When it comes to running a business, it’s important to take advantage of every tool you can find to make things run more efficiently. This is especially true of small businesses where you don’t have as many employees to take care of organization, payment and other tasks. Fortunately, the following apps are examples of tools that can help your small business become more profitable by helping you save time and keep organized.
PayPal – Stay Connected to Your Transactions
PayPal is easily one of the most used services for payment on the Internet. It’s become practically a staple for bother buyers and sellers. Additionally, both casual users and business users will find plenty to like about the app. Some features that are especially useful for streamlining the payment process for small business owners include the following.
- Automated Shopping Carts
This allows you to setup an easy way for customers to buy items through stores like eBay. You can get “add to cart” buttons, add shipping costs automatically, and even receive automatic records about all of the funds that you have going in and out through that part of your business.
- Accept Credit Cards in Person
As part of the Virtual Terminal program, you can sign up for a PayPal card reader that will connect to the top of your phone or other compatible consumer tech. PayPal will actually send you the reader device for free in the mail.
There are multiple options for taking payments in person. CardFellow has a great comparison of PayPal and Square, and this is another great comparison can be found on Digital Trends.
Image via Google Play
Expensify – Keep Track of All Expenses
Managing expenses for a business can be a colossal time sync. The amount of time and paperwork required to keep track of everything your business and employees are spending can be staggering. This app lets you and your employees take pictures of receipts with your phone and upload them to an account.
The app can also keep track of additional business details including the following:
- Time
By adding a rate per hour and an amount of time, the app can calculate any expense incurred based on time. An example could include any additional temporary personnel hired.
- Mileage
The app can either let you add mileage directly, or use the “GPS” feature to automatically add mileage based on your phone’s changing GPS location.
Image via iTunes
Google Drive – Store Information in a Limitless Cloud
One serious concern for small business owners is how you get employees who aren’t in the same area to work on the same projects.
Google Drive is a free solution for organizing all of your company’s documents in a single place. You can create a single document spreadsheet that all employees can add to no matter where they are. You can also give yourself, employees, outside collaborators or clients access to documents in a fast and efficient way, straight from your mobile phone, tablet, or other device.
In addition to Google Drive, the Dropbox app is a great way to share documents and resources among employees, even if you aren’t in the same office.
Image via Google Play
Timebox – Efficiently Distribute Your Time
Timebox lets you keep track of the time you spend on various different tasks using the Pomodoro technique, which breaks down you work into cycles called pomodori.
Each cycle lasts for 25 minutes, with a 5 minute break given right after to help you refocus. Once you do four of the cycles in a row, the app will give you a longer break of 15-20 minutes. You can easily look down at the app on your phone at any given point to get a sense of how much time you have left in each cycle or task.
Looking for more time-saving tips? Check out this edition of Brilliant Bloggers.
Image via Google Play
Overall, management apps will do much more than save you time. They’ll save you energy and sanity as well, which small business owners often need to keep their stress low and their profits up.
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