Business Management Software

July 10th, 2010 | Posted in Business, General | By Liza | 0 Comments

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I’ve been looking for various management software and cloud solutions for things like project management and other management solutions I’ll need for my business.

My outlook on cloud computing changed recently. I didn’t really trust keeping everything on the web – what if something goes wrong? What if all of my data gets lost on some remote server overseas? How safe is it really? But the more I had to think about what methods I’ll be using to keep track of time, tasks, emails, invoices, etc., the more convenient and natural it seemed to put everything on the web so that I can access my data from anywhere at any time.

Project Management – Toodledo

The main thing I wanted to find was a good free or inexpensive project management and time tracking solutions. I’ve tried things like RememberTheMilk, but it just seems too limited in what I need and is really just a to do list. So I decided to try Toodledo, a…well…another to do list…but a much more robust, feature-rich, and flexible to do list. I have to say, Toodledo looks ugly when you first log in. There are apparently ways to install new themes, but I haven’t gotten there yet. What Toodledo lacks in looks it certainly makes up for in features. It tracks time spent, has sub-tasks, allows you to attach files to tasks, allows for multiple folders (aka projects), and so much more. There are two features that really stand out to me.

The first is the Scheduler feature. You can input how much time you have to work (like 1 hour, 15 minutes, whatever’s available), and it tells you exactly what you should be working on for that time. You can even estimate how long something might take when you create a task and Toodledo uses this data for the Scheduler feature.

The other feature is goal chains. You can set long term goals for yourself, something that might not be concrete – like an ambition of some sort. Then you can link tasks that contribute to this long term goal and as you complete them, a visual chain is created. It seems like it would really motivate me to work toward my long term goals and build my chain.

Toodledo has a free version and two pro versions. The most expensive Pro version is $20-something per year, so well worth it for the features I would be getting. I’m currently on my free trial.

FTP – FileZilla

I chose FileZilla (free) for my FTP client. Nothing much to say here – nice and simple to use.

Code Editor – TextWrangler

Also pretty simple – a nice code editor. I like the simple interface. On the left hand side there’s the code, on the right hand side a nice simple frame with all of the files TextWrangler has open.