In this mobile day and age, apps are commonplace. We all have apps on our mobile devices to help us manage our everyday lives and to keep us entertained. Drilling down further and more specifically, are there any small business apps that could help improve your efficiency and effectiveness as an owner? Let’s take a look and see!

Streamlining Your Life in One Click

In his Nerd Wallet blog “25 Best Small-Business Apps in 2018,” Steve Nicastro dives deep into the multiple hat-wearing world of entrepreneurs, and pulls together a comprehensive list of business apps that can small business owners excel. These are quickly summarized (not in entirety) below into small snippets.

Business & Accounting apps

Gusto (formerly ZenPayroll): This app combines the payroll and tax and benefits processes into one place, including automatically reporting new hires to the government, handling all tax filings, and automating benefits/workers comp payments.

Quickbooks: Linking to thousands of accounts (i.e. bank account, credit cards, third-party payment services), you can run (and view) your business pretty thoroughly through this app. This functionality includes invoice tracking, payments to employees and vendors, and in-depth visibility into financial health and reports.

Freshbooks: Specifically for SBOs and freelance workers, this app helps you create and track invoices and manage payments.

Wave: Designed for very small businesses, sole proprietors, and independent contractors, this app allows people to manage invoices and payments, track sales and expenses, pay employees, scan receipts, and produce accounting reports in one place.

Communication Apps

Addappt: If you and your professional contacts use this app, it’s fairly seamless to share contact details, organize contacts into groups, and send messages within the app platform.

Fuze: Easy to set-up and download, this high-definition videoconferencing app is for SBOs to use for virtual “face to face” meetings.

Pushover: For entrepreneurs with multiple devices, this app pushes messages/notifications from all your mobile homes into one place.

Slack: This app is a robust “instant messaging” platform with capabilities to send direct messages, organize team conversations publically or privately, and even send files (i.e. PDFs and images) directly into the chat.

Skype: Yes, Skype is still a major player on the scene. This is simply because it allows video/voice calls from around the world, can welcome 25 people onto one call, share computer screens, and send files of any size.

Time Management Apps

RescueTime: Are you curious how you spend your day? This app tracks your time spent on websites and apps and sends you a detailed report of how you used your time.

My Minutes: This goal-setting app is designed to keep you more focused on your work, rather than wasting time online.

OmniFocus: Synching between your phone and desktop, this app shows you completed tasks and deadlines for new projects.

TripIt: Putting all your travel plans into one place, this master itinerary shows departure times, delays, airport directions, and weather reports.

Mobile Payment Apps

PayPal: This well-known app has evolved in recent times and now allows SBOs to use a PayPal card reader on a mobile device to accept payment on the go.

Square: This hot app is why PayPal started accommodating card readers. This popular platform is used at many small businesses like brick and mortar shops and food trucks that rely on fast and convenient payments.

Organization Apps

Asana: This app is designed to enhance collaboration and communication through viewing project tasks, sharing notes, and uploading files outside of email.

Proven: Created to streamline the hiring process, this app allows jobs to be posted to multiple boards, enables fast sorting of applicants into yes/no/maybe categories, and provides note fields for candidate follow-up.

Boxmeup: This app helps track packages, as well as organizes bulk inventory items. For example, you can use QR labels that are phone-scanned to know the contents of a container.

Evernote: This brings your notes (to-do lists, reminders, checklists) to this app that works on mobile and desktop devices.

Trello: This project management app brings your team’s workflow to the forefront. Tasks and projects become “cards” on this platform, and each card contains team members, deadlines, designated tasks, and files. Each time a card is updated, the entire team assigned to this task is automatically notified.

KanbanFlow: As another workflow app, this platform allows SBOs to visualize the workflow with specific work boards/columns. Here, tasks can be assigned, deadlines given, and files uploaded.

Other Notable Small Business Apps

Expensify: Since most SBOs know the pain of tracking business expenses, this app is linked to your business credit card, automatically putting charges onto an expense report. If that doesn’t work, you can either upload receipts to your phone or quickly make manual expense reports.

Dropbox: Simply, this is THE place to store and share files on the cloud.

MailChimp: Easy to use, this app allows people to send newsletters, manage subscribers, and view performance reports on all campaigns. 

Polaris Office: This app (called a “reliable alternative to Apple’s iWork”) lets you create, edit, and send Microsoft Office files on your phone/device, and view PDF files. 

What Apps Do YOU Rely On?

That was a comprehensive list of SBO-worthy apps, but is there another app that you think deserves to make the cut? Please share any apps that are essential to running your business!  

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