Top 10 apps every small business owner needs

By John Stuart

Small business owners are often pulled to meetings and remembering those last minute tasks left, right and center. Not only are you a salesman, you’re a marketer, accountant and PA all at once.

Fortunately for you, now is an exciting time to own a small business as you can use mobile phone applications to help manage your business on the go. We understand low start-up budgets can get in the way of buying the swanky new app on the block; that’s why every app on this list is either free or has a low one-off/monthly cost.

Gone are the days of purely synching your emails to your mobile device – now you can keep on top of expenses, task management and all forms of social media. See below the top 10 Apps we recommend to every small business owner:

Pocket

If you’re on a long commute, what better down time than to read up on new business blogs and resources for your business, right?

Pocket – an offline reading app, allows you to save said resources for you to read later, which is especially useful when there’s lack of Internet about. Another extremely useful feature is its ability to show stats of your own website on the go, such as how many people are saving your website, as well as a discover feature of the most saved or shared articles on the app.

Read a review on Pocket

Slack

Got a team working in your business? Slack is an incredibly useful collaboration-based interaction app to allow for quick, easy communication across your business. It’s especially useful for keeping in touch if emails are too long winded – it’s a quick, easy solution to delegate tasks and keep in touch all at once.

You can easily set up a ‘channel’ to discuss a daily work objective and delegate tasks that go direct to your colleagues. It also has the facility to synch social channels to aid with research or monitor your own channels while speaking to your team. Messages and notifications are also archived to read later and are manageable through customisable settings to manage the amount of notifications you receive

Read a view on Slack

Buffer

Buffer is a social media content management app that allows you to share posts across all your social media sites. For just $10 (£8) per month it allows you to easily schedule posts for up to 10 social accounts and includes link shortening, tracking, browser extensions and a free image creator ‘Pablo’ for those on the go photos and GIFs.

Read a view on Buffer

Wave

Forgot to send that invoice? That’s where Wave comes in. Wave allows you to send invoices absolutely free with no strings attached or nasty surprises. The app also includes extremely useful resources such as expense tracking, report building and multi-user support. The catch? Literally nothing.

Read a view on Wave

Scanbot

Voted Best All-round Scanning app by The Sweet Set Up – Scanbot is quite simply a scanner in your pocket. It lets you scan documents into PDFs, making them appear clean and professional for business use.

The best feature about this app is definitely its scanning optimization process – it actually tells you to move closer to a document or prompt you that the lighting is too dark. This is very useful in order to produce the best scans of your document

Read a review on Scanbot

Canva

Canva is an excellent on-the-go editing tool to not only edit images but create your own documents, presentations and even images optimised for social media sharing.

The founder’s words about the creation of this app: “It’s created for people to do graphic design work without spending too much money and time.” This makes it the perfect app for businesses on the go or for those who are perhaps not as ‘graphic design savvy’ and need a quick solution for a social post or presentation. It also has an integrated free stock photo feature that gives this app incredible value.

Read a review on Canva

Deliveries Package Tracker

Deliveries Package Tracker allows you to track all your parcels at first glance by simply adding your tracking ID, saving you the hassle of downloading all the different couriers your orders are with!

Deliveries has vital functions such as tracing your order via Google Maps, which is integrated into the app as well as widgets that allow you to quickly get an overview of your deliveries without physically opening the app. With all this in mind, Deliveries is a user friendly, smart and easy go-to app is a must for your business.

Read a review on Deliveries Package Tracker

Shoeboxed

Shoeboxed is another great accounting-related app that will fit seamlessly with your business needs and is especially commended by small business owners such as Sally Aquire at Money Crashers.

Shoeboxed is a receipt-capturing software that enables you to manage both your expenses and even store contacts through capturing business cards you collect through networking. It is also able to track mileage and produce a report of your expenses at your disposal.

It’s essentially an expenses and CRM app that could be used seamlessly with our previously recommended app Wave

Read a review on Shoeboxed

Zazen Meditation Timer

Meditation? Relaxing? These are the last words that come to mind for a small business owner.

What the free app Zazen Meditation Timer offers is very unique – it provides that short break in the day to partake in the art of meditation and gives you valuable down time out of your busy schedule. You can optimize features such as a ‘preparation period’ that enables you to find the best space for you to unwind before you begin, as well as synch your own relaxing music to the app and make your mediation experience unique

Read a review on Zazen Meditation Timer

Asana

How does one place to manage your projects across your team sound? Asana advertises itself to make teams up to 50% more efficient.

By creating ‘Workspaces’ you are able to set these projects from personal to professional, with settings to make these projects private or public – which makes it a great app for individual as well as team use. For those of you who are extra organization savvy – you can even assign tags to your projects, such as ‘writing’ for a writing task, which easily categorizes your projects in one app.

Read a review on Asana

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John Stuart works on behalf of moderngardenrooms.com in outreach and content creation. He creates engaging content that help businesses connect with their audience and stand out from the crowd

1 comment

  1. Tecsmash says:

    TecSmash is your ultimate source of Technology news and Make Money Online product reviews. We research and review all Tech, MMO, Biz Opp and IM products.

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