Running a business is hard enough. The more you can automate and don't have to remember, the more you can focus on the things that matter most.
There are many areas of your business that you could automate to save time. Record each PayPal payment notification as income for your tax records. Use GPS technology to record business mileage. Or, get reminders to renew your company's web domains that are automatically added to your daily to-do list.
If you're curious about how you can set up any of these things to better automate your business, keep reading.
Most small businesses accept payments from payment processing services that send email notifications. PayPal is an example of this.
Notifications are a great way to trigger other automations.
In this case, you can use the unique subject line that this service always attaches to your emails, to trigger the addition of a new record to your earnings spreadsheet.
First, if you don't already have an account, create an IFTTT account The Ultimate Guide to IFTTT:Use the Web's Most Powerful Tool Like a Pro The Ultimate Guide to IFTTT:Use the Web's Most Powerful Tool Like a Pro If this is the other thing, aka IFTTT is a free web-based service for your apps and devices to work together. Not sure how to build your applet? Follow along with this guide. Read more.
Then click on My applets from the menu, and click the New applet link to the right. Click This .
Search Gmail and click the Gmail link. You can use any other email service you want, as long as it's integrated with IFTTT.
In the next window, select New email in search inbox .
On the next screen, make your search query. Subject:you have money (Use whatever text your payment service uses in the subject line of the notification email.)
“Subject:” tells IFTTT to scan incoming emails for the text specified in the subject field.
Click Create Trigger .
Next, you need to create an Action that loads a new row in your revenue posting spreadsheet.
Before you do this, go to Google Drive and create a new directory called IFTTT , and inside it create another directory called Business .
In the business subfolder, create a spreadsheet called Income and Expenses . Name the first tab in the spreadsheet Income .
Back in IFTTT, click That . Search Sheets and click Google Sheets .
In the next window, click Add row to spreadsheet .
This will trigger a new row in your revenue spreadsheet every time a new email arrives that matches the subject line filter.
Fill in the following form using the data shown below.
The important field here is Formatted row. The text in that field should be “BodyPlain ||| ||| ||| ReceivedAt”
This leaves two fields blank. This will allow you to parse the body of the email into the sender's name and dollar amount (see Google Script below).
Click Create Action to finish this step.
Now it's time to customize your spreadsheet. Open the Google Sheet you just created.
When you receive an email, the new row will look like this.
As you can see, the body of the email is uploaded to A1, two columns are skipped, and the payment date goes to D1.
Clear the sheet by hiding column A. Click the down arrow to the right of column A and select Hide Column .
Next, you need to write a Google Script 4 Google Scripts which makes Google Sheets much more powerful. 4 Google Scripts That Make Google Sheets Much More Powerful. Google Sheets are great, but they can be even more powerful if you use Google Scripts. to improve their abilities. Read More
This script will insert the necessary calculations to populate B2 and C2 with the name and dollar amount from the email body.
Enter the script editor by clicking on Tools in the menu, and click Script editor .
In the script editor, paste the following code below the closing bracket for myFunction().
función FindLastRow () var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet (); var data = sheet.getDataRange (). getValues (); para (var i = data.length-1; i> = 0; i -) if (data [i] [0]! = null && data [i] [0]! = ") return i + 1 ;This code searches the sheet for the last row.
Now, inside myFunction(), paste the following script.
function myFunction () var intLastRow = FindLastRow () SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet (). getRange ('B' + intLastRow) .setValue ('= left (A' + intLastRow + ', find ("$", A' + intLastRow + ') -11) '); SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet (). GetRange ('C' + intLastRow) .setValue ('= mid (A' + intLastRow + ', find ("$", A' + intLastRow + ') - 1, (Find ("D", A '+ intLastRow +') - Buscar ("$", A '+ intLastRow +')) + 2) '); This sounds complicated, but it's not.
The first "adjusted value" command is simply to fill column B with this function:
“=left(A1,find(“PS”,A1)-11)”
This simply grabs all the body text to the left of the dollar sign.
Then fill column C with this function:
“=middle (A1, find(“PS”,A1)-1, (Find(“re”,A1)-Find(“PS”,A1)) + 2)”
This extracts the dollar amount between “PS” and “US Dollar”. The script simply replaces A1 with whatever number is the last column.
Save this script by clicking the disk icon in the menu.
Then set the script to run every time the sheet is updated by clicking Edit , and Current Project Assets .
Click the link to add triggers.
Select my role , From the spreadsheet , then select Instead from the last dropdown box.
Now, every time an incoming payment notification arrives, a new row is added to the spreadsheet.
Your script fires and populates the appropriate fields with the sender's name and dollar amount.
This next automation is easy, as you'll be using an app that can do GPS tracking for you.
In-app purchases are a bit of a pain, but you can export your ride logs to email for free. Logs arrive as an Excel attachment.
All you have to do is set up an IFTTT automation to grab incoming emails and save the file to your Google Drive account.
Everlance trip logs come with the subject line:"Your transaction export is ready." This is what you can use to catch the email.
This is what the Upload file from URL the configuration should look like.
Click Create Action , and you are ready.
Now, every time you finish a trip, just export the trip data to your email account, and it will be automatically logged to your Google Drive account in your TripLogs folder.
Download: Everlance for Android (Free) | iOS (free)
One of the great dangers of owning a website is forgetting to renew your domain name every year or two.
Many domain registrars will allow you to automatically register domains when they expire, but you may not want to. Perhaps you are looking to sell the domain or transfer it to someone else. How To Transfer A Domain Name With Zero Downtime How To Transfer A Domain Name With Zero Downtime If you're wondering how to transfer your domain name with zero downtime, you need to do it in a particular order. Read more.
One thing you can do is set up an automation that will automatically push a new task to your To-Do app on the date you receive the reminder.
Go back to IFTTT and set up an automation to catch those notification emails.
In this example, we'll use the GoDaddy notifications that come with the subject line:"Your GoDaddy Renewal Notice."
Most to-do apps are smart enough to embed the due date if you mention a time and date in the name of the task.
In this case, click on Add ingredient , and choose Received on .
This will set your task to the date you received the email.
The next time you log into your to-do app, you'll see the overdue or overdue task, and you can assign it to a time when it's more convenient to deal with the domain.
This is especially useful if you have many domains to manage. You'll never forget an expiring domain again.
There are many things to remember when running a small business. Hopefully the above automations will help reduce the load a bit.
And remember, if you're a freelancer, there are plenty of other tools to help you run your business. If accounting isn't your strong point, you'll want to check out our list of the best accounting software available for freelancers. The Best Accounting Software Every Freelancer Needs The Best Accounting Software Every Freelancer Needs for accounting is a minefield of complexity. Mistakes can be costly and even a crime. If you're tired of manual accounting, try accounting software. Read more.