Bolstr's take on crowd-sourced fundraising is that most businesses don't want to surrender control by giving up ownership interest. Their alternative: revenue sharing. In exchange for capital, a business agrees to give investors a share of revenue for a fixed period of time. This private-offering approach is a good fit for community-based lending--in other words, raising money from friends, family members and patrons. The site also provides tools for engaging and informing these investors.

PaySimple, a cloud-based service that automates billing, receiving payments, and customer management for small businesses, now enables its merchant customers to add incentives for early payments and to charge late fees on invoices. Additionally, companies can add their social media links to online invoices. PaySimple has a two-tiered price structure: for $35 a month, it will handle all your billing and accept major credit card and e-check payments at competitive rates. An $11-a-month plan covers electronic invoicing only.