Marketing Guru. Financial Whiz. Customer Care Specialist. As a small business owner, you have to wear many hats to keep things going with these Best Business Apps. If you’re looking to increase your productivity, better organize your day, or just make your life easier as a small business owner, a good app might be just the thing.
However, from the thousands of apps made available to entrepreneurs and small business owners, how do you know which one is worth investing your time and money in?
To help solve this problem, we have compiled a list of 9 best apps that every small business owner should use.
- EVERNOTE: This is THE app you need for ultimate productivity and organization. Evernote lets you create notes, save information (we mean emails, pictures, and anything in between), and even to-do lists to keep you on track and help you remember everything you need to remember. The free version lets users upload up to 60 megabytes of data per month. The business version ($12 per user per month) offers a variety of features such as offline access to stored data, administrative controls and unlimited space for uploads.
- SLACK: Every business owner needs to be in touch with his or her team. Slack makes it easy for team members to keep in touch with each other through its instant messaging platform. you can organize conversations into private our public channels and send direct messages to other team members. It’s a fairly simple and easy to use app that allows you to drag, drop and share images, PDFs and other files instantly. The paid version ($8 per user per month) comes with a full archive of your team’s message history and unlimited app integration, guest access and group calls.
- QUICKBOOKS: With it’s easy to navigate interface, QuickBooks is the number one accounting software for small business owners (especially if you want to take control of your company’s finances). It helps you run your business and provides a full sense of your businesses’ financial health. You can use it to track your monthly sales and expenses, pay employees and vendors, track unpaid invoices, and much more. It also connects to many third-party accounts – including your business bank account, credit cards, PayPal and Square. It also makes doing your business taxes much easier, as it tracks your expenses and lets you upload photos of receipts with your phone. Plans range in cost from $10 to $24 for the first six months and $13 to $40 per month thereafter, plus a 30-day free trial.
- EXPENSIFY: Going away on a business trip soon? Make sure you download the Expensify app to keep track of your expenses. This app makes it easy for small business owners to keep track of how much they are spending and where. Expensify can link directly to your credit or debit card and can place charges directly on an expense report. Pretty cool right? If you’d rather not do this, you can take pictures of your receipts with your phone and Expensify will automatically extract the relevant information, and you can make an expense report yourself. It costs only $5 per month per active account for team users and $9 per month per active for corporate users. The great thing about this app is that it works with all types of phones such as iPhones, Androids, Blackberry and Windows Phone (as well as on all desktops).
- DROPBOX: Dropbox is one of the most popular platforms to store and share files on the cloud. With almost 500 million users, this is an extremely useful and easy to use software to share information with others. Dropbox offers a free, basic, and pro plan to users for as little as $8.25 per user per month. Teams with more than five employees can buy the business plan for $12.50 per user per month. It also offers free trials and works on all devices and operating system.
- CANVA: Do you need to create graphics for your business on a regular basis, but don’t want to spend extra dollars to hire a graphic designer? Canva is a simple, easy-to-use software that allows anyone with absolutely no design experience and skills to create beautiful graphics for social media, newsletters and other related marketing materials. With a business version, you can share graphics with your team, and have others create and save materials under one profile for everyone to access and view.
- SQUARE: Similar to PayPal, Square is a payment app that lets small businesses such as food trucks, beauty salons and retail shops receive payments from their customers. Its users receive a small, portable card reader that they can attach to a phone or another mobile device to take fast, convenient payments. It deducts 2.75% of every swipe automatically. Manually entered transactions cost 3.5% plus 15 cents per transaction. What’s cool about this payment app is that it offers a combination chip card/contactless reader that accepts mobile payments, such as Apple Pay, and EMV chip cards. It costs $49 upfront and 2.75% per transaction.
- CLEAR: With this app, you can create and easily manage lists, schedules, and reminders to organize daily tasks, and sync them with your Mac Desktop, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and even iPod Touch. It’s a gesture-based task management app that is easy to use with a simple interface. You can use separate lists to organize every aspect of your business, and personalize each list to a particular theme and objective. It costs $4.99 for iOS devices and $9.99 for desktop.
- PIPEDRIVE: Pipedrive is a sales management tool that helps small business owners focus on the right contacts and manage their sales process. In the pipeline view, deals are categorized by sales stage, which allows your team to develop a clear understanding of your sales momentum and priorities. With plans starting from $10 per user per month, you can leverage from a powerful tool that helps streamline your sales process, so that you can focus on more important aspects of your business.
If you’re struggling to manage your small business, these Best Business Apps can help you achieve more goals, with greater productivity. With the right combination of tools, you can streamline your business process, and simplify your goals, saving you both time and money.