NASA scientists using caveman tools to put a man on the moon.

If you look back at old NASA footage in the control room, the scientists and astronauts that worked on the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions in the 1960s didn’t have calculators. They used a modified abacus known as a slide rule. At that point in time, the slide rule was the very best tool for calculation, and it was about 300 years old.

To folks like me who were born in the ‘80s, using a wooden device made up of beads to figure out how to put a man on the moon sounds like lunacy. But what other choice did NASA have? They had to use the best tools available to them, and despite using ancient, outdated tools, the scientists and astronauts of yesteryear were able to pull-off what some thought was an impossible feat; putting a man on the moon.

Since then, the proliferation of computers, their decreasing size and exponentially increasing power has completely changed the world we live in and the tools we use today. And while our business may not be embarking on seemingly-impossible tasks like landing on the moon, it would still behoove us to use the best available tools to accomplish our own missions.

We here at ProOnGo have used a lot of tools to maximize our productivity — some have worked very well and some haven’t. That’s why I want to take the time to write about two project management tools that we use on a regular basis and can’t live without:

#1: Lighthouse App

Lighthouse is an application for managing your development team by dividing up tasks, setting milestones, and updating progress. Whenever we have a feature request, bug to fix, or improvement in our website, we create a ticket that describes the request, attach any necessary files, assign the ticket to a developer, choose a deadline date,and give the ticket a priority.

Developers can work on these tickets, assign the tickets to other developers for questions, and assign the ticket to testers when completed. We love Lighthouse because of its email integration, the use of plugins to extend functionality and the ability to keep projects private. Last but not the least, Lighthouse has an easy, well-documented developer API so you can build some easy plugins according to your company’s needs. You can try it for free, and then pick any of their three plans, gold ($100/month), silver ($50/month) and bronze ($25/ month).

#2: TenderApp

TenderApp, for all practical purposes, is an app that has been designed for a customer support team. The learning curve to use this app is negligible but most of all, in being a Web hosted app, doesn’t require any installations to be carried out either.

Simply put, the system collects all customer issues to ensure that you don’t miss even one customer complaint. Highly customizable, the best part about this project management tool is that it can synced with the aforementioned LightHouse App so that your developers can get to work on a resolution as soon as possible. There are 3 plans that one can choose from: Ultimo ($99/month), Extra ($49/month) and Core ($9/month) but only after trying the software for free for a period of 14 days.

After using both of these project management tools for some time now, getting by without them sounds almost as crazy as asking me to send someone to the moon with an abacus.

One of the benefits of having millions of expenses flowing through our system is that we have a unique vantage point with regard to how small business spending trends are evolving over time. Over the years we’ve occasionally been asked for our take on the strength of small business spending, and although such analysis tends to fall off the bottom of our to-do list (we’re busy making expense reports easy), we do want to give you a peak into our world of small business expenses at an aggregate level.

Shall we begin with the caveats? Before you proceed, be advised that this is not a scientific or statistically thorough analysis, you shouldn’t base any business decisions off of the data we show below, and we’re only able to show this information in this highly aggregated form. OK?

With that aside, here are the top ten Vendors by transaction count (shown alphabetically), for new expenses entered into our system by quarter for the past three quarters:

We’re not surprised to see the online spending trend remaining strong (see Amazon’s presence in all three quarters), nor are we surprised that you make a habit of swinging by Wal-Mart and Starbucks on a regular basis. We’re a little surprised by just how few airlines made the list: stretching back a little further than this data there have been fewer hotels and airlines on the list over time. Perhaps a sign of small businesses spending more time “close to home” and being a little tighter with the checkbook when it comes to taking business trips?

I also think it’s insightful that there is some real consistency quarter over quarter – six of the top ten have remained in the top ten throughout the three quarters shown above (Amazon, McDonalds, Shell, Starbucks, The Home Depot, Wal-Mart). Two others have appeared in two quarters each (Lowes, Menards). Essentially, of the ten spots, only four have been in play over the past several quarters, and even amongst those four there is some consistency.

So, for now, there’s your peak into small business spending. Perhaps some economist or statistician will reach out to us and strike up a conversation about what other ways we should show highly aggregated trends that we’re observing. We’d be open to that.

Small businesses – we’re here for you when it comes time to track your expenses in QuickBooks, Excel, or simply using our web and mobile apps as standalone solutions.

Small businesses using Intuit products should be really excited about the recent acquisition of Demandforce by Intuit for nearly a half a billion dollars. Demandforce specializes in automating marketing and customer communications for small businesses with their SaaS product D3, and since the acquisition was led by Intuit’s small business group, you can bet that this technology will be applied as another tool in the arsenal of small businesses.

Intuit is positioning itself to become a one-stop shop for small busisness. Marketing is a HUGE challenge for small businesses, I would argue more so than accepting credit cards, so an acquisition of a company that will allow small businesses to efficiently manage their marketing and customer communications will be a valuable tool in the belt of QuickBooks customers.

The customers have to walk in your door before they give you money. They have to visit your site before they become a subscriber. If your company is compromising on the quality of its communications and not utilizing all of the available avenues your potential customers use find your product, you are leaving some serious money on the table.

If you’re a business owner, I’m sure you realize this is a big problem, and you’re not alone. According to a semi-recent survey by Deluxe:

“49% of small business owners claim that effectively reaching customers with limited resources is their biggest challenge. This is more than twice other key challenges cited: managing the costs of doing business (19%) and securing credit (12%). Their biggest frustration about marketing: They don’t know if what they are doing is effective.”

That definitely seems like an area worth addressing if you’re Intuit.

Now, if your eyes didn’t pop when you saw the deal is for $424 million dollars, go back to math class because that’s a lot of money. To put that figure in perspective, Cisco bought Linksys for about the same price in 2005. Granted, a half a billion doesn’t go as far as it used to, but with this acquisition, Intuit is claiming Demandforce is worth about the same amount of money than the company that manufactures a product which nearly every internet-wired household contains; a Linksys router.

So what does this mean? It means Intuit expects to provide some serious value to small businesses with this purchase. D3 could be a very valuable tool for small businesses using QuickBooks that are finding themselves compromising on their marketing and support communications. The deal is expected to close in May so we can probably expect the next Demandforce iteration to be integrated into Intuit’s Small Business Lineup by late 2012, early 2013, but that’s just a complete WAG.