhere, providing your team freedom and flexibility to get the job done regardless of their location. They also boast the ability to integrate with other software such as Slack or Asana.
They offer the chance to start a 30-day free trial, with resource planning or resource planning + time tracking.
Toggl Plan
Pricing plans: Free & Paid
Your team is one of your many resources. Toggl Plan attempts to manage everything, down to the team member, to assure you that time is never getting wasted. Nothing will slip through the cracks with their platform, which is designed to give teams visual overviews as well as what’s coming up next.
It’s easy to use, easy to find clarity in your workflow, and simple to stay up-to-date on current and upcoming tasks.
Toggl Plan offers new users a free 14-day trial with all the premium features to test out their well-loved capabilities. You can choose to stay on for free after the trial period, with the exception of some features.
teamdeck
Pricing plans: Free & Paid
Teamdeck is an ideal free resource management software for any teams currently working remotely.
Their onboarding process is quick, garnering your business profits right away. They claim your whole team can be onboarded to their system in one day, meaning you’re spending less time training and more time generating profits.
Booking is as simple as drag-and-drop; you can always see who’s available and who’s not; and calendar views are open and future-focused, allowing you to see things like who’s on vacation.
You can get started with them for free and take additional steps later if you enjoy the experience.
BONUS: actiTIME
Pricing plans: Free & Paid
Price: Free for up to 3 users with limited functionality.
Paid tiers start at $5 per user per month. 30-day trial period.
Overview: actiTIME — a cross-platform time management tool with rich project management, reporting and accounting capabilities.
First of all, it offers flexible time tracking features available from your browser, Chrome extension and mobile device. Charts and reports show your productivity analytics and identify bottlenecks.
With actiTIME, project managers can create projects, break them down into tasks, assign them to their teammates and review their progress. They can also turn all their team time logs into visually compelling reports in just one click that allow them to compare estimates with the actual time logs and distribute the workload more precisely in the future.
To track the working time, managers can configure work schedules for employees in any country or time zone.
Integrations: QuickBooks, BaseCamp, Trello, Slack, and more.
Deployment: Web-based, Windows, Linux, Android, and iOS.
Which Free Resource Management Software Will You Use?
For small business owners, these are all top considerations.
For your business to be successful, and to earn yourself a salary, you’ll need to use your resources (and your budget) wisely. Using free resource management software can help you to do just that.
At actiTIME, we provide a fully-functional, free 30-day trial. Click here to start your free trial and see how we can optimize your workflow.
