Once you’ve gotten your business up and running, it’s a good idea to modernize the rest of your business and be organized. Being organized is important, and guess what, there’s an app for that : ) Developing mobile capability on your site means that there’s apps you can use, at home or on the go, to streamline your process. These apps make it easy to respond to emails, organize your projects and calendars, share files, advertise, and facilitate your record-keeping. If you’re tired of missing appointments, wasting time, losing important data, or worrying about retaining customers, upgrading with these five apps can help. As small business owners ourselves, we know the value of tools that make our workload lighter. We use these apps to stay organized every day, and they are all simple, easy to download and use, and will increase your flexibility in this age of tech. Even choosing just one at a time can bring added benefits to your business—whether you are a start-up or looking to enhance your daily operations. Without further ado, our five favorite apps for running and organizing your business:
1. Google Apps
Google has several apps that we’ve found useful in managing our business. Gmail is an excellent e-mail provider. It’s user-friendly—you can organize your contacts, send mass emails, organize your inbox with tabs and folders, archive messages you might need later, and simply type a keyword into the search box to find that one particular email. With Gmail it’s also easy to create a sign-in that’s unique from your personal email address. You will look more professional and it is simple to route your emails to whichever inbox suits you best (whether it’s sending your business emails to your personal inbox or vice versa). Calendar is another great app to use from Google—you can sync with your staff, create appointments and reminders, visualize the day, week, or month ahead, and even get alerts on your phone if you like. Similar to the personal versus business email address, you can create separate calendars for the different facets of your life and check both at the same time. It’s colorful, searchable and user friendly as well. Our other favorite google app is Google Drive. With google drive you can upload and share larger files, like videos or spreadsheets. You can use the sharing element of the app to let your staff edit documents or input data onto a group spreadsheet. It’s also a great way to utilize cloud storage, meaning your large files will be saved to the app instead of take up space on your computer or phone. With Gmail, Google Calendar or Google Drive, it’s a breeze to stay organized and on top of your game—start exploring them today!
2. Instagram
Instagram is one of the easiest and most valuable social media apps for small businesses to use. People are drawn to aesthetically pleasing images and Instagram makes it easy to post beautiful ones. By posting a picture of your products, your customers using your products, behind-the-scenes shots and more, you can establish trust and camaraderie with potential clients. There’s a reason for the saying a picture is worth a thousand words—with a few simple images you can attract your client base. In addition, Instagram lets customers post their own photos about your products or business. Let’s say you run a jewelry business—customers can post a picture where they’re wearing your gorgeous rings and voila, you have user-generated marketing material that didn’t cost you a dime. Instagram works well across platforms—you can direct customers to your website and vice versa easily and you can share the pictures multiple times across other social media like Facebook or Twitter. Instagram is also great for connecting you to folks who are in the same business—you can use the search engine with keywords or hashtags to find similar businesses, thus keeping tabs quite literally on the competition. Instagram is also fun! You can define your brand, explain your services, or push your artistic side super easily.
3. Quickbooks Online
Quickbooks online essentially acts as a virtual secretary. With remote access, you can send files to your staff or your accountant from any computer or mobile device meaning you are chained no longer to your desk chair! If you have an accountant, you can sync your books seamlessly, so you both stay on top of your financials. Quickbooks can be connected with your bank so you can automatically download and organize bank and credit card transactions. You can use the app to track inventory, send invoices, statements and reports, receive payments, sync with your other apps, snap photos of receipts, manage bills, track miles, and pay your employees. Beyond all these services, Quickbooks has a stellar support system for users as well—you can contact their assistance team using their chat option and thus quickly resolve issues and get professional feedback.
4. Dropbox
Share files easily and safely with Dropbox. This app enables you to send large files to employees or customers. You can use it to sign and send documents, share pictures or videos, and have the capacity for clients, collaborators or staff to easily send files back to you. When it comes to personal cloud storage, Dropbox can’t be beat. Not only can you automatically backup your files online, thus freeing space on your devices, you can also easily share and edit these documents. Win win!
5. Trello
If you’re someone who is a visual learner, Trello is the app for you. It’s one of our favorite organizational tools because it acts as a virtual whiteboard, but one where a post-it note can’t drop on the floor to be forgotten! A Trello board is essentially a web page containing lists. Items within the lists are called cards and can be dragged and dropped onto other lists or reorganized within the lists. Each card can be amended with checklists, discussion notes, attachments, images, deadlines, colored labels and more. Think back to the old days of notecards and post-its spread out on a kitchen table—that’s how Trello works! The horizontal orientation of these lists with bright graphics and moveable cards give you a top-down, bird’s eye view of your projects. Project management can be one of the more challenging tasks as a small business owner—it’s hard to make sure everyone’s on the same page or to track who is making what progress on a particular task. Using Trello means that everyone gets to be on the same page.
