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Knowledge
by Elizabeth Gonzalez | Updated Aug. 5, 2022 – First published on May 18, 2022
Image source: Getty Images
I once worked for someone who claimed he could tell everything about you by the trunk of your car. His trunk was the automotive equivalent of a zen garden: seemingly empty, yet stocked with everything from a mylar thermal blanket to a light-up sign you could place in the road in case of an accident.
I made a mental note never to open my trunk in front of him.
When it comes to your business records, you want to be that guy. Proper small business record keeping is much more than a legal requirement. It protects your legal rights, informs planning, and promotes operational efficiency.
To get there, you need to create a document management system detailing what documents to keep, how long to keep them, and how to dispose of them when the time comes.
If you’re operating a sole proprietorship, your founding documentation might be little more than an application for a federal Employer Identification Number (EIN). Once you form a business entity such as a partnership, corporation, or LLC, however, you will have corporate documents such as:
Founding documents are permanent company records that you should store for the life of your business.

This online guide from the U.S. Small Business Administration is a great starting point for developing a document management system for your small business. Image source: Author
Federal laws require businesses to keep employee documents for varying minimum time periods. If a complaint is filed against your business, the record keeping requirements extend until the claim is resolved.
Minimum time periods for employee documents are as follows:

This guide from the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants provides detailed information on benefit plan document requirements. Image source: Author
These are just the minimum requirements for business paperwork enforced by federal authorities. Many legal and financial advisors recommend retaining documents for far longer periods.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) requires businesses to keep the following tax records:
Since the IRS can investigate as far back as six years if it suspects a major tax violation, you may want to play it safe and hold onto all tax records for at least six years.

The National Federation of Independent Business publishes a helpful guide to document retention. Image source: Author
Even small businesses generate a fair amount of legal and administrative paperwork.
Examples of legal documents you need to store include the following:
Your business should retain all licenses, contract agreements, and other legal documentation as long as they remain in force and for a reasonable period thereafter.
The Uniform Preservation of Private Business Records Act (UPPBRA), enacted by many states, provides a baseline of three years unless a more specific retention period is specified.
To protect your business, you need to keep legal documents for at least as long as the statute of limitations lasts for potential disputes and legal challenges. Statutes of limitations are legal deadlines for filing specific types of legal claims, and they vary by state.
For example, statutes of limitations for breach of contract claims range from three to 15 years in different states.
All of these regulatory requirements may seem overwhelming, but the document retention bottom line is simple: You can never be too organized, and you can never archive a record for too long.
In the digital age, it’s easier than ever to organize, retain, and secure documents. With an orderly document management plan, you, too, can motor on knowing you have a tool on board for every contingency and a way to find it when you hit an unexpected bump in the road.
Elizabeth Gonzalez is a legal and regulatory expert writing for The Ascent and The Motley Fool.
We’re firm believers in the Golden Rule, which is why editorial opinions are ours alone and have not been previously reviewed, approved, or endorsed by included advertisers. The Ascent does not cover all offers on the market. Editorial content from The Ascent is separate from The Motley Fool editorial content and is created by a different analyst team.
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There are a lot of great SaaS tools out there for remote workers, but here are some of the best ones for productivity and effectiveness.
It's easy to get overwhelmed with work as a remote worker, especially when you don't employ optimized SaaS tools to manage your workload. These tools increase your efficiency and can alleviate pressure from work.
The good news is that many of these SaaS tools are free to use, and while there are paid versions for some, they're relatively affordable. With these tools, you become more flexible with work, spend less, and optimize your data's security. Let's get into it.
Software as a Service, often called SaaS, is a cloud-based software delivery model whereby cloud providers host applications provided to users over the internet on a pay-as-you-go basis. SaaS is one of the three main categories of cloud computing. Unlike Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS), the other two categories, SaaS is often employed by IT users, business owners, and personal users.
This article will guide you through ten of the best SaaS tools you will find useful as a remote worker. Utilizing them will lead to efficiency, productivity, and effectiveness.
Google Meet is a fantastic tool connecting you with your colleagues working from different locations and time zones. As a video conferencing tool, it's a great way to collaborate and maintain in-person relationships. Using Google Meet is easy; the user interface is straightforward. You can share your screen with other participants in a meeting, allowing everyone to receive first-hand reports from employees or colleagues.
Hosting your meetings on Google Meet makes it more qualitative. Furthermore, its optimized work environment makes it easy to find solutions to potential bottlenecks and problems that threaten your work's progress and that of your employers.
As a remote worker, communication is important. While you may already know a few tips on managing remote teams, communicating changes, problems, and progress is essential to the team's success.
Asana eradicates any guesswork as it actively encourages team communication and collaboration. If you want to stay up to date on contributions, get necessary stakeholder approvals, be accountable and efficient in hitting deadlines, and manage your teamwork and progress, then you should explore Asana.
Bit.ai is a document collaboration platform for team members, irrespective of where they do. It's integrative, collaborative, and effective in internal and external communications. You can create documents containing text, images, videos, cloud files, and music files embedded in them using this tool.
Additionally, Bit.ai can be integrated with other apps such as Google Drive and Spotify, giving you various opportunities to live chat, collaborate, and discuss projects. These features are invaluable to remote workers, and you should probably add this tool to your work arsenal ASAP.
Proofhub is project management software that enables you to access the tools your team needs easily. If you are a remote worker who works in teams more often than not, then Proofhub is one of the perfect SaaS tools for your workflow.
You can use this software application to work collectively on projects, deliver project results on time, and ensure team accountability. You can explore Proofhub in a way that allows you to work on projects collectively, thereby gaining from the expertise of your colleagues.
Trello's boards, lists, and cards help professionals transform creative ideas into concrete actions. Similar to Proofhub, Trello brings projects to life and keeps them going.
It's a software application that improves team bonding by encouraging team members to brainstorm on project planning collectively. If you work remotely but enjoy the feel of an in-person office environment/workspace, you should try out Trello.
Slack is a tool built to manage remote workers' pressure since the sudden shift to remote work for many organizations. It's a channel-based messaging platform that organizes your work in specific, custom-built patterns, improving remote work efficiency.
You can use Slack to create specific channels for various topics, and these channels can have a consistent naming convention, which makes them easy to find and utilize. For instance, you can create a "Help" channel, a "Team" channel, a "Project" channel, and others, depending on your virtual workspace needs. You can also integrate Slack with Gmail and Google Drive, further optimizing your workflow process.
Microsoft Teams enables remote workers to actively work with other team members, stakeholders, and clients. This tool is a fantastic blend of features that allows you to use chat rooms, videos, and audio for efficient communication and collaboration.
This tool enables you to speed up your assessment through its project collaboration features. Additionally, you can create and share reports seamlessly through the Microsoft report template, schedule meetings in Microsoft Teams, and add personal notes on the app.
Mockplus is a design tool that enables designers to meet and graphically convey their ideas to one another. If you're a designer who works remotely and frequently collaborates with other designers and team members, you probably should be using Mockplus already.
It's not enough to speak about your design; you must display them. So, with Mockplus, you can discuss ideas with your team members and visualize them. This way, you can make necessary adjustments promptly and work efficiently.
Zoom is the biggest video-conferencing tool most organizations and businesses use today, as it's an excellent hosting platform for small and large meetings. Optimizing your workday with a few meetings, chats with colleagues, and training can be productive as a remote worker.
On Zoom, you can easily share your screen during meetings, break into smaller rooms and accommodate as many team members as possible. Even though it has so many useful features, it's also free and can accommodate most of your needs.
Loom is a great remote working app that brings the digital workspace to life. With it, you can see and hear team members giving presentations.
Conversely, you can use Loom to give or get optimized feedback. The software application can capture an individual's mood, facial expression, and body language, useful tips that can help you improve your verbal communication skills.
You must be familiar with tools to ease your work processes as a remote worker. The tools discussed above will help you stay organized, hit targets, and stay on track to meet work deadlines.
As such, your productivity and work-life balance will improve. All you have to do is perfect your way around these SaaS tools and watch how much progress you will make within a short time.
Raji Oluwaniyi is a multifaceted content writer with a penchant for research, writing, and editing a wide range of content with minimal oversight. As a Top Rated Freelancer, he has three years of experience writing tech-related and career-focused content for companies like Career Karma and Test Gorilla. Currently, he is a Work and Career section writer at MakeUseOf. As such, he looks forward to impacting a wide audience through his value-oriented and engaging approach to content writing.
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Updated: Aug 29, 2022, 7:31pm
Kashoo is a cloud-based accounting system for small businesses that want to manage their accounts on their own. You can thus, create professional invoices, manage expenses, track transactions, process payroll, generate reports and perform other accounting tasks on any device. Kashoo has different plans that can grow with your business.
Read our Kashoo Review to find out if it’s the best accounting software for your business.
For more than 10 years, Kashoo has helped small businesses manage their accounts. The software is easy to use as it focuses on simplifying accounting for small business owners so they won’t require professional assistance.
Kashoo offers three plans:
Trulysmall.invoices is an invoicing tool for small businesses that want to send invoices and track and receive payments. At zero cost, you can request payments and see who hasn’t paid.
Next up is Kashoo’s Trulysmall.accounting for automated income and expenses tracking. When you pay the required $20 per month, you’ll get a double-entry accounting solution for downloading bank transactions, tracking income and expenses, sending invoices, accepting payments and running essential accounting reports.
For advanced accounting, which includes detailed reporting, project cost tracking, customization options and the opportunity to collaborate with an accountant or bookkeeper, you’ll need Kashoo, which costs $30 per month. Connecting Kashoo to your accounts means you’ll access all benefits of Trulysmall.invoices and Trulysmall.accounting and additional features, such as payroll processing, bank reconciliation, advance reporting and connection with multiple accounts and feeds.
Kashoo is fully encrypted and thus, protects you from financial fraud. It allows unlimited users without extra costs, and you can connect with more than 5,000 banks and credit unions to make several transactions using multiple currencies. You can send payment links with invoices, automate bank transactions and access up to 90 days’ worth of data on the automatic bank feed tool.
Below are a few perks of choosing Kashoo accounting software:
Kashoo is quite limited in its functionality There are no advanced features, such as time tracking, workflow management, document management and inventory tools, that its competitors offer. Plus, it only integrates with a handful of third-party apps. Also, Kashoo boasts accommodating multiple currencies, but the functionality isn’t compatible with its mobile accounting app.




Regarding pricing, Kashoo and Wave are your go-to options, with Kashoo offering a free invoicing plan and Wave being entirely free. However, their features are limited. For example, QuickBooks Online offers features, such as time-tracking and document management, and opens up a customer portal, but Kashoo and Wave offer none of those to their users.
However, if you’re still in doubt about which of these three providers is right for your business, Kashoo and QuickBooks Online offer trial periods, and Wave comes free of charge, so you can check them out for yourself.
Kashoo was designed for startups and freelancers who want simple accounting software. While Kashoo has tiers that consider your business growth, its features remain limited, and it integrates with only a handful of third-party tools. So, if you’re looking for a more detailed accounting solution, you should explore other options.
The best accounting software programs all provide similar features, so when considering which one is best for your business, you need to consider which features are the most important to your situation. This will help you decide which accounting software meets your needs best. Certain software is best for actions like accounts payable (A/P) and banking and cash management while others are geared more for retail companies, offering cost tracking, inventory management and collecting and submitting sales tax. Other features you may want to consider include whether the software has a mobile app, how good its customer service is and how well it does with accounts receivable (A/R) and financial reporting.
Kashoo has a free invoicing plan. However, you’ll need to subscribe to any of its two paid plans to enjoy other accounting features.
Yes, you can have as many users as you want, without extra charge. For additional businesses, you’ll need to add to your subscription. Kashoo requests that you reach out to its service agents if you want to add more than five businesses.
Kashoo is pretty secure, so there’s no need to worry about losing or exposing your financial information. Kashoo uses 256-bit secure sockets layer (SSL) encryption to back up your data and protect against unauthorized user access.

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If you want to save cash, but need a reliable space to store and manage documents, join us as we share some of the best free options available in the world of document management systems.
If you need a digital home for all your documents but don’t want to splash the cash, we’re going to share with you the best free document management software around. Just because they’re free doesn’t mean they’re not up to par. We would happily use all the services we recommend ourselves.
Of course, any service that’s free comes with limitations. If you’re a medium-to-large-sized business looking for an all-singing, all-dancing document management software, the options below may not be enough.
However, if you’re a personal user or a small company looking to effectively manage your digital “paperwork,” the selection below will help you keep your documents in order. 
For ease of use, features and versatility, OpenDocMan is the best free DMS.
Yes. OpenDocMan offers a free version. However, paid plans are also available.
We believe Egnyte is the best overall document control software. Read our full Egnyte review.
Open source software is free-to-use source code that gives users the ability to modify and redistribute the code, often to improve the software.
The best free document management software offers as many quality features as possible, without asking for your money. Despite being free, we still expect to see an industry standard level of security, a well-designed platform and basic document management features like search and organization functionality. 
These products offer many key features one would want to manage documents. The open source options outdo private companies offering free plans, but even they have features that are ideal for certain users. Read our document management best practices to learn how to make the most of each feature.
All the options below offer a full, long-lasting free plan. While many services offer free trials, they typically only last up to one month. With the selections below, you can trust you’ll have a free account for as long as the service is active.
More details about OpenDocMan:
Pros:
Cons:
OpenDocMan is one of the few open-source document management solutions available, and is a popular choice within the open-source community.
You can add custom metadata-like tags to categorize documents, making it easier to search for a particular document. It’s also possible to create temporary documents that will be deleted on the expiration date of your choice.
The user interface looks better placed on Web 1.0 due to its outdated design. However, if you prioritize functionality over form, you won’t be too concerned with how the platform looks as it works well.
File versioning is available, and users can access any and all revisions made on a specific document. You can also add decision makers who are authorized to review and accept new or edited documents.
Users can set up automated emails each time a document is created, viewed or edited. Moreover, users can set automatic file expirations. Such automations put OpenDocMan on par with paid services.
In the free market space, OpenDocMan is certainly the leading option for those working with digital documents. It comes with many of the key features we look for in a leading DMS, and despite the dated design, it functions extremely well and will give you most of what you need.
More details about OpenKM:
Pros:
Cons:
The OpenKM document management software is fantastic for managing documents. It comes with automations that make life easier. Automations include but aren’t limited to automated file transformations (to change Word documents to PDFs), automatic file security and automated file movement based on the file description and metadata.
Other features include digital signatures, file versioning, reporting and a built-in task manager. These features make OpenKM more of a workstation with a DMS built into it, something that helps users manage all areas of their business.
Optical character recognition (OCR) allows you to edit and search data from paper documents, PDF documents and images. Users need to take a photo of the document and upload it to OpenKM. OCR technology scans the document and makes it possible to edit and search for it inside the DMS.
OpenKM is one of the best free document management systems available. It may take a little time to grasp, and the training tools could be better, but once you get used to it, it will function as a highly reliable document management system.
More details about OnlyOffice:
Pros:
Cons:
Developed by Ascensio System SIA, OnlyOffice is a free-to-use service that can serve as a DMS and workstation. The platform is an open solution, which often leads to a better product, more flexibility and improved security. You also don’t have to worry about a private company having the ability to snoop around your documents (we see you, OneDrive and Google.)
In terms of functionality, OnlyOffice has a built-in document creator that lets you create Word documents, forms and spreadsheets, as well as audio and video files. It’s extremely basic, and personal users on the free plan don’t have access to document templates like those on a paid subscription.
OnlyOffice is only free for personal use. If you work in a team, you’ll need to look elsewhere or try one of the paid plans. The free version is a bare-bones document management system, so it may not be enough for users with a specific set of needs.
OnlyOffice lets you integrate an external cloud storage solution like Dropbox (read our full Dropbox review) with the platform, letting you access documents and other file types without taking up any of your free 2GB storage space.
We feel OnlyOffice could offer a little more than the bare bones of a space to store and create documents. It’s a good option for anyone who doesn’t want to use mainstream services; however, with only 2GB of space, you may need to use them anyway.
More details about Hightail:
Pros:
Cons:
Like OnlyOffice, Hightail is limited as to what it can do when compared to a paid service. The free Lite plan offers only 2GB of storage and 100MB file-upload sizes. However, we like its usability and some of its unique features.
With regard to DMS features, Hightail enables you to create documents, file them in unique projects and share files with others. While the platform does have more intelligent features to organize documents, most of them are only available on the paid plans, which lets the free service down.
Although this article is predominantly targeting users looking for a space for documents, we would be remiss not to mention some of Hightail’s better features that pertain to video and images. 
In addition to documents, you can upload videos and photos to your space, and the impressive part is that you can highlight specific sections of a video or image and leave real-time comments for another team member.
Those looking for a standard document management system that offers templates galore and helps you track your critical business documents should go with a different option. However, for those who want a little bit of everything, Hightail is worth your consideration.
More details about Confluence:
Pros:
Cons:
Confluence is a document management software that provides a space for small teams to create and store documents that pertain to specific projects. 
There’s a basic word processor where you can create original documents, or if you’re looking for something specific — like a performance chart — you can select from the many templates available inside the platform. There’s also a search bar that allows you to easily locate specific documents. 
The free Confluence plan allows for up to 10 members, all of whom can contribute documents to the space you create. As a group you share the 2GB of cloud storage, so this service is only suitable for light use.
Confluence has made it possible to integrate third-party apps into the service. Users can integrate Google Drive (read our full Google Drive review). This allows users to embed Google Docs and Drive files directly into content created within Confluence.
Confluence lacks many of the smart and organizational features you’d get with a premium document management system, but remember, it’s free. 
With that in mind, we believe the platform has created something that has enough character to entice those on a low (or no) existing budget. With the addition of the app integrations, what we have is a more than capable document management system.
Finding the best free electronic document management system isn’t easy, but it’s not impossible. Just because you’re not handing over your cash doesn’t mean you have to settle for less in terms of the features available — and we believe the selection above proves that.
For us, OpenDocMan and OpenKM are the perfect free options. They both offer intelligent automations, and they have fantastic search and categorization functionality. If they were to update their UI designs, they’d be close to offering the perfect DMS.
The other options, although a little thin on features, will also help you keep your documents in order, while offering some cool features to give you a better user experience. Either way, whichever service you choose, we’re confident none of them will let you down. 
While still at it, read our document management vs content management guide to learn how they differ.
Which free DMS do you use? What do you think is the best option out of the selection above? Is there a DMS you would like us to review? Let us know in the comments. Thanks for reading.

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