Cb's Toolbox.
Learn all about all the apps and tools Carpetbag Enterprises uses (and loves!). We may receive commissions for purchases made using the links below.
Banking.
From the perspective of an owner-user, Relay makes it super-easy to take care of banking administration activities. Signup is a breeze. Accounts & virtual cards are simple to set up & you can create more than 20 at no additional charge! It's also easy to set up access-restricted accounts for other team members and make funds transfers. Their statements and transaction documentation needs a little bit of improvement - the layouts are a bit disorienting for a financial professional. But, their banking connections to Quickbooks Online are nice and stable and their login process with two step authentication is nice and easy. Also, their customer service is superb; you get the help you need promptly.
Bookkeeping for our Clients.
Process Street is the app at the heart of Carpetbag Enterprises. We use its checklist system to train new employees, run & track routine back-end tasking, and perform our custom weekly bookkeeping routines for done-for-you clients. It is by far the most powerful checklist tool Nina has found to date. You can build interactive checklists containing all the options you could ask for - images, imbedded videos, interactive dialogs, links, multiple choice, dropdown options, dates, attached files, dependencies...so much! That being said, this is an app with a steep learning curve and only businesses with very rigid processes will find this tool set useful. However, it's a super-cool tool if you are a checklist-oriented business. If you're shopping for a checklist app to run your business on, Process Street is definitely worth investigating.
Dropbox is our cloud file-sharing app of choice for three reasons:
It's not Google. (We're not anti-Google, but we like to evenly spread out our apps, so that a single service outtage doesn't hamstring the entire business.)
It has a great desktop app that saves a local copy of documents so work can happen outside of a browser screen. If a computer is not connected to the internet, the document can be edited locally and then automatically updated when the internet is reconnected.
It has a decent scanning app for phones. This is not so much of a killer feature as it used to be, but five years ago it was one of the few fast and reliable scanning apps on the market.
Cb is and will always remain agnostic when it comes to accounting software. We believe that the best option takes into account the needs of your bookkeeper AND the other needs of your business. We've worked in a number of accounting software systems over the years and will continue to do so. That being said, our current favorite is Quickbooks Online. QBO offers a really robust set of tools for double-entry bookkeeping that are easy and efficient for an accountant-user. Plus, they are working to improve the user experience for the owner who may not be as comfortable with the idea of debits and credits. The cost of this toolset has been rising steadily for a couple of years, which is of concern. But so far, its value is still in line with its pricetag.
Because downloading reports is often an hourly occurrence for the team at Cb, we really don't want the status of our downloads taking up valuable screen real estate on our web browser. Luckily, the Always Clear Downloads 2 app extension for Chrome automatically sweeps those pesky notifications away. It's a free tool, but so ridiculously helpful that we would gladly pay a dollar or two a month for the service.
If you do a ton of sales through Stripe or Paypal and want to be able to accurately log income and fees in your accounting software as it happens, then Synder Sync is the app for you. Although their setup process and dashboards are a bit disorienting, their live and email support are quite good. And once you're set up properly, Synder's output is SOLID. It does exactly what you want and expect it to with very few hiccups.
Qbox is a brilliant little app that allows Quickbooks Desktop users to store and access their company file in the cloud. The downside is that only one person at a time can open and use Quickbooks, but the $12/month pricetag cannot be beat!
Communication.
Google Workspaces offers a lot of tools into it's $6/user price tag. Here are the features we like best:
Gmail - It's ubiquitous for a reason.
Google Sites - Google will host your domain for no additional cost if you're using Sites. Now, that's a great value!
Chrome - Workspaces allows you to create a custom Chrome profile template and distribute it to everyone on the team. The profile template automatically installs our required Chrome extensions and gives us a centralized website bookmark system.
Google Meet - Do we prefer Zoom? Yes. But we can't beat the value of this included feature.
The administration pages for Google Workspaces can be daunting, but once you find what you're looking for a bookmark to help you find it next time does the trick nicely.
There soooo many appointment scheduling tools out there and at this point they seem to all offer basically the same functionality. We use Appointlet because it has a decent free plan and easily integrates with easily gmail calendars.
SendRecurring is one of those apps that doesn't look pretty, but it does its single job very, very well. We use it to send automated monthly and annual email reminders to clients. Plus, it's got a very generous free plan. If you just need to send the same message on a specific schedule, this is the tool for you.
Dropbox
Sign and Capture by Dropbox don't have tons of bells and whistles, but we just need to create a screen share video or get a document signed every once in a while. So apps work great and don't cost us anything extra
Marketing.
Namecheap is our go-to domain registration service. Their prices are hard to beat and their help documentation is phenomenal for both a novice and for an experienced user of their products. We've never had to contact customer service because their documentation is that good!
If you like Cb's graphics, then you'll love noun project. Their annual subscription provides royalty free rights to use any of the graphics in their huge catalog. Search for any noun and you'll get a screen full of graphic representations of that thing or idea. The paid plans allow you to download icons using custom colors. Another really helpful feature is the download history where you can review any and all icons that you've previously downloaded. If you're not a fan of stock photography, The Noun Project is worth checking out.
Zoho Campaigns offers the functionality of the bigger email marketing services, but at a substantially lower per email cost. Their user interface is a little behind the times, but the services themselves are great, especially for the price. We like that you can buy credit packages instead of being forced immediately into a monthly plan.
Security.
Although this password vault has been around *forever*, it has kept up with the times and online security experts continue to recommend it. Their Chrome extension works great. It's very easy to share passwords (never for bank accounts, though - please don't share bank account passwords!!!!) and there's even a nifty tool to help you improve your password security practices.
Time Tracking & Payroll.
For straightforward and affordable payroll, Gusto is a great option. Their onboarding was smooth and running payroll twice a month for our team is a breeze. If it's your first time setting up any sort of payroll, plan a big, fat amount of time to complete the onboarding process. Gusto makes it as easy as it can be, but each state has its own unique set of rules and maze of bureaucracy to navigate and that's work only you can do. They also have a simple integration with Quickbooks Online which is a helpful time-saver.
If you like having a clear plan for what to accomplish in a day, but want flexibility about when that happens, this is the app for you. Hourstack is envelope budgeting for time management. You can schedule out your daily time blocks without committing them to a particular hour of the day and each task also has a built-in timer so you can switch between tasks to your heart's content. It is unique in its ability to track & report both the time reserved for our work and what we actually spend on it. Plus, there's just the right amount of sorting and tagging options available. Nina uses Hourstack as her daily planner and we use Hourstack as our master timesheet for all employees and as our capacity planning tool.
