r/SmallBusinessOwners

Early bird, member rate, group discount, speaker comp, exhibitor allotment… the rules stack up fast. Some platforms handle this cleanly, others turn it into a spreadsheet nightmare.

I’ve looked at how Eventbrite, Cvent, and Eventify deal with layered pricing.

What’s the most complicated ticket logic you’ve had to set up and did the system cooperate?

Getting devices like laptop to someone is easy enough, its everything after that gets messy. tracking who has what, sending replacements, getting laptops back when someone leaves, figuring out what to do with old devices... it all adds up pretty quickly, and the thing is, we really dont want another IT platform just for this, we already have enough tools and dashboards to deal with.

How are you guys handling this without making the process more complicated than it needs to be?

I run a small apparel/e-commerce brand and at one point realized I was paying for way too many tools that basically did the same things.

I’ve been cutting them down over the past few months, and honestly these are pretty much all I use now:

Google Search Console for understanding where our organic traffic is actually coming from. I mostly look at what people are searching before finding us, which pages are getting impressions/clicks, and whether our SEO work is actually doing anything. Free and honestly enough for most of what I need.

Saharan AI for pretty much anything creative. Product images, social content, ad creatives and videos. The Agent Mode is probably what I use most because I barely need to prompt it. I can upload our brand guidelines, product info and references, and it figures out the creative direction while keeping things consistent with our brand. It also has most of the image/video models in one place, so I got rid of a few separate subscriptions.

Shopify for basically the backbone of the business. Storefront, products, orders, inventory, discounts, etc. I try not to install too many apps anymore unless there’s a real reason for it.

Klaviyo for email and customer retention. Mostly abandoned carts, welcome flows, post-purchase emails and occasional campaigns. Once the basic flows are set up, it runs pretty quietly in the background.

Notion for everything internal. Launch plans, content calendars, product ideas, supplier notes and random things I don’t want scattered across 20 different docs.
There are definitely more powerful specialized tools for each of these things, but as a small business I’d rather have 5 tools that cover 80–90% of what I need than 15 subscriptions I barely use.

Curious what tools you actually kept paying for?

I am a small business owner. I’ve owned my salon for a year now and I am wondering if I should be looking for a new CPA I have had this one for a year and I’ve gotten frustrated with a few things, but I don’t know if they are real red flags or if this is common practice.
1- incorrect P&L’s I asked her for a quarterly P&L to pay my quarterly taxes. The one she sent showed an income about $20,000 less than what my POS system says I made
2-My QuickBooks has duplicate accounts on it that she said she would get rid of a few months ago, and they are still there
3-According to QuickBooks, she has never reconciled my accounts before
4-I keep getting notifications that I am late on a certain local tax and she keeps insisting it is QuickBooks fault for not paying it on time and that she’ll figure it out, but I keep getting the notices

I had to bookkeeper take a look and she was concerned about it, but I couldn’t tell if she was just trying to get me to hire her or not. I have a meeting with my CPA on Wednesday along with another CPA. I am interviewing but I’m looking for some non-biased opinions on what I should and should not be worried about.

As a semi retired 57 year old who sold a business, I have had the opportunity to look back and truly think on the what made me successful.

My own home services startup was quite a ride for 28 years which culminated in a successful exit and sale. During that entire period I was proud to be successful and self sufficient. I also was under the mistaken impression that I was the most important person to the business.

Yet, after I sold the business it still exists and churns out revenue for the company that purchased it. So, if I’m not there and everything still runs, what is the most common denominator?

Great Employees!

I’ve come to the realization that while I made the decisions my staff executed them. And the truth is, they were/are great at it.

Sure, I was there steering the ship, making good decisions in important areas, but I personally had ‘t been an actual field operator
for years!

My saving grace for my own well being is that I treated my 25-30 employees incredibly well. As testament to this I had grown men in my office getting weepy when news of the sale hit. Some of them were actually people who I never thought actually cared about me or the business, but there they were.

I left on good terms with most everyone and some of my old employees are thriving at the new company. Some sadly left as working for a corporation is different than working for a family run operation. I guess that’s just how it goes.

The statement for people wanting to start a business is hire well. The question for current employers is, are you treating your employees as well as you could?