by guest author Tina Martin
“There’s an app for that!”
We spend a lot of time on our phones every day, both at work and at home. If you run a small business and have staff that works remotely, your devices will be your lifeline for staying connected with everyone.
There are many apps designed for small business owners. You can make your phone work for you and have the time you’re spending on it be productive in both managing and growing your business.
Apps for Bookkeeping and Accounting
Accounting is a job that no small business owner truly relishes doing. It is time-consuming and will no doubt have caused you stress. What you need is a piece of accounting software that is robust and reliable but is easy to use and understand.
Your business software for enterprise resource planning should be able to grow with you as you move from small to midsize. QuickBooks helps you remain compliant and stay on top of your business’s financial well-being. Track expenses, create and send invoices, and manage your inventory with the easy-to-use app. It can also integrate with several essential applications, which allows for a seamless workflow overall and insightful reporting.
It also comes with quick and straightforward ways to invoice customers with its many automation options available, as well as keep track of both your expenses and those claimed by employees.
Apps for Collaboration
When you have employees or freelancers working for you who are based remotely, collaborative work can be tough. Apps like Trello and Asana are designed to help provide a platform for project management and teamwork. You can assign tasks to different people and use the system to manage how well the work is progressing.
When it comes to sharing documents, Microsoft OneDrive is a cloud storage and file-sharing system that can facilitate this. It is useful where multiple people all need access and editing rights to the same documents.
Apps for Organization
As hard as you try to stay organized and on top of everything you need to do, this can be incredibly difficult as a small business owner — especially when you forget to write something down! Evernote is an app that can help with this. It works as a notebook for your phone, and you use it to write down to-do lists and any brilliant plans you may have.
Apps for Communication
You need to stay connected with your employees but don’t want to be caught up in a never-ending cycle of emails. How do you do it? An app like Slack can help provide a channel of communication as it has the option to send direct messages and for groups to break off into separate “channels.” Slack offers the option of receiving push notifications to make sure you never miss a message.
Don’t forget Skype! It’s a popular app that most people will be familiar with and will have used before. You can use it to chat with team members and also have video calls. Skype helps to make staying connected as easy as possible.
In Summary
You know how difficult it can be to manage all the tasks that come with running your own business — so much so that there are times when it feels like you spend more time managing your accounts and emailing colleagues than you do on your actual work. That’s where having some handy apps at your fingertips helps. Take back control of your time so you can work on building an empire!
About the author
Tina started her career in business administration but grew tired of working her tail off to make someone else a lot of money. She decided to pursue something that inspired her: becoming a personal fitness instructor. As she grew her client base, she realized that in addition to their physical health goals, her clients had a lot of personal improvement aspirations. So, she took another leap of faith and decided to start offering life coaching services. She started her website as a side project to reach as many people as possible and encourage them to put their dreams first.