20 Free Business Software for Small Businesses and Start-Ups

By aucklandnorth. Posted in Small Business, Startups.

Budget planning is essential to start-up and small business success. Making the most of the available free resources is a great way of keeping your costs under control – check out our top 20 free software! (more…)

Xero Add-on Focus: Deputy

By aucklandnorth. Posted in Cloud Software, Small Business, Solutions, Startups.

This online business software is putting an end to staff roster issues and endless hours of administration. We recently caught up with Kristin from the Deputy team to tell us more about their cool system.

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Top 5 Businesses of the Month – May in Birkenhead

By aucklandnorth. Posted in Small Business, Startups.

The Birkenhead community impressed us so much that we’ve dedicated this month’s blog to this hotspot. Park the car and explore Birkenhead by foot.

1. Lovenotes

I met Manda before I met Lovenotes, and got an instant feel for the goodness and substance this company brings to the community. Do you know it takes 10 litres of water to recycle 1 sheet of waste paper? Manda and the team at Lovenotes combat this by creating beautiful stationary for you from your one-sided, used (non-confidential) scrap paper. There is something uplifting about writing on orderly scrap paper. With a pay as you go system, I have signed up. It is fun, inexpensive (from $135) and one box of scrap paper makes 50-80 notebooks for you to keep! Whether you are a business owner or serial printer, Lovenotes is a win-win.

2. Crave

This is one of those stores you could spend an hour in. Winner of the Giftware and Homeware category for the Auckland Top Shop Awards in 2012, this wonderfully quirky, colourful and well-curated store will be a one-stop shop for all your gifting needs. Sidekick have been personalising their referral giftslately and I would definitely see happy faces from our vibrant referees with gifts from here. Crave have a great selection of clocks, cushions and crockery, 100% a go-to for birthday shopping if you haven’t found the perfect gift yet.

3. Dappa Dogs

For all your dog grooming needs, Dappa Dogs will have you covered. Known for their bright orange store and team of National Master-Certified Groomers, your dog will be well looked after whether you want a trim or a full-on salon spa treatment for your pooch. This is the place for you if only the best will do.

4. Bloom

As a sucker for cupcakes, Bloom makes the cut with yummy handmade cupcakes for all occasions. They have many designs to knock your socks off, including Berry Lamington, Rasberry Tart, and Nutella Caramel. This is a dainty stop-over suited to a catch up with your best friend, or to take some cupcakes home for a home-hosted high tea.

5. Coffee General

Coffee is the life-source of busy workers like us, so it is good to know where to get a good one. I have been to Coffee General time and time again and they have never disappointed. As the coffee connoisseurs of Birkenhead, Coffee General made it in Metro Magazines Top 50 Café’s in Auckland in 2013. This small coffee shop provides a cosy dwelling for meetings or is nice for some peace and quiet to rejuvenate before the day begins.

How to Keep Investors on Your Side

By aucklandnorth. Posted in Business Growth, Cloud Software, Contractors, Small Business, Solutions, Startups.

This is a featured Blog from our friends at SeederBoard.


Raising funds for any business is notoriously difficult. Any number of factors can slow things down or get in the way, preventing you from taking your business to the next level.

Once you have completed endless elevator pitches, a frantic search for due diligence paperwork, then working out a fair term sheet, you might finally close the fundraising round. (more…)

Good News for Small Business Owners

By . Posted in Business Growth, Small Business, Solutions, Startups.

Good News, Everyone!

According to this leading Business Index report, the small business output in Q1 of this year reached it’s highest point since 2008. They state “Small and medium-sized businesses in the UK enjoyed the strongest level of activity, year-on-year, for six years.” Essentially this means small businesses are performing better than they have in years.

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Choosing a Cloud Application – Guest Blog – Link Solutions

By aucklandnorth. Posted in Business Growth, Cloud Software, Small Business, Solutions, Startups.

No matter what background you’re from, you went in to business to do what you love. Not to spend your time on admin. Reuben Sweeney from Link Solutions talks about what your cool, new-age business needs to consider before choosing the cloud software you think will save you time and money.

It’s tempting sometimes to feel like we’ve reached a higher plane of existence with the rise and prevalence of cloud-based business applications built around the Xero ecosystem. You’ll hear it called The New Economy in comparison to the ‘old’ way we used to do business. Globally New Zealand businesses are pioneering the use and development of cloud-based business applications. New Zealand is consistently at the top of the global list for ease of starting a business and thanks to products like Xero, Unleashed, WorkflowMax, Vend and GeoOp it’s easier than it ever has been to start your business globally with competitive systems, lower overheads and less risk. With over 380 add-ons, the Xero ecosystem is busy with industry-specific niche applications that will do 90% of what you need them to do all for a small monthly fee.

In the next five years we’ll continue to see the number of applications available increase but some of the slower names disappear. It’s important when researching cloud apps for your business that you consider not just what the product can do for you (feature/functional fit) but where the product is going, what are their priorities, what is being worked on and how often is it being released? It’s easy to fall into the trap of picking one app over another because one will do 92% of what you need it to when the other only does 91%. It’s easy because that’s the way we used to select business applications back when the platform choice was for life and the apps were static. In a cloud environment it’s not the strong that dominate the weak but the adaptable that will dominate the static.

For the first time as users we’re able to cheaply and easily retrieve business information from our cloud-based business applications and have the minimum expectation that the information is live, timely, mobile and accurate. That’s awesome for a lot of things like planning, forecasting and decision making. These apps are allowing our businesses to act and react quicker than our competitors and quicker than we ever have been able to in the past. That’s just the beginning. These are first-generation apps that will quickly become a minimum standard. We’re already starting to see the emergence of the second generation of apps from companies like Unleashed and Vend. In the new new economy (which it will no doubt be named) it won’t be enough for an app to simply input, organise and regurgitate/dashboard business information to users. They will need to be smarter because the user expectation will shift from demanding information at our fingertips to demanding only relevant, actionable information about our businesses.

The apps that survive the transition (and have already started) into the 2nd generation aren’t the apps that are fighting for the last 10% of function or fit, or the apps that are going beyond and delivering features and functions you didn’t know your business needed. They will be the apps that bring you as a user and based on your user role (organisational roles) relevant, actionable information specific to your identity. Imagine a world where like an individually tailored newspaper bites of relevant, targeted information are headlined, distributed and announced throughout your business. Instead of a retailer asking ‘what sales have we done today?’, logging into their Vend from Costa Rica and finding out they’ll receive a headline like ‘You’ve sold more of product range X in the last week than you have sold to date’. Wow. The difference is subtle but deep. One is starting to tell a story, asking you questions of you and the other is giving you an answer.

We’re seeing the start of this transition in products like Vend where instead of saying ‘What do I need to order for my store?’ you can have one staff member draft a stock order based on your minimum stock order quantities for each product, have a manager edit and approve it and have an email order automagically delivered straight to the relevant supplier. A product like Unleashed lets you achieve a similar result but for a warehouse. ‘What do I need to order?’ become ‘What’s in my Low Stock Alerts?’. A product like WorkflowMax turns the question from ‘How close am I to budget for this project task?’ to ‘These are the project tasks approaching budget with X% remaining’. This subtle change in questioning will define those applications that survive the transition into the 2nd Generation of cloud based business applications. Think about what 2nd Generation business applications might look like as you think about what apps might suit your business.

Save yourself hours of app research by calling Link Solutions on 0800 159 672 or emailing contact@linksolutions.co.nz



Reuben Sweeney 021 774 413 reuben@linksolutions.co.nz

Top Tips For Tradies

By aucklandnorth. Posted in Business Growth, Cloud Software, Contractors, Events, Small Business, Solutions, Startups.

Sidekick’s National Powered Up Businesses Roadshow brought together hundreds of trades people that wanted a better, easier way to manage their trade business.

We spoke to Andy Burrows from Trades Coach after the event to compare ideas of where trades businesses struggle.(Link to his fantastic blog).

Three issues that we both found important were: Cash flow, time and cost management-especially for multiple jobs, and blowing the budget.

1. Cash flow

After a long project is over and you have finally been paid, looking at your bank balance can feel great! But if you are a tradie that looks at the $70,000 then thinks you’ve got enough cash for a new ute, you are not working your cash flow correctly.

But firstly how well collecting your payments? And if you aren’t getting paid on time, do you know exactly who owes you what?

Options: Payclip– BNZ have a device that plugs in to your smartphone to collect payments for small jobs right then and there. So if you did great work on your maintenance call out and the owner is home, why not get the money now?

Xero: With Xero your debtors are automatically loaded into a projected graph on your Xero dashboard, once you send your invoice off. This means you not only can see in advance when you are due a big pay week, but you can also see which invoices are overdue for payment/who to chase up. Send an invoice from your mobile on the job too, you could charge them for it but it will only take a minute or two.

Now, on top of all of this you need to figure out how much of that money is yours to keep, and how much you need to keep your business growing smoothly and your suppliers paid. Trade businesses have fluctuating income so prepare yourself and make your profits where you can, which leads me to issue two and three.

2.Time and cost management for multiple sites, long hours.

So no brainer, you were busy working on the job, and what time did you finish that job last Tuesday again? It can feel like a chore doing your paperwork which might make you put it off, throw it in the direction of your wife, or get sick of it real quick.

This is especially for trades that have multiple small jobs to do like maintenance or plumbing. How are your job quoting systems? Are your staff measuring their time well?

Training your staff and subbies alongside a good system means accurate and quick quoting for your staff, and faster payments. You are also teaching your staff good management, which could benefit them in their trade future. You can learn it together.

GeoOp– It’s quite good if you have an admin lady that answers calls and delegates jobs. She can type the job out as she receives them, and drag and drop them (on the computer) to the staff, who get text alerted with all the details. For the lucky tradie that’s nearest or almost finished, a mobile GPS will lead them to their next job.

With GeoOp, you can utilise your staff’s time and increase your turnover, which means you or your admin can think about marketing, fliers, and getting the guys to drop them in a few nearby mailboxes. Ah, carrying on, but last thing-its integration with Xero pushes invoices, bills and receipts through to the front desk so there’s no double entry. There’s so much to cover, so you may as well utilise a free half hour demo- Vanessa on 021 278 1798 can get you one.

3. Back costing and budget blow outs

Back costing helps you estimate your profit properly. You deserve to make a profit for the work that you do, so charge out accordingly. Once you get in to the habit of back costing you can see how far off you are from your job estimates, and your quotes will adjust to your expectations. At the PUB, about 1/3 of tradies back-costed, so there’s lots of room for improvement.

Do you know how to set your budgets? Shaun our CA is passionate about budgeting for success, and will give you a free consultation to talk about how you are setting yours. Call him on 021 644 547. Andy Burrows trades coach blog if you want to check it out.

Thanks for meeting us at the PUB!