Running your own small business can be difficult and complicated, entailing a lot of time management and work. However, there are a few apps out there which can make your life much easier as an entrepreneur, helping you in the day to day functioning of your enterprise, be it for payment, for keeping track of things, or for marketing.
Evernote
Evernote is an app which takes all of your notes, tasks, and to-do lists and keeps them in one place. And it’s not strictly for mobile – you can also use the desktop version (which syncs with the app), and there are even Evernote-enabled Moleskine journals. You can also share your information via the app, thus making it easier to collaborate with your colleagues. For small businesses, this a particularly good platform for both keeping track of things and sharing business ideas among your team.
Square Register
In this day and age, businesses pretty much have to be able to accept credit and debit card payments. But accepting card payments means that you need a card reader, and will have to deal with transaction fees for every sale by card. Square Register is a free app which allows you to make POS card transactions, as well as record all of your sales, which can easily be converted into a spreadsheet. This makes record-keeping much simpler, so taxes become much easier to deal with as well. And Square Register allows you to work offline, saving them locally, and syncing them to your Square account once you’re online again.
Scan Pages
Owning a business usually entails lots and lots of documents which you need to scan or copy, and scanners are expensive. And you probably don’t have the time to go somewhere like Kinko’s or the local library to have that done if you’re running a business. Scan Pages is an iOS app which allows you to scan documents directly from your iPhone or iPad camera, and upload them. This is a significant improvement over simply using your camera and clicking your documents, as Scan Pages has a number of additional features which your mobile camera does not come with.
Asana
Asana is an app that makes working together simple for business that operate from multiple locations. It puts together a platform for to-do lists, tasks, and group projects; you can assign tasks to different users within the platform, as well have conversations. Simply put, Asana makes communication less tedious, and greatly simplifies communication between colleagues.
Robin
Robin is a personal assistant app for business, and functions basically in a similar manner to iPhone’s Siri, except that Robin also gives you such useful information as traffic updates, parking guidance, personalized radio, and hands-free messaging. Aside from that, Robin handles your emails and expense reports.
Expensify
Expense accounts can be a nightmare for business owners – but Expensify makes the process of submitting and approving expense reports much simpler. Using the app, you can keep track of expenses and miles travelled, and you can organize expenses by either trip or payment method. You can also add your credit card accounts to Expensify, thereby making it easier to upload receipts and reports. So if you are a small business owner who frequently travels, or if you have your employees use their own credit cards for expenses, then Expensify might be a great tool to try out.
Local Vox
Local Vox is an app that allows brick and mortar businesses to build their brands online, enabling business owners to publish news, events, and announcements through various online channels. Thus, with one click, you can circulate your announcements through social media, websites, local directories, and email newsletters.
inDinero
InDinero is an app that tracks business cash flow and manage day-to-day finances. It syncs to bank accounts and credit cards, and also helps businesses to predict future cash flow, according to past trends. Basically, inDinero is your entire back office, taking care of accounting, filing corporate tax returns, and managing payrolls.
Coin Beyond
We’ve already mentioned Coin Beyond in a previous post, but this is actually a good tool to have for your business as well, because there arguably are more advantages to accepting bitcoins as payment in your real-world business than you might think. The app and the card reader are free anyway, plus there is no transaction fee whatsoever, so what do you have to lose? In terms of functionality, Coin Beyond basically works the same way for businesses as Square Register does, but instead of dealing with credit card companies, you’re dealing with bitcoins. As bitcoins are legal in the US and a few other countries, and quickly moving towards being an acceptable currency (they also make currency exchange much simpler), the usefulness of such an app will likely only grow. And if one day the value of the dollar suddenly collapses, then you won’t lose any earnings you have in bitcoins.
