Small businesses do more with less. Resource constraints, such as tight budgets and lean teams, keep the stakes high for growing brands. Hence, every dollar must be accounted for and every decision must be backed by data.
It’s critical for such organizations to monitor their finances and goals. The continuous oversight ensures they don’t overspend or put in efforts that are disconnected from their business objectives.
Fortunately, there are easy-to-use and cost-effective platforms that can help with granular goal tracking and comprehensive financial planning.
Teams in budding companies can instantly adopt them into their workflows and streamline their operations and account management.
In this article, let’s look at five essential tools that help small businesses stay focused on their goals and remain financially sound in 2025.
1. OKRs Tool: Best for Startups Looking to Align Goals
The OKRs Tool, as the name suggests, is designed to help teams define, align, and track Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) effectively. The minimalistic solution can help professionals hit the ground running within minutes without needing any assistance from consultants.
- AI-generated OKRs and initiatives: Leverages conversational LLMs to draft goal statements and related action items using templates.
- Company-wide alignment: Set objectives for the organization, teams, and individuals, which are interconnected for transparency and accountability across all levels.
- Notifications and alerts: Professionals in growing brands can get weekly check-ins and reminders to ensure no deadline gets missed.
- Real-time dashboards: Managers can track the status of tasks and monitor the progress of projects by themselves, minimizing operational disruptions.
Small businesses can achieve clarity when objectives, key results, and initiatives are connected. This enhances operations as every team member will know what’s expected of them, preventing duplication of effort and improving focus.
Additionally, professionals can remain accountable to one another across the organization, which is pivotal for fostering a strong culture at the workplace.
Finally, with real-time visibility over action items, teams can proactively avoid roadblocks, solve problems quickly, and make decisions backed by data.
One of the biggest advantages of the OKRs Tool is its affordability. Startups with fewer than ten employees can use this platform for free with limited features.
As their needs grow, they can upgrade to the paid plan, which costs $30/month for unlimited users. Here, brands can access all the functionalities, including AI insights and integrations.
2. FreshBooks: Best for Managing Invoices and Accounts
FreshBooks is a cloud-based accounting platform designed for small businesses and individual accountants. Teams can create professional and branded invoices in seconds with templates, accelerating their financial operations.
Some key capabilities of this platform include:
- Payment automation: Growing businesses can accept recurring payments, send reminders, and add late fees automatically.
- Granular expense tracking: Monitor and log billable hours spent with clients and on projects through built-in timers and manual entry.
- Speed up financial reporting: Leverage professionally curated profit and loss statement templates that enable double-entry accounting for accurate bookkeeping.
- Collaborate with stakeholders: Communicate with clients, team members, and vendors on proposals, estimates, and invoices seamlessly.
Fast-moving budding companies can immediately make FreshBooks a part of their process by integrating it with over 100 commonly used solutions, such as PayPal, Gusto, and Mailchimp.
Professionals can also stay updated on the go with full-featured iOS and Android applications and complete accounting tasks anytime, anywhere. This is particularly beneficial for senior executives in small businesses who are responsible for approving invoices and proposals.
FreshBooks is easy to adopt, even by non-technical finance team members. The platform offers a 30-day money-back guarantee to give users peace of mind as they explore the solution for managing their organization’s finances.
Small businesses can choose from various plans to suit their needs. Startups with limited invoicing and accounting needs can choose their most affordable plan, charged at $8.40/month, allowing teams to send invoices to five clients.
Companies working with multiple clients can consider the Premium tier, which costs $26/month, allowing professionals to send invoices to unlimited clients.
3. Asana: Best for Small Teams Looking to Manage Tasks
Asana is a popular project and task management platform that can help small businesses organize initiatives and align them with company goals. The platform’s intuitive interface makes adoption easy, and it can seamlessly accommodate a brand’s growing needs.
The salient features of Asana are:
- Granular task management: Teams can break broader objectives into action items and assign them to specific professionals to elevate clarity and accountability.
- Real-time goal tracking: Create custom dashboards with visualizations that allow decision-makers to get an overview of the projects at a glance.
- AI-powered assistant: Asana incorporates fine-tuned LLMs that can recommend workflows, share task updates, and help standardize operations.
- Smart resource planning: Small businesses can monitor team capacity to rebalance workloads as needed, optimizing resources in the short and long term.
Additionally, the software’s interface can be customized as needed. Professionals in growing brands can view projects as lists, Kanban boards, calendars, timelines, and Gantt charts to suit their work styles and preferences.
The mobile applications and robust integrations ensure team members stay on top of their goals and objectives on the go, even without opening Asana. The scalability of the platform provides peace of mind as teams won’t have to switch to a different tool.
Finally, one of the biggest advantages of Asana is its pricing. It offers a powerful free plan for individual users and small teams. Companies with more extensive needs can choose their Starter plan, priced at $13.49/user per month, when billed monthly.
4. Wave: Ideal for Business Owners Who Do it All
Wave is a money management solution catered toward small business owners who handle the finances singlehandedly. It consolidates many powerful capabilities, such as invoicing, payment handling, and accounting in one place.
The key functionalities of this platform include:
- Unlimited estimates, invoices, bills, and bookkeeping records: Even on the free plan, small businesses can do much of their financial activities, leading to cost savings.
- Seamless payment tracking: Pro users cross-check receipts with bank and card accounts for instant verification of credit, securing cash flow.
- Accept payments in multiple methods: Credit cards, Automated Clearing House (ACH) payments, Apple Pay, etc., and stay updated in real time with instant notifications.
- Streamline taxation process: Double-entry accounting, auto-import of records, transaction categorization, reconciliation, etc., help with audits and tax filing.
Moreover, startups and new businesses can receive direct support and guidance from Wave’s certified advisors. Their in-house professional bookkeepers and coaches can provide assistance or coaching to help founders manage their business’ finances easily.
Furthermore, the solution is designed for business owners, not accountants, accelerating adoption for non-technical executives. The guided onboarding tour can help in getting the hang of core functionalities of the platform quickly.
The biggest advantage of choosing Wave is its pricing. It already offers a robust set of features in the free plan.
As organizations grow, they can upgrade to the Pro plan, priced at $16/month, when billed monthly, for advanced capabilities, such as bank sync, receipt scanning, and reduced payment rates.
5. Weekdone: Great for Elevating Task-Level Collaboration
Weekdone is a comprehensive OKR solution that helps small businesses track what needs to be done on different time scales, such as weeks and quarters. It also elevates collaboration by allowing professionals to give praise and share feedback on action plans and progress.
It offers the following goal tracking features:
- Track quarterly OKRs and stay focused with weekly check-ins: Convert business goals into quarterly objectives and approach them methodically through weekly updates.
- Receive project updates in email: Busy professionals can get comprehensive operations reports in their inboxes without opening Weekdone, streamlining workflows.
- Curated templates and expert coaching: Leverage OKR tracking frameworks to hit the ground running and elevate your processes through guidance from professionals.
- Team surveys and analytics: Provide your team members with feedback and gauge their morale through pulse surveys and sentiment analysis.
Growing brands can use this tool to achieve their organizational goals and elevate the team’s morale effectively. Each member will be aware of their responsibilities and can communicate with others freely about their challenges, if any.
On top of that, Weekdone’s automated reporting capabilities decrease administrative workload, especially for professionals who wear multiple hats.
The solution is freely available for three users. Pricing after that depends on the number of team members in the business. For instance, an organization with 4-10 members will be charged $10.80 per user/month, billed monthly.
Wrapping Up
Small businesses need to stay on top of their finances and company goals because they operate with limited resources, keeping the stakes higher. Any oversight or mistake can massively impede the progress of the team.
Hence, it’s pivotal to use lightweight, intuitive, and cost-effective tools that elevate goal tracking and financial management. Additionally, these solutions should be easily scalable to ensure the teams won’t have to switch to another platform as their needs grow, resulting in operational stability.
OKRs Tool, Asana, and Weekdone are popular options that can help small businesses, such as startups, to set goals for their organizations and track them on the task level. These tools are pivotal for ensuring transparency across the organization.
For effective financial management, FreshBooks and Wave are two reliable options. These solutions are designed for growing brands and offer many robust features, such as accounting and invoicing, in their free plans.
Author bio:
Lucy Manole is a creative content writer and strategist at Marketing Digest. She specializes in writing about digital marketing, technology, entrepreneurship, and SaaS. When she is not writing or editing, she enjoys reading books, cooking, and traveling.