While the iPhone is well known for its entertainment features, it’s also a great asset for your business. For those users who are running their own small businesses, the iPhone can be a great help at keeping track of your orders, costs, and managing your contacts. Whether you’re a small business owner, a contractor, or a freelancer, these apps will help keep you connected to the office, no matter where you’re at.
Keep track of your expenses with these iPhone apps
For keeping track of your expenses, you can’t beat the Shoeboxed app for the iPhone. Not only is it free, but it will save you a ton of time when tax season comes around. Shoeboxed allows users to capture an image on their iPhone of a receipt, organize it, and store it online. Instead of keeping all your receipts in your shoebox at home, store it on Shoeboxed for quick review.
In the same vein, the iSpend app helps keep track of more expenses than just your receipts. iSpend is a great app for helping keep track of your expenses as you’re on the go. It only takes a moment to enter your expenses, like car rental or cab fare, and then quickly organizes them into manageable categories. The app is a little pricey at $9.99, but it’s also easily customizable, making it your best friend on business trips.
However, if you don’t feel like spending $10 on an app like this, there’s always the Expense2Go for Salesforece app. It works with salesforce.com to keep track of your purchases and receipts. Best of all, it makes it super easy when it comes time to send in your expense report. This one works like a combination of Shoeboxed and iSpend, and it won’t break the bank for you to give it a spin.
Keeping track of your time with these iPhone apps
For managing your time, you can’t beat the Minibooks app, available for $9.99. This little tool keeps a log of your hours worked right on your iPhone. One of the coolest features of this app is that it will allow you to keep track of multiple projects at once, and even if you turn off your iPhone, it will continue to track your time for you. The app also helps you when it comes time for billing, making everything organized and easy to invoice. Best of all, your can try out the lite version for free to see if you like it.
For a little less money, there’s a great app called iPunchclock, which works like time clock at a factory. At only $4.99, it makes this app the cheapest I’ve come across so far for tracking time on projects. Users can input their hourly rate and get started on your project while iPunchclock tracks your hours. It’s not quiet as good at organizing your time, but for someone who just needs a pocket timer, it works just fine.
Keep track of your taxes with this iPhone app
The Contractor, Freelancer, Small Business Tax Calculator isn’t just an app with an absurdly long name; it’s a great tool for helping to plan your taxes ahead of time. This app is perfect for anyone whose position fits in the title. By typing in your hourly or weekly rate, the calculator will tell you what you monthly rate is, how much of it you’ll owe in taxes and how much you get to take home. This is perfect for planning a budget because it lets you know what actual cash you’ll have after taxes before you even pay them. Plus, it’s free, and that’s great too!
Keep track of your contacts and customers with this iPhone app
Lastly, every small business owner and freelance knows how important it is to stay connected. There’s not much point to any of the other apps if you don’t have your contact straightened out, and for keeping track of these there are few better programs than the LinkedIn app. LinkedIn helps manage your business contacts for free from your iPhone. Better yet, it helps you establish new contacts, which can be just as rewarding as keeping tabs on the ones you have already.
