Here are five apps that will make your business sturdier and more organized. There’s so much to track as a small business owner. Stacks of unorganized papers, making up numbers for your accountant, losing unread emails in an email chain. Whatever your pain point, there’s probably an app for it.
Matt and Curtis talk about apps to make your life easier.
We'll talk about the best tech tools for small business. Make life easier by only having to remember one password, snapping pics of documents then shredding them, and automatically audit-proofing your business. We'll also discuss tools that improve communication and task distribution within your teams.
Lastpass
What it’s for: Password management
Why it’s important: Your number of business and personal online accounts is ever-expanding. We don’t have to tell you how important it is to keep them safe and secure. We all know we’re not supposed to use the same password, but who hasn’t when there’s so much to keep track of? Not to mention that resetting forgotten passwords is the pits.
Why it’s awesome: Lastpass is your new best friend. Once you sign up, you create one long masterpass. Then log every password for every online account (making sure they’re all unguessable and unique). Boom. Your passwords are unique, safe and you never have to remember them again.
Scanbot
What it’s for: Digitizing paper and receipts
Why it’s important: Paper sucks. It’s easy to put off dealing with it and even easier to lose. However, digital files in the cloud are eternal. As a small business owner, you have to keep track of receipts and other critical documents for taxes, for your life and for your business. If you stay on top of things, you can digitize everything and never have to worry about digging through shoeboxes and file folders again.
Why it’s awesome: Scanbot turns your phone into a scanner. You can scan paper as soon as it arrives, and Scanbot will remember your cloud accounts and recent files, so you can instantly file and be done with it.
You can also send and share uploaded documents by fax or email instantly.
Trello
What it’s for: Task management
Why it’s important: To-do lists are great, but how do you know when something’s done once and for all? and boy is it a hassle to keep following up with people. Just as Slack centralizes your communication, Trello centralizes everything that needs to get done, who’s doing it and when it’s due.
Why it’s awesome: Trello is a favourite of the True North marketing team. We have a team of freelancers who take care of all of our marketing. On top of what they do for True North, they have their own businesses and other clients to look after.
Trello keeps us all on task. You can set up boards for projects, and, within the boards, cards for specific tasks. The cards assign tasks and deadlines to specific people, who are alerted of approaching deadlines with automated emails. Once a task is finished, the person simply clicks a ‘done’ checklist, and moves it off the board.
Slack
What it’s for: Team communication
Why it’s important: Whether your team shares an office or are a collection of freelancers working from all over the pace, you want to know what’s going on and who’s doing what. Good communication builds strong teams.
Why it’s awesome: Slack creates a communication hub that works seamlessly from all devices. You can organize your communications by channels, where only the people on certain projects receive messages or communicate through direction messages. It works the same way people communicate in their lives, but separates their business communication from their personal.
MileIQ
What it’s for: Tracking your mileage
Why it’s important: If you’re self employed, your mileage is a tax deduction. In fact, the $/kilometre rate has just gone up. But you need to have an accurate log of your business-related mileage. But, who really has time to update a digital or paper logbook after every drive?
Why it’s awesome: You don’t have to log anything. When MileIQ detects you’re in a vehicle, it turns on and starts tracking your kilometres. It tracks all your trips and organizes them in an app. Each trip shows up on your screen, and you swipe it to the right or the left, to categorize as Business (right) and Personal (left). The app will track all of your data for you so it’s ready and audit-proof come tax time.
The Basic version is free and allows for 40 free drives/month. You can upgrade to unlimited drives for $5.99/month or pay for the whole year at $4.99/month.
We hope one or all of these apps makes your business life easier. Getting things off your plate so you can focus on what you do best and love doing is going to keep you fueled and grow your business. And if you want to get bookkeeping and accounting off your plate, we are your small business accountant specialists! Reach out to us.
Read more about Small Business Basics topics that may be helpful to you and your small business.
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