7 Must Have Apps for Small Business Owners

Running a small business is a big job, and regardless of an entrepreneur’s experience, individuals are always looking for new ways to improve the way that their business is run. Although the ultimate aim of any business is to generate profit, it is equally important to create a healthy and happy working environment.

One way in which you can easily achieve this and increase your profit margins is to invest in apps that are specifically designed for small businesses. There are a vast array of different types of apps that can help you improve different areas of your business. For example, you can get apps to better manage your inventory, apps to help you with employee time tracking or even apps that can streamline your payments.

As the world of small business mobile apps is so vast, we have created this guide to help you find the apps to run your business more efficiently. We have split the apps that are available on the market into different categories and ranked which we think are the best. 

Best app for accounting and finance

Being able to accurately and efficiently manage your accounting and finances will ensure the success of your business and will help you maintain and promote the profit you are generating.

QuickBooks

Quickbooks is the perfect accounting software for businesses of any size, as their features cater for individual freelancers, small businesses or medium businesses. Granted, if you are a large corporation, QuickBooks likely won’t be a perfect match for you, but will suit most business owners.

Because Quickbooks is widely considered the industry leader for accounting and finance software, it is compatible with many other kinds of apps that you might want to integrate into your business. Moreover, its popularity and great reputation ensure that accountants will be happy to work with the system. There are tiers to the QuickBook package plans, but the software can essentially help you with anything that you need help with from payroll, to cash flow, tax deductions to invoice and payments.

One of the best features that QuickBooks offers is live bookkeeping. It allows you to partner with a bookkeeper who has specific expertize in your business. They can reconcile your accounts to double-check them and make sure everything is in order. They also offer plans for any budget, starting at $12 and going up to $90 a month. You will be sure to find a plan that suits all your needs at a price point that you need.

Best app for inventory management 

Inventory management is a function of business that managers and owners often disregard as unimportant when in fact, proper inventory management can make or break your business as it dictates profit margins. We therefore cannot talk about essential apps for business without mentioning inventory management apps.

Sortly 

What is the best app for inventory management? In our opinion, the best inventory management app that proves to be universally beneficial for businesses of any size is Sortly. The variation in Sortly’s plans and packages ensure that there is an option for every business. They are one of the only options available that provide a completely free version, which is perfect for small start up businesses. Alternatively, they also offer a custom plan option that allows you to tailor the plan to your businesses’ specific needs.

Their features include the option to group items by category and allows you to customize within these categories to ensure that everything that needs to be tracked is being tracked. They also have a QR/barcode system that allows you to easily log everything in your inventory and check what you need or are running low on.

Best app for payments

Point of Sales (POS) and payments are arguably one of the most important factors of a business. Their importance means that business management teams cannot afford any mistakes in this field. That is why relying on a digital app is the best solution to ensure your payments are accurately accounted for and collated in one centralized place.

Square

Square have made quite the name for themselves in the business world. Square is an innovative company that has streamlined the payment system of countless businesses, making the entire process far easier and convenient for both businesses and customers.

The contactless payment processing options that Square offers allows you to process payments online or on the phone and have them instantly synced up on your centralized POS system.

It also keeps records of past purchases and remembers the buying habits of past customers, which in turn allows you to send out personalized ads and marketing tools. It is a software that offers far more than just a simple purchasing and payment system and therefore earns its spot as the best payment app for local businesses.

Best app for time tracking

One of the most important components of a business is the employees. Having dedicated, loyal and skilled employees will help to ensure your company makes as much profit as possible. Regardless of the business you are in, it is essential to ensure your employees are not only well looked after but also that you have the capabilities to keep on top of your employees, as their work is just as much your responsibility as business manager or owner as it is theirs.  

Mobile-Punch

Mobile-Punch is the best time tracking app available thanks to its breadth of features and user friendly set up. The app works on both android and ios devices, making it accessible to all workers and businesses.

Mobile-Punch makes clocking in and out and keeping a track of hours employees have worked far easier than the traditional paper methods. With the app, all you need to do is have a mobile phone in hand, which everyone does these days, and with the click of the button your employees can record when they get in and leave work. The app automatically calculates the hours they have worked, making payments far easier, accurate and faster.

One of the key features of Mobile-Punch that sets it apart is its geolocation feature which validates the presence of workers on the field. This offers several advantages to businesses in terms of resource allocation, task assignment, and itinerary organization. Moreover, Mobile-Punch, similarly to the packages offered by Sortly, allows you to create customizable plans, hence ensuring you can find a package that suits your budget and your needs.

Advantages of Mobile-Punch

Best app for communication

Communication is key to running a good business. Whether it is maintaining communication with staff and employees to keep everything running, or maintaining good lines of communication with your customers so they can know of all the great things you are offering, communication is at the heart of it.

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is probably one of the most well-known forms of communication, and for good reason. The app allows you to easily communicate with your employees and manage projects in a seamless manner through video calling or group chat platforms.

Microsoft Teams helps you to easily compartmentalize your working life thanks to the fact that you can set up channels within the app. Channels are essentially different groups within which you can call, message and share documents with members.

Moreover, when you create a Teams group, a sharepoint is created. The sharepoint is a file sharing tool where Microsoft Teams stores any and all documents that are shared in the group. That way, you have all the relevant documents for each group in a safe and convenient place.

Best app for customer relationship management

Just as employees are an integral aspect to any business, so are customers. After all, without customers, there is no business. You therefore need to maintain healthy and strong customer relationships, which can be achieved through successful customer relationship management.

Belly

One of the best ways to maintain booming customer relationships is to implement a comprehensive loyalty program. Belly is a great app that will help you do that. Whilst Belly is on the pricier side, you get a whole lot of features included in the package, and with the extra revenue you will inevitably generate from customers, it is a worthy investment.

The app allows you to digitally manage loyalty programs. It also collects data from your customers to allow you to create customizable marketing campaigns that you can send out. It is geared at increasing the reach of your business to promote success.

Best app for project management

Project management is the final branch of business management that can benefit greatly from having an app organize and run it. Project management is essentially what keeps everything running in a business so it is integral to have a fully comprehensive and functioning system to ensure that everything is running smoothly.

Basecamp

In our opinion, Basecamp is the best project management software available on the market, mainly due to the categorization of projects that it allows, which makes everything far simpler and more organized.

Basecamp allows you to split all your projects up, with everything related to each project appearing only in the folder relating to that project. This helps to ensure you do not get confused when you have multiple projects going on at once. It features a message board, to-do lists and schedules to make sure everything is in check at any one point in time.

Overview

Running a small business is difficult, especially if you are a new entrepreneur with little experience. Therefore, all the help you can get will improve the overall functioning of your business.

From project management and time tracking apps to help the internal functions of your business and improving the management of employees, to payment and marketing apps that make your customers’ lives easier, apps are the 21st century digital solution to age-old issues of ineffective business management. As most of these platforms and software offer differing price points for any budget, you will be able to find options that suit the needs of your business.

Find out how to save money with mobile time tracking