Decision support for small-business owners
Choose the software, money and insurance your business runs on.
Tell us how you operate. For each area you pick, we set out what it needs, when it starts to matter, and what to compare when you choose.
Six short steps. No email or account.
A plan per area
In the order your business needs them.
When it matters
The point at which each one becomes urgent.
What to compare
The questions that separate good options.
Saved on this device
No account, no email, nothing to cancel.
See what a plan looks like
Researched guidance for 51 areas of the business.
Example operating plan
Landscaping, 6 people
The business
Six people, hourly crews, work happens at customer properties, and payroll runs whether it rains or not.
- Business
- Landscaping and lawn care
- Team
- 5 to 9
- People
- W-2 employees
- Works
- We travel to jobs
- Stage
- Growing
- 01Job and crew management
When it matters: Once you have more than one crew, or once jobs are being missed or billed late.
Compare first: Field app on a real phone - 02Time tracking
When it matters: With the first hourly employee.
Compare first: Location verification - 03Payroll
When it matters: Before the first employee's first payday.
Compare first: Tax filing included and guaranteed - 04Accounting software
When it matters: From the first transaction.
Compare first: Does your accountant support it - 05Business insurance
When it matters: General liability before the first job on a customer site.
Compare first: Coverage limits versus price
Product picks appear in each area as we publish comparisons. Until then, each area says what to compare.
Build one for your businessHow it works
Three steps, a few minutes.
You choose what gets looked at, so it never turns into a list of everything we could sell you.
Step 1
Tell us how you actually operate
What you do, who works for you, where the work happens, and what you are trying to fix this quarter. Six questions, not sixty.
Step 2
Choose what you want looked at
Pick only the areas you want evaluated. The ones you leave out produce nothing at all: no questions, no recommendations, no follow-up.
Step 3
Get a plan you can explain
For each area: when it matters, what to compare, and what to avoid. Saved on this device.
The library
Or start from what you already know.
The library is open. You never have to answer a question to research something here.
By area of the business
All 51 guidesBy what the business does
All industriesHow we work
How we work, in three rules.
Know what you're buying, and why. Each rule has a page that explains it.
The same answers give the same result.
Every plan is built from what you told us, by rules written down in public.
How we decideA link that can pay us says so.
The label sits beside the link, at the point you click, not in a footnote.
How we get paidNo ratings, reviews or prices we cannot stand behind.
Facts come from the provider's own documentation. Our judgment is labeled as ours.
Editorial standards