Best Apps for Small Business Owners of All Times – 2017 Edition
In the era of accelerated technological progress, the management of small businesses has become much easier. For small businesses, the use of digital technologies is not a luxury, but a vital necessity. When every person on the team is worth their weight in gold, then applications that automate important organizational issues help facilitate business processes, and enable leisure time and self-development.
Now small business owners can monitor company milestones, handle payroll, employee issues, and anything else that pops up, and adjust the small business from a gadget. In this list, we offer some of the best applications to manage a small business from any corner of the world.
Best Accounting Apps for Small Businesses
Many small business owners hate bookkeeping, and that’s okay—if you’re not an accountant, you don’t necessarily have the expertise. Here are best accounting applications that will make your life easier and help you learn how to love accounting!
Xero
Xero is great online accounting software designed to offer a more efficient and enjoyable way for a small business to manage its accounts. It sets the standard for accounting software to help small businesses stay on top of their finances and work with their advisers.
Xero key features for small businesses
The key features of Xero that are valuable for a small business include:
- Visibility of all your bank accounts, credit cards, and PayPal balances, unpaid invoices, expense requirements, reports, and contacts.
- Super fast bank reconciliation statement.
- On-site billing. Allows you to create, approve and send invoices directly from an Android device.
- Create expense reports simply by uploading a digital copy or a photograph of receipts.
- Remote access from anywhere. Call customers and suppliers directly from the application (find them on the map too), and then save any notes you need right back to Xero.
- Bookkeeping is easy. Get everything you need to manage and track your SMB income and expenses.
- Easy tracking of invoices and expenses.
How small business owners could use Xero
Being accounting software, Xero imports all of your financial transactions into its database and links them to the corresponding accounting transactions. It allows you to manage your time efficiently due to its easy to manage interface and data access. Xero uses the best of the Internet and mobile communications to allow small businesses to manage their finances at anytime and anywhere.
What small business owners think about Xero
FreeAgent
Being accounting software, Xero imports all of your financial transactions into its database and links them to the corresponding accounting transactions. It allows you to manage your time efficiently due to its easy to manage interface and data access. Xero uses the best of the Internet and mobile communications to allow small businesses to manage their finances at anytime and anywhere.
FreeAgent key features for small businesses
The key FreeAgent features that are valuable for a small business include:
- Flexible 12-month, 6-month and 3-month cash flow view.
- Cost is $20 per month, and no fee is charged for the first 30 days of trial. Cancel the service at any time without fines or the need to break the contract.
- Customize the interface using drag and drop functions.
- Enables users to view recent expenses, bills, invoices, and projects.
- Gives access to live bank balance charts for all of your accounts.
- Year-to-date Profit and Loss snapshots, including details of distributable reserves.
- Tax Timeline of important upcoming tax dates and deadlines.
- If you have access to the Internet, you can view your account from any computer with your login and password.
How small business owners could use FreeAgent
Unlike many accounting software products that limit transactions, if you do not buy a more expensive package, FreeAgent offers unlimited users, customers, bills, expenses and other functions for one monthly fee. It also has a project management feature to help you keep track of billable hours. FreeAgent is best for freelancers, consultants, and other very small businesses.
FreeAgent does not require its users to install special software onto computers,guarantees the security of stored information, and is compatible with both PCs and Mac computers.
What small business owners think about FreeAgent
QuickBooks
QuickBooks Online is accounting software based on cloud computing. It is an amazing solution for small business owners since it has all of the necessary accounting features for all types of small businesses, including freelancers, consultants, online sellers, shop and restaurant owners, service providers and many more.
QuickBooks key features for small businesses
QuickBooks key features for small businesses
The key QuickBooks features that are valuable for a small business include:
- QuickBooks offers the best and most affordable paid packages and services for various types of companies.
- The app offers access to financial reporting, revenue and expenditure tracking, the ability to download bank and credit card transactions, automatic data backups, and quarterly and year-end tax preparation and registration.
- The software is easy to use.
- Saves time for business owners and does not add to the already tense nature of small business accounting.
- QuickBooks is all about automating tasks. The software can automate all of the recurring invoices and pay bills to synchronize data through the bank and credit card transactions.
- Automatically adjust and categorize costs by eliminating the tedious, time-consuming task of manual execution for each transaction.
- QuickBooks eliminates the need to create financial reports from scratch with its wide collection of built-in reports.
- Offers both phone and conversation support, which can be accessed directly via the QuickBooks website
How small business owners could use QuickBooks
Whether you’re just starting out or hoping to expand, QuickBooks can provide you with basic functionality, or it can be measured and configured with advanced features to match the needs of your growing business. It’s also completely cloud-based, so you have access to software and your data from a desktop or mobile device anytime and anywhere you have an Internet connection.
What small business owners think about QuickBooks
Wave
Whether you’re just starting out or hoping to expand, QuickBooks can provide you with basic functionality, or it can be measured and configured with advanced features to match the needs of your growing business. It’s also completely cloud-based, so you have access to software and your data from a desktop or mobile device anytime and anywhere you have an Internet connection.
Key features of Wave for small businesses
The key Wave features that are valuable for a small business include:
- Wave Accounting is extremely simple to get started and use. An account can be created in seconds by entering an email address and desired password.
- It’s free of charge.
- Wave has a user-friendly interface which explains in simple, non-technical language what you need to know about your selection. Setup is easy and the dashboard gives you a useful overview of your business.
- Give your accountant or your business partner access to your accounting.
- All of your data is in the cloud, which makes access from anywhere easy—accounting can be done on the go.
- Save money on business services. Wave has partnerships with many suppliers that offer numerous products and services to help you manage your small business.
- The app has an automated transaction import.
- Reporting functionality includes key business reports including: Balance Sheet, Profit-Loss, Accounts Receivable and Payable aging, Sales Taxes. All reports can be output in PDF or exported to Excel.
- Wave includes the option of calculating a small salary you can use to calculate salaries and taxes, and even pay them.
How small business owners could use Wave
Wave has all the basic functions, that a small business needs for its accounting activities. These includes the ability to track expenses, create financial reports, send invoices, bank account links and more. And unlike other free services that limit usage, Wave offers unlimited access to everything. This means that you can use it for as many customers, accounts, expenses and reports as your business needs.
As a free software, Wave is best for companies that are just starting or planning to stay small. Definitely, it’s good for self-employed people, such as entrepreneurs, freelancers and consultants, and very small companies made by fewer than 10 employees. But if your business grows or has expansion plans, you could quickly outgrow the Wave.
What small business owners think about Wave
(Experts’ review)
Best Small Business Apps for Time Tracking
No matter how much time we have, it’s never enough. Our time is our most valuable and scarce resources—and one of the most mistreated. Time dictates how early we wake up, how long we spend at lunch, when we eat dinner and how late we go to sleep. It’s what helps determine our salary or pay rate, and limits how much we get done in one day.
Toggl
Toggl is a perfect app for small business owners that enables teams to track time for project management.
Toggl key features for small businesses
The key Toggl features that are valuable for a small business include:
- Toggl has a free plan with limited features and a Pro version which costs $5 per person per month. It includes a free 30 day trial after switching to the Pro version.
- Add up to 5 people to your team free of charge; additional people can be added with the pro-version.
- Provides the opportunity to create an unlimited number of projects and a large hierarchy of tasks.
- Reports can be exported to PDF and CSV.
- Use tags and so on.
- Enables sharing reports with customers and colleagues.
- Business owners and team managers can set the rate for hours worked.
- Allows integration with Basecamp, Freshbooks, ActiveCollab, QuickBooks, and Planner.
- It has an easy-to-use and sleek design.
How small business owners could use Toggl
With Toggl you can tag time entries in order to group activities (e.g. writing) across multiple projects or clients. After upgrading to the pro version you can indicate whether a task is billable or not. Toggl gives you a variety of report types, filters, and the ability to bookmark reports or export them. The reports provided by Toggl are some of the best reports we saw among the list of apps.
The best option is that all of your employees can use Toggle and it allows you to divide them into different groups in order to stay organized.
What small business owners think about Toggl
Eternity Time Log
Eternity Time Log is a simple application for time tracking. It helps business owners focus on specific tasks and determine how much time they spend on each. It has a user-friendly interface and the ability to add notes, favorites, as well as the statistics function to each activity
Eternity Time Log key features for small businesses
The key Eternity Time Log features that are valuable for a small business include:
- Eternity Time Log gives you the freedom to have any number of activities in any hierarchy you like.
- It has a user-friendly interface.
- Provides you with multiple timers and and allows to adjust times for the current and previous log entries.
- The ChartFlow option offers navigable pie charts for reports.
- Your data is safe, since you can WiFi backup to PC or Eternity on other device. You can also backup email messages and Dropbox.
Provides access to daily, weekly, monthly and custom reports view with detailed statistics. You can also export reports and timesheets to Excel (via email with .csv attachments or Dropbox)
How small business owners could use Eternity Time Log
Eternity Time Log will help you focus on selected tasks, and at the same time find out how much time you spend on them. The app promises to help you time your work, rest and play (these are the main categories loaded into its activities list). Tapping on each category brings up a timer window with a big start button. To log time on a particular task, you use this timer and add a note or a tag for later viewing. Later, you can look at the activities and filter them by tag or even by hour ranges, giving you insight into your work patterns. The application is simple, but has all of the necessary functions, including notes, ready types of activities, favorites and, of course, the statistics section.
What small business owners think about Eternity Time Log
RescueTime
Online RescueTime service is one of the best timekeepers. It tracks all sites that the user visits, groups them by categories and generates statistics of the time spent on the Internet. This is valuable tool for those who constantly strive for maximum productivity.
RescueTime key features for small businesses
The key RescueTime features that are valuable for a small business include:
- RescueTime as a user friendly interface which makes using the software enjoyable.
- It has detailed reports that show which applications and websites you spent time on, how much time you spent in different categories, how productive you were, and whether you achieved your goals.
- Weekly Email report summarizes the user’s activities and productivity score.
- Users are allowed to set goals to help improve productivity. Progress can be viewed on the dashboard, in the weekly email report, and in the goals report.
- With the pro version you can block distracting sites.
- Some parts of your day can’t be logged automatically. The RescueTime Premium feature enables you to log offline time for meetings, phone calls, or even your morning commute.
- Alerts can be created to notify you of just about anything.
How small business owners could use RescueTime
RescueTime consists of two parts— a program that monitors your activity on the computer, and an online service that collects this information, processes it, and gives you statistics, generating various reports. Monitor activity in programs, on sites, idle time, the most busy hours of work, and activity in certain applications. You can add tags to the programs and sites and your reports will get a completed form—you’ll know exactly how much time you spend on work, how much on entertainment, and how much just disappears doing nothing. All reports grouped by tags can be detailed by comparing the actions you prefer. If there is data that is best not to share, you can exclude it.
What small business owners think about RescueTime
Everhour
Everhour is intuitive and straightforward time tracking software that offers a comprehensive feature set that addresses all of your time tracking needs. It is an ideal solution for companies and organizations that want to be on top of their time without having to exit their favorite management environment.
Everhour key features for small businesses
The key Everhour features that are valuable for a small business include:
- Accurate time tracking. Employees can manually enter a time or use the timer just with one click. Personal estimates and progress bars will let them stay within the deadlines and budgets.
- Flexible reporting. Clear your processes through highly customized reports. You can export them and share them with colleagues or clients, or make them private.
- Seamless integration. Keep using your current project management tool—Everhour will complete it just in two steps. See how native-looking and highly adopted it is.
- Data relevance. Everhour continuously syncs with your project management tool to keep tasks, projects, members, and tags always up-to-date with the freshest data.
- Progress indicators. Check efficiency at a glance with distinct progress indicators. Watch the progress of your tasks and its’ participants.
- Task logs history. Learn the full history of task time and estimates. See who used the timer or logged manually, who made the change and when, and what the change was.
- Significantly improved transparency for the client with comprehensive and tailored reporting.
- Create accurate estimates and budgets, and synchronize efforts via collaboration and communication.
- Monitor activities and progress of all team members.
How small business owners could use Everhour
Reporting in Everhour provides you numerous filtering options to dive deep into where you spend your time. What’s even better is that it comes with several great integrations (e.g. Xero and Freshbooks) so you can easily invoice your time and projects.
Everhour’s reporting tools are so flexible and customizable that you can easily make the reports look the way you want (add columns, change order, apply filters and formatting, etc.). With information coming from various aspects of your projects, such as tags, estimates, projects, milestones, you can dive deep into each task, analyze all of the information, and have actionable insights that can guide you to perform better and deliver projects on time without going over budget.
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