Welcome to the 21st century, where robots cook our dinners, manage our diaries, and even de-fluff the cat. The age of technology is a gift from the heavens for all of us trying to cram far too much in to our already jam packed schedules, even with all its headaches and fall outs with Mercury in retrograde.
When you find yourself on the sofa at 2am trying to do last quarters VAT returns with your toddlers toy calculator, you know it’s time to find a better way. Hello automation, goodbye chaos.
Having a life which involves 8 hours sleep a night, regular yoga practice, and quality time with family and friends, is not a fantasy you have to dream about. It’s a real tangible possibility which can be achieved with just a few nifty tools. And more to the point, it’s something you deserve!
Enter Zapier. Think of her as the most efficient PA you’ll ever have. With more flow than Vinyasa, this magical machine can synchronise tasks from the mundane to the intricately complex.
Capture new leads from your Facebook ads or website opt-ins, and have Zapier automatically copy the data into the appropriate mailing list to start your automation sequence. Zapier can then track potential clients behaviour through other softwares such as booking softwares (I highly recommend Acuity), payment platforms (Stripe is a personal favourite), and even Google Forms, Twitter, Mail, Asana, CRM’s and more, to completely stream line and automate your sales & follow up process.
What’s more is you can use technology to do all your book work and accounting for you. I don’t think any one of us can honestly say we look forward to doing our accounts. But why do something you don’t enjoy when you don’t have to?!
Stripe is my preferred payment platform, as I mentioned above, but Braintree is another highly recommended one. Both are compatible with a savvy bit of kit called Commerce Sync. CS tracks all of the income through your Stripe dashboard and automatically turns your sales income into invoices, your refunds into credit notes, and your card processing fess into expenses. All of which it then relays to your cloud based accounting software. I use Xero. These three combined cost me less than £30 a month and saves about 40 hours of my time every single month. I log in once a week, to hit reconcile a few times, and my bookwork is done. To give you some perspective, my companies process thousands of transactions every month. The time I dedicate to my bookwork and accounting is less than one hour a week, compared to the ten hours a week it used to demand.
Need to track enquiries and leads from lots of different traffic sources? Ask Zapier.
Need to manage a team and delegate specific tasks? Ask Zapier.
Need to create a spreadsheet of clients and attendees from an event or webinar you hosted? Ask Zapier.
If your VA or PA can do it. Zapier can do it without the need for sleep or coffee.
If you’re a little overwhelmed with which booking softwares to use, or which CRM system to try out, check out the Explore dashboard on Zapier’s website. If your software or system doesn’t have third party API integration capability, or a relationship with Zapier (i.e. not listed on the Explore dashboard), it’s not making your life easier, so don’t bother.
Your software works for you. Zapier works for your software. I work to bring more balance and less stress to your life, so if you’re still struggling, get in touch!
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Originally published at medium.com