Top Software Apps to Run a Business Coaching Practice

As a coach, meeting with clients, clarifying direction, driving accountability, identifying solutions, celebrating wins, and providing tough love when required, is the easy part of the job. This is where the coach is in their comfort zone, engaging with the client comes naturally. This is what they enjoy and why they became a coach in the first place. The hard part, well, everything else required to operate a successful coaching business.

The administration side of operating a coaching business can become very clunky. Scheduling meetings, recording meetings notes, completing assigned tasks, tracking client progress, delivering content, business development, creating proposals, invoicing clients, building a community, the list goes on.

The great news is there are a lot of great software applications on the market that make operating a coaching business much easier and much more efficient. I have identified the business coaching software application options that are affordable to start with but also allow for scale and integration.

Accounting Software – Recommend Xero

Xero is an ideal solution for business coaches. It is easy to use, and you do not have to have a degree in finance to reconcile your books, keep accurate records, and generate reports.

How it makes doing business easier:

• Cloud-based with web and mobile app versions.
• Easy integration with payment software services like Stripe, PayPal & GoCardless.
• Customizable email templates including reminder emails and recurring invoice email templates.
• Recurring invoices are easy to setup, manage & modify.
• Integration with time tracking solution is easy to manage - Everhour.
• Easy reconciliation through the bank feed with rules.

Time Tracking Software – Recommend Everhour

Everhour is simple and accurate time tracking software for teams to see who’s tracking time, keep track of all project budgets, schedule alerts, and plan resources.

How it makes doing business easier:

• Integrates with Xero.
• Easy to enter time.
• Monthly project reports.
• Monthly personal reports.

Team Communication Software – Recommend Slack

Slack is the perfect tool for communication & collaboration, providing group messaging or team collaboration that aims to simplify communication for businesses. For coaches you can set up private channels to allow direct communication with clients and third-party suppliers. Removes the need for endless emails having to copy in all stakeholders.

How it makes doing business easier:

• Very easy-to-use software platform and intuitive for first-time users.
• Enables effective and proactive communication between internal team members and external stakeholders such as clients.
• Set up channels for specific user groups.
• Ability to create chat threads.

Email Marketing Software – Recommend Mail Chimp

MailChimp is perfect for small business and newbies because it is the easiest email marketing platform around. You can get up and running quickly and in most cases for free. Marketing automation software can be very complex, it's better to start with small and go from there. Send your first email. Get your first subscriber form in place. Learn the ropes and see what works for your business.

How it makes doing business easier:

• Add up to 2,000 subscribers for free.
• Mobile-friendly email templates work well across the most common email clients and devices.
• Customizing the sign-up process with your branding.
• Sending email campaigns is extremely easy and efficient.
• Analytics reporting open and click rates of campaigns - download the list of people who opened your campaigns and what links they clicked.

The above list is just the start, there are many many more business coaching software solutions, but these suggestions will give new business coaches a great start in digitizing their practice.

I hope you find the above information useful. Good luck.

Cheers

Matthew Jones

TheCUBE Founder & CEO

TheCUBE is a powerful business coaching platform allowing coaches to deliver greater results and life changing value to more clients with less effort.

BOOK TheCUBE demonstration today.