Like most small business owners, I'm always looking at ways to save time and improve efficiency.  These are my current top three:

 1. Netsso - I've been doing some work with the developers of this product,  and it is my top time saver.  Netsso is an Irish product, and it’s preparing to launch its BETA phase so this is a sneak preview really.  When I am in the office, I spend most of my time online using a wide range of web sources and regularly having to log in and out of social media accounts and websites for clients and for ourselves.  A password manager can cut out the login time and favourites will save your regular sites but NETSSO's "single sign on" system does both much better. It stores all my logins and passwords and saves any URL I record onto it (including Dropbox file links), but - best of all - I can lay out all these links into "desktops" for each area of work or client, so all the links are together in the one place when I need them.   For example, I have a clients “desktop” or page, divided into sections with each client’s name at the top and all the relevant links underneath, such as their website and social media – essential for doing blogs, news and daily posts.  I have an internal Inis Communications page of links with our website (including the administrator logged in version), our Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, email, bitly, Hootsuite, Dropbox, Google Docs, phone, mobile, utilities, media sources, financial sites etc on it. My personal one has leisure, kids stuff, school and educational sites, personal mobile and social media links on it. It's my top time saver and I can also use it from any PC or laptop.  Check it out on http://www.netsso.com/

2. Hootsuite - before I had NETSSO, this was what saved me most time because it cut out so much logging in and out of both our own and our clients’ social media accounts and websites, as well as other key sites.  It's my number two now because it allows you to schedule posts in advance to any or all of your social media accounts and to track your past posts together at one glance.  You can also set up Hootsuite accounts for each client or set of social media accounts – essential for us because we offer Website and Social Media packages for clients, which includes regular updating of all their social media.  Even the free level is superb (I briefly upgraded to use the bulk scheduler but found it unwieldy and not really worth the effort in the end). If you have more than one social media account, I would highly recommend it:  http://www.hootsuite.com/

3. My Work Time - another Irish product, by app developers Tús Nua Designs. I have the iPhone app and it basically allows me to track client projects and tasks wherever I am and to record the time spent on each one.   It works by adding clients, projects and tasks and using a start/stop button on each task.  You would be surprised what a difference it makes when you add in every phone call or email….  The app also has a fee calculator and you can export the files weekly or monthly, which really helps speed up your billing process.  These files also give you an overview of the exact proportion of your working hours which is spent on revenue-generating activity – and whether you need to review this!  Check Tús Nua out on http://www.tusnuadesigns.net/ or just get the MyWorkTime app.