Great Small Business Apps!

 photo by Steve Rhodes

Everyone is on the go these days and small businesses are learning to streamline responsibilities so they don’t lose ground. A great tool for keeping things organized on the go is your smartphone and some amazing apps! Here are five apps that can help maximize your effectiveness and help small businesses stay on track and keep up with the lightening speed of client work!


1. MiniBooks for FreshBooks. FreshBooks is an online invoice, time tracking and expense tracking system. The FreshBooks online interface offers some additional details and capabilities, but the general abilities of the MiniBooks app are pretty extensive. It is great to be on the go and check the status of an invoice or track the time of a meeting. You also have all your clients information at the tip of your fingers! For 1-2 people and five clients, you can set up a free account and use MiniBooks lite. For anything over, the cost online is $19.99/month and the app is a one-time $19.99 fee.

2. ExpenseBooks. ExpenseBooks is an app that automatically integrates with MiniBooks/FreshBooks. ExpenseBooks allows you to enter and track expenses. When Minibooks syncs, it brings all the ExpenseBooks information into the expenses section, which allows for a great report of categorized expenses. This app is $4.99 and works great with MiniBooks and FreshBooks.

3. Driver’s Log. If you have to track your mileage for travel, Driver’s Log is great. You get into your vehicle, enter the place which you are leaving from (and you can save the location for later use), record your odometer reading and it provides a timestamp. When you arrive at your destination, open the app, type in your odometer reading and viola–your trip is tracked! It is easy to use and allows you to track travel on more than one vehicle. The travel log reports can be exported into a HTML or CSV format and sent directly to your inbox. The app is $6.99, but well worth it if you travel by car more than a few times a month.

4. Paypal. If you use PayPal to make payments or receive funds, the mobile app is excellent for doing this on-the-go. Each time you open the app, you must login to your account (for privacy reasons). You can “bump” your smartphone to another to send payment or go to your account to withdraw funds or track your history. Most importantly, this app is free and it saves time by allowing you to do everything “paypal” related from the palm of your hand.

5. iDisk. If you use MobileMe , you must add the iDisk app to your smartphone. The iDisk app allows access to all your synced files, which can be a huge time saver when you need to send something to a client or need to quickly pull up a document. Directly from the app you can view your documents, browse your files, and share the document with others through a link sent via email. This is another app that is free and all you need is your MobileMe account credentials to get going!

Jen Cohen is a social media and marketing maven knocked down many times in 26 yrs. Something Creative: http://somethingcreativemarketing.com