The Best Apps To Transform You Into A Productive Small-Business

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Small business owners should wear multiple (metaphorical) hats if they want to succeed. Such hats include a marketing manager, accountant, customer service specialist, and social media consultant. This list could be endless. Fortunately, technological advancement gives business owners numerous apps that can help them emerge as the best entrepreneur. The apps also make work easier. Traditional business owners could not understand the meaning of freedom, or doing business remotely. Fast forward to today, there are a lot of apps that can help a business owner. Some may charge a small fee, but you don’t need to struggle to manage your business when the apps are available. Read on to find apps that can be of great help in your business.

1. Evernote

You need to keep your business notes in an organized manner. Evernote makes it easy for you to de-clutter your business. You can access a lot of information on the internet, tag for ease of searching, embed photos, video, audio, and tables. With Evernote, you can access every piece of information you need for your business. You can sync across every device you have, and access Evernote on all of them so you can manage your business from anywhere.

How do you use Evernote?

  • Keep the information about your business in separate books such as Flyers, business documents, insurance information, expense reports, receipts, and coupons. Share these with your staff.

  • Evernote has a camera that can help you scan and store all receipts and bills, making it easy to track all your business expenses.

  • Create a principal repository for marketing tools and ideas. You can do this through saving flyers, tweets and retweets, and reviews. The repository will become instrumental when you need to develop a new strategy for your business, or any other new material.

2. Organize your finances with Wave

Accounting processes and procedures are unavoidable if any business owner wants to see progress. There is adequate software out there you can use in your business but if your company has less than nine employees, Wave is the best app for you. It is software that works well even if you do not have formal training in accountancy. Wave helps the business owner when they want to track expenses and sales, pay salaries, produce reports, manage invoices, generate business reports, and manage debit and credit notes. Wave comes in numerous formats which cover every aspect of accounting for small businesses.

How do you use it?

  • You should customize your income and expense categories and get an overview that you can monitor

  • Scan your receipts or take a photo of them, and transform them into accounting transactions.

  • Generate various business reports automatically. Such reports include balance sheets, Profit and Loss accounts, and sales tax reports, among others.

  • Bring on board qualified professionals who have won your trust. Such people may include accounting personnel, business partners, and shareholders. They will be instrumental in helping you to manage your books.

3. Toggle- the best time manager

Time is of the essence. Track every minute you spend in the business through the use of Toggle. You can track how much your employees have done through this genius app. A single click enables you to track every second in the business. Through Toggle, you can view various graphs, track projects, and manage timesheets. Moreover, Toggle can help you sync the output of your business with an array of apps that help in project management.

How does it work?

  • Register every hour you spend on the business, and learn which activities consume a lot of time. Make sure you have a brief description of the time each project or task takes before completion.

  • Estimate the time a project should take, and keep track of such a project using a project dashboard. Understand the tasks that consume a lot of time, and assess how much profit they bring to the business. If it is a client, seek to know how much return such a customer brings to your business.

  • You can track what your staff is doing at any particular time. Toggle also helps you assess the productivity of employees, and this is a critical issue to consider when managing staff positions.

4. Use Square to make any payments

Does your business rely on point-of-sale purchases? Do you have a small budget to procure any meaningful payment system? Relax. Square is a perfect app that allows you to make any payments without much worry. The app has a card-reader which you can plug into your tablet or smartphone. It allows you to scan any payment card and issue payments. You can now avoid the large POS systems. Square works offline.

How do you use it?

  • Permit your customers to leave you a tip. You do this by having a preset percentage, e.g. 15%, 20%, 25%. If you do not want percentages, you could have a preset amount.

  • Ensure every regular client has their details in the system. You can change such details effortlessly by clicking on a button, saving you time.

  • The point of sale app available in Square can help you manage inventory, produce digital receipts, and set up directories for customers.

5. Quick Books

If you need to know the financial status of your business, use Quick Books, a renowned accounting software. The software can help you track the expenses of your business, sales, track invoices (paid and unpaid), and pay staff. The app can access numerous accounts such as PayPal, your business account, Square, and credit cards, and upload results from them. It comes in handy at tax time because you can track any unknown expense, and upload receipts from any external device. The Quick Books app is accessible on your Android phone, iPhone, Android tablet, and iPad. Quick Books plans cost from $12 to $25 for the first half year, but then this rate goes up to $42 per month. Freelancer has numerous projects you can work on to enhance your experience in managing small businesses.

6. Pushover

Pushover is the ultimate game changer for all small businesses. Do you want your business to have direct connections to others? Do you want your employees to work in sync, even if they are far from the office? Pushover sends multiple notifications and messages from your phone, or any other central device. The app allows you to send over 7,000 messages every year, and you can receive unlimited notifications on Apple watches, Android devices, iPads, and iPhones. The app gives you a trial period of a week, and then charge you a one-time fee of $5.

7. Rescue Time

Rescue Time tracks every minute you spend on websites and various applications. The app gives you a detailed report based on what activity you were doing, painting a picture of how your day unfolded. The Lite version is free, but the premium version has additional features such as alerts, detailed filters and reports, and the ability to block harmful websites. Rescue Time works well with Linux, Android, PC, and Mac. The premium app costs $73 annually, and the first 120 days are free.

Productivity in business is the result of effort and creativity. Put more effort in your business apps, streamline your tasks and you will reap big in your business. If you want your business to outdo others, you have to stay ahead of the competition.

These are just a few apps for small businesses. Do you know of any others? Share them with us in the comment section!

Publicado 21 agosto, 2017

NickGolding

Entrepreneur & Creator

Nick is the Entrepreneur Correspondent for Freelancer.com. He is based in Sydney, NYC, & London. His life consists of frequent flyer points.

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