The 10 best small business software for 2024

Looking for the best small business software?

Business software has become very versatile in this day and age.

You name the problem, and there’s a software or application to solve it.

However, with vendors offering a multitude of software options for small businesses, which software should you go for?

Don’t worry! This article highlights the best small business software that you can use to take your business to the next level.

This article covers:

Common types of small business software
Top 10 small business software
What are the benefits of using small business software?

Let’s get started.

Common types of small business software

From HR to communication and productivity management, there’s a wide variety of tools and applications available in the market today — tailored to suit the requirements of small businesses.

Let’s take a quick look at them:

Productivity management software: generates productivity reports and tracks time to help improve employee performance.
Project management software: helps manage tasks and projects effectively.
Accounting software: helps you with accounting tasks such as invoicing, payroll management, bookkeeping, projecting cash flow, etc.
Communication software: gives your team a platform to exchange files and messages in the form of text, audio, or video.
Email marketing software: allows you to send marketing emails to your clients and prospects quickly.
Human Resource software: optimizes your daily HR tasks, onboarding workflows, employee database management, etc.
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software: manages the interaction of your company with your clients or customers effectively.
Online payment software: helps you accept and process payments from your customers.

Top 10 small business software

Here is the best small business software in each category we discussed above ( An in-depth analysis covering features and customer ratings):

1. Time Doctor for productivity management

Time Doctor is the ultimate software solution for productivity management.

Used by small and medium businesses like Thrive Market and FirehouseSubs, Time Doctor is a powerful tool to help teams track, analyze, and improve their performance.

With dozens of features like productivity rating, time tracking, and payroll management, it reduces the need for any third party app to manage your team’s productivity.

Key features

Here’s a quick look into some of Time Doctor’s powerful features:

A. Time tracking

Time Doctor’s easy-to-use interface allows employees to track the time they spend on tasks and projects with ease.

To start tracking time in the manual mode, you just have to open Time Doctor, enter the name of your task, and hit the ‘Start’ button. You can use the ‘Stop’ button to pause the timer for a break or stop tracking time when you have completed a task.

Time Doctor also has a feature that automates time tracking for better flexibility.
This way, you don’t have to worry about forgetting to turn on the timer!

B. Productivity ratings

Most small business time tracking tools classify social media sites, like Facebook, or email applications, like Gmail, as unproductive apps.

However, some team members may be assigned to manage these ‘unproductive sites,’ for example, your company’s Facebook page. The productivity app would likely classify the time employees spend doing this as unproductive — which is incorrect.

Here’s where Time Doctor is different (and better).

Time Doctor allows you to customize which application you consider as productive and which ones otherwise.

Your productivity reports are generated based on whether you classify that application as:

Productive
Unproductive
Neutral
Unrated

Time Doctor doesn’t automatically classify some sites as productive and others as not — it’s totally up to you!

C. Detailed reports

Time Doctor not only allows you to track time, but it also auto-generates detailed productivity reports, which include:

Timeline report: Get insights on how much time you spend on tasks and breaks.
Project and tasks report: Determine how much time you spend on a particular task, project, or client.
Web and app report: Know how much time you spend on different websites and applications while working.
Hours tracked: Determine how many hours you have tracked per day, week, month, etc.
Activity summary report: Get a real-time summary of your active minutes, productive and unproductive time over any chosen period of time.

D. Powerful integrations

Time Doctor’s powerful Chrome extension lets you track time directly from other workplace software like:

E. Payroll management

Time Doctor allows you to generate payroll at any time and export in a CSV format to pay your team. You can also enable multiple payment methods and export your payroll as a ZIP file containing each CSV file for different payment methods.

The payroll feature allows you to:

Select the users you want to include in the payroll and the date range for it.
Customize payroll for payment currencies and add payment rates.
Enter your pay rate and select the payment method.
Integrate Time Doctor with payment tools like Paypal and Payoneer.
Remember your currencies, pay rates, and payment methods for the next payroll.

Note: The payroll services can only be used by business owners.

Pros

Tracks employees’ idle time percentage.
Uses both manual and automatic time tracking modes to track time.
Tracks time without an internet connection.
Offers a mobile app that can be downloaded on Android devices.
Integrates with several tools and software like ClickUp, Asana, and Wrike.
Track all the website pages an employee visits during work hours.
See screenshots of your employee’s screen (only applicable to those who have enabled the screencasts feature.)
Strict privacy and data security policies.
Responsive customer support team.
User-friendly interface for easy productivity tracking.

Pricing

Time Doctor offers a 14-day free trial that doesn’t require credit card details. Paid plans start as low as $7/user per month.

Customer ratings

G2: 4.4/5 (150+ reviews)
Capterra: 4.5/5 (300+ reviews)

2. Remote.com: To manage international teams remotely

As the name suggests, Remote is an all-in-one remote management tool for international payroll, HR, management, benefits, taxes as well as compliances. With the modern-day features, the Remote platform allows you to hire employees and pay them compliantly from more than 60+ countries over the globe.

The remote SaaS platform helps you in recruiting, creating quick and reliable contacts, and onboarding them with fluency. Not only this, but it helps in minimizing the TAT (Turn Around Time), operational costs, and risks.

When you choose Remote as your payroll application, you can pay your employees on time in their local currency. It helps you keep your employees compliant with changing taxes and regulations in their respective countries. It also helps you and your employee manage all the work with its user-friendly dashboard.

With the powerful APIs, Remote lets you create a personalized experience and customize the platform as per your requirements. With the additional IP protection and standardized security, Remote is a completely reliable SaaS platform for managing your HR, compliance, and payroll. It is a good choice for enterprises operating globally and looking forward to working with remote resources.