Tallyzip – Business Management Goes Social

For freelancers and small business owners who need a better way to manage their enterprises online, Tallyzip is a web-application that doesn’t leave anything out. Rather than just being a CRM tool, an accounting and invoicing application, or a task management and collaboration platform, Tallyzip has decided to become all of the above – and more.

If you’re looking to free yourself from the mundane tasks that take up a good portion of any entrepreneur’s day, then it’s time to start streamlining. Tallyzip can help you organize your office by putting many of the tools you need to run a business in one central place and automating as many frequent activities as possible. Tallyzip has many features and tools, but the web-app itself can be broken down into three main sections: CRM, online accounting, and task & collaboration. You can use the social CRM tool to keep a company-wide database of all your contacts, clients, and customers. Each contact gets his or her own profile page, where you can add personal information, telephone numbers, email addresses, and transactional data. The CRM section is also where you’ll create estimates, communicate with colleagues about client relationships, and track which orders have been placed. You can use the application’s invoicing tools to send bills and view updated financial statements for your company at any time. Finally, the task and collaboration features can be used by teams to communicate about ongoing projects, delegate tasks, and view real-time activity feeds that show what everybody’s up to on a given day.

Not one feature described above is unique to Tallyzip, of course. Competing applications have been offering collaboration tools and invoicing capabilities for years. What makes Tallyzip unique – and what ultimately makes the application so useful to business owners – is the ability to combine these tools and make them all available in one place. Users don’t have to worry about importing files or managing multiple accounts on separate business applications once they start using Tallyzip.

Practical Uses:

• Follow up with potential clients who you haven’t heard from in a while
• View the status of a recent transaction before replying to a customer email
• Send invoices and track which clients have been paying their bills on time
• Review financial statements for your business without having to import any files

Insider Tips:

• Businesses can interact with other Tallyzip users using social CRM
• The global search feature lets people find people, tasks, and records by keyword
• See what your employees are working on by checking out the activity feed
• Tallyzip offers inline commenting to keep employees’ conversations organized

What we liked:

• Business owners only have to pay for one application when they use Tallyzip, as opposed to pay for separate invoicing, CRM, and project management apps
• The keyword search is useful when people are looking for specific transactions or documents
• Tallyzip is designed in an intuitive way that makes it easy to navigate
• Individual client information, including past transactions and outstanding invoices, is accessible from the client’s contact page

What we didn’t like:

• Businesses have to upgrade to the Plus or Premium plan if they want access to priority user support

Alternatives:

• 37signals – http://37signals.com
• Nutshell – http://www.nutshell.com
• Salesforce – http://www.salesforce.com
• Tree.io – http://tree.io

Company Info:

• Launched: October 2011
• Privately Held
• Headquarters: Chandler, Arizona
• Founded by: Nathan Pearson, Juan Trujillo, and Andy Hawkes
• Web site: http://www.tallyzip.com

Costs:

• Free plan
• Starter plan is $19/month
• Plus plan is $49/month
• Premium plan is $149/month