So, what is CleverTools exactly? It is an online suite of business web tools aimed at small business, especially the web design/web development/artistic communities. There are currently 6 tools in development: Project Management, Invoicing/Estimates, Bug Tracking, Timesheets/Time Clock, Leads Management, and a collaborative Whiteboard. One of the innovative and truly beautiful things about the system, is the fact that you don’t have to use every single tool. You only pick and chose what tools you need and they then work together. For example, from within the timesheets tool, if you have the invoice tool enabled as well, you can create an invoice with the click on a link and all the necessary data is automatically filled in.
So, why are we building CleverTools? We are ultimately building it for ourselves. As a virtual team with members in California, Iowa, and South Dakota, we depend on web tools to successfully run our consulting business. There were 6 different, core, web apps we used to manage our business. Some are things we built specifically for us and some are commercial products. We just got sick of having 6 different sites, 6 different logins, 6 different GUIs and learning curves, 6 different bills (or theoretically), and 6 different companies to get support from. Not to mention, transferring data between the services became a pain and our customers were getting frustrated with the having to go to xyz to pay a bill, abc to post bugs, ect.
We believe centralizing the cores tools into one place and having them interact together will be a huge help to us and also you! This will save time, frustration, and in the end, money. We believe organization and communication are keys to success and having one centralized place will help foster those needs. Plenty of companies do one tool here and there, but this fragmentation, while it does help to improve organization and communication, fails to fully utilize your ability to improve your business.
We look forward to meeting you guys and hearing your thoughts! We will be using this blog to communicate to you, to offer your glimpses, and hopefully to get you excited!
Are there any plans to integrate expense reporting as well? I manage teams of developers that occasionally have to travel and would love one integrated toolset with customizable access control lists. Looking forward to the launch.
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