There are tons of things to wrap your head around if you’re a startup owner: your hiring schedule, how you plan on scaling, and the best way to market your business model to possible new investors. However, if you’re planning on getting a startup up and running in the near future, one thing that’s important to prioritize is your software solutions.

Tech solutions and software solutions are the lifeblood of new companies, as even before you can get a solid team on board, you often need good software to get the basic nuts and bolts in place.

In this article, we’ll cover the 3 essential tech solutions you should be investing in on day 1.

Let’s take a look.

1. Business Planning Software

Do you have your business plan sorted out? A business plan basically is the blueprint for how you plan on building your company. It answers crucial questions like:

• What do you plan on selling?
• What is your niche in the market?
• How will you turn a profit?
• What will you do to scale if you do start earning money?
• What are your marketing plans?

All of these questions should be answered in rigorous detail when you develop a business plan. This has two benefits: one, you’ll get a clear idea of the goals you’re setting for your business, and two, when it’s time to present your plan to possible investors, they know exactly what they’re buying into. No one wants to take bet bling.

However, developing a business plan is a little more complicated than opening a word processing document and writing it out. Using well-structured business planning software can help guide you through what you need to know to have a viable business and will prove a critical resource as you move forward.

2. Tax Software

You already know the drill: only death and taxes are certain in life. Well, there’s not really good tech software dealing with death (yet), but the good news is that as a startup owner, there are tons of great tax software options available. What exactly should you look for in tax software? There are a few basics.

Make sure that it takes account of all revenue streams. You don’t want to get audited because you forgot to include a source of investment income. It’s also critical that your tax software is intuitive and easy to use. The last thing you want is for the software you use to be more confusing than the tax forms themselves. Finally, be sure that it’s certified and licensed. Too many small business owners fall prey to fraudulent tax software just looking to steal critical information.

Just to be certain, it’s a good idea to perform a professional tax software comparison before buying. That way you pick the program with all the features your business needs, and none of the ones it doesn’t.

3. Accounting Software

There’s nothing that sinks ships like badly balanced books. If you don’t have a clear idea of how much you’re spending vs. how much you’re bringing in, your business will not be around for long. Keeping track of revenue streams and ensuring that the total is at least equal with your outstanding debts is critical.

Technically, there are two sides to solid accounting software. It should be able to provide you with basic bookkeeping services. That means balancing your ledger and doing the basics of making sure that your income matches expenses.

The other side is full accounting, which involves more than a basic explanation of the balance of income and expense. Like a human accountant, good accounting software should be able to tell you where you’ve gone over budget and how you can stand to save in the future. Some critical features included in accounting tech solutions:

• Invoice processing
• Payment processing
• Order processing
• Autopayment
• Direct deposit
• Cost predictions
• Cost summaries
• Unauthorized expense warning
• Inventory tracking
• Time tracking data

Before you have the funds to hire on a human accountant to handle these areas for you, dependable tax software may be your best bet.

This list of tech solutions may not be the most glamorous – we know, you might have been expecting AI data management or some sort of VR solution – but trust us, if you want to get your business off the ground, starting with the essentials is key.