Systems & Tools

These are the systems and tools I use to run my business. For better... and for worse. 

Online Scheduling Tool

Genbook

Likes: $15 a month, patients can schedule themselves online, provides a forum for independent reviews that can be searched by web engines, clean look and feel on the back end and front end.

Dislikes: cannot do 10 minute appointment scheduling, slow to load, sometimes needs to be refreshed multiple times an hour. Slightly kludgy execution. No ability to color code.

Bookkeeping

Quickbooks 

Likes: integrates with Intuit Merchant services, which allows seamless sales receipts (ie easier record-keeping), industry standard, accountants dig it.

Dislikes: cost, tech support often sucks

Email Newsletter Tool

Mail Chimp 

Likes: FREE! Professional looking, tons of ideas about how to make sure your email gets opened and not labeled spam, provides easy access to artwork that can be purchased to jazz up your email for a few bucks a pop. Every bit as good as Constant Contact in my opinion and no fees unless you have a ton of subscribers. 

Dislikes: none!

Phone system

Google Voice

Likes: allows you to have one number ring any number of phones. We use it to ring to our personal cell phones. This ensures that you're always near your business phone (sometimes this is not a good thing!). Saves us from having a land line. Free.

Dislikes: 1) Sometimes messages go to your own personal voicemail, sometimes they go to your Google Voice account. There's no way of knowing. 2) Some callers will not be able to complete their call to you, especially if they're using an older company phone system. No way to block your personal number from people, so sometimes they call your home phone instead of the business phone anyway. 

Web-based Computer Backup System

MozyPro

Likes: runs automatically

Dislikes: be sure you're backing up the right files, or you'll be in big trouble when your computer dies. This happened to us 3 months into business. It really sucked!

Online Website Hosting

Kutenda

Likes: Excellent SEO and assistance with SEO. Good for people who don't know much about HTML and aren't too picky about micromanaging their webpages. Comes with a Email Newsletter tool that's not as good as Mail Chimp. Better for larger small businesses, if you know what I mean.

Dislikes: it's lets see, 2012 in the Common Era and you're still not letting me use Cascading Style Sheets? Are you out of your minds?! Editor is kludgy,  annoying, and slow to load at best. I would move my website, but that's a big hassle I don't need right now. 

Document Sharing

Google Drive

Likes: The virtual nature of Google Drive allows us to share documents among a number of users and collaborate remotely, work from home, etc..

Dislikes: Hard to tell how things are going to print out. Can't change margins of documents