Owning or working for a small business can be extremely rewarding.
You have a good view of the business operations, your work is visible, and you have an opportunity to make a big impact during the company's critical growth years.
But then there are the less glamorous aspects -- from tight budgets and limited resources to lack of direction and leadership -- that can really start to weigh on you.
It would be nice if someone would throw you a bone every now and then, right?
That's why we took some time to round up 13 completely free templates that you can lean on to streamline your workflow, save time, and get more done.
Free Templates Every Small Business Needs in 2021
1. Professional Bio Templates
Let's face it: Writing about yourself can feel, well, awkward.
The good news is we've created 40+ fill-in-the-blank bio templates that you can use to put together an impressive, professional narrative that you'll want to share.
Use these professional bio templates to give your team page a refresh. We recommended collaborating with a couple of colleagues you work closely with as you fill these out to ensure you're speaking to all of your awesome skills.
2. Business Plan Template
The idea of a business plan can seem daunting, especially if you don't have a long-term strategy fully fleshed out. The one-page business plan above helps you check off the main boxes of an organization: what business opportunity you're taking advantage of, the state of your industry, your target market, and more. These are the pillars of your business. Use the document above to set them up.
3. Invoice Templates
For larger businesses, investing in paid invoicing software is a good way to keep your payments organized, but for small to mid-sized businesses, paying for a solution isn't always an option.
If you're looking for a cost-free way to stay on top of your billing, check out these free invoice templates for Microsoft Word. These invoice templates come in different colors and styles, so you can pick one that best suits your business.
*Bonus* We also just launched a free invoice template generator that allows you to create professional invoice PDFs in just a few clicks. Check it out here.
4. Company Newsletter Template
Want to keep your contacts and customers engaged and informed about your business? Try sending a monthly company newsletter.
This clean and concise template makes it easy for you to plug in things like updates, accomplishments, awards, and upcoming events to share with your community.
You can also adapt this template to use internally for an employee newsletter featuring new hires, promotions, culture events, and changes in existing policies.
5. Executive Summary Template
An executive summary can introduce a business plan, product announcement, marketing strategy, and similar business-critical documents. The template linked above -- and shown below -- offers a standard summary format along with tips from HubSpot to help you perfect your messaging throughout the summary.
6. Employee Timecard Template
Keeping tabs on employee hours is a really important part of running a business. Aside from ensuring your employees get paid (and get paid on time), having a log of hours can also help to resolve conflicts, evaluate employee engagement, and plan quotes in service-based industries.
With the help of this timecard template, you can keep all of your employee hours organized by week, month, and year. And don't worry about busting out that calculator: the template takes care of totaling each line for you.
7. Dashboard Templates
Part of running a successful business hinges on your ability to use data to drive decisions. Trouble is, pulling the right data can often be a hassle.
That's why, if you're a HubSpot customer, you'll want to know about these handy dashboard templates from Databox. These templates provide you with the campaign clarity you need -- whether you're looking to pull performance numbers for a landing page or figure out where you best leads are coming from.
8. Business Letterhead Templates
An on-brand letterhead, while it may seem like a small detail, can go a long way when it comes to establishing credibility and trust through written communications.
In many cases, your letterhead serves as a first impression to potential customers, so you want to make sure it represents your business well. Additionally, your letterhead typically houses valuable contact details, so you'll want to convey that information in a really clear and concise way.
9. Email Templates
Think about how much time you spending crafting emails on any given day. One hour? Two hours? More than five hours?
Aware that email can be a serious time suck, we created 15 email marketing templates to simplify all of your marketing and sales needs -- from PR and blogging outreach to customer reference emails.
These fill-in-the-blank templates are especially helpful when it comes to reducing the time you spend on emails that you're sending on a repeat basis.
10. Meeting Agenda Template
We've all been in our fair share of meetings that have gone off the rails. But unproductive meetings suck up valuable time that could be better spent on impactful projects.
To keep things on track, try using a simple meeting agenda template.
Fill out this template a few days ahead of your meeting and send it out to all of the participants. Doing this in advance will give folks time to prepare for the meeting accordingly -- and ultimately eliminate any confusion.
11. Infographic Templates
When you work at a small company, design resources can be hard to come by. But that doesn't mean your content creation efforts need to suffer as a result.
These free infographic templates can be used by designers and non-designers alike to create quality inforgraphics right in PowerPoint or Illustrator.
Use these infographic templates to visualize your latest research report, create a shareable blog post, or promote a piece of gated content on social media.
12. Social Graphic Templates
With the help of these Canva templates, you can create stunning social media images for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and more.
These templates are designed to meet the dimension requirements for each network, so you can spend less time hunting down accurate aspect ratios and more time boosting your social media engagement.
13. Small Team Status Board Template
If you're working on a really small team -- let's say 1-10 people -- you might find this status board template useful.
The template provides a column for each member of your team where they can add high-level status updates. This can be updated daily, weekly, or monthly to keep everyone on the same page about priorities, progress, and opportunities for collaboration.
Not to mention, the handy color-coding system allows you to determine the current standing of the task (good, needs attention, waiting on someone, etc.) at a quick glance.
There you have it: 13 incredibly useful business templates that will help you save time and hit the ground running next year. If you love these free resources that save time and money, check out these recommended free apps for startups.
Can you think of any other templates you lean on for support? Share them with us on Twitter @HubSpot.
