Hello hello! Welcome back to Coffee with J for another blog post.
First thing first let's talk about this weather. The sun has finally been out and about and showing us why we love summer! I love it so much; I went to float the Bow on Saturday with some friends as well as just really enjoyed the outdoors over the weekend! We are also de-weeding the garden because it has gotten a little bit out of control, and it is truly amazing how much the veggies thrive when the weeds are gone.
As you can see on the title, today's blog post is about the top apps that are amazing for a small business owner! Whether it's just you and a couple employees, or you have contracts with commission based workers, these will be so helpful for your company. These apps will be divided into categories to help you determine which one you need.
Finance
-Quickbooks: With this app you are able to track, write up, and send out invoices. You can take photos and track your receipts for tax season, as well as match your transactions from your business bank account. And the cool thing about this app is that you have a bar graph where it shows you how much money you are bringing in every month as well as how much your expenses were; and then after seeing both it'll show the difference of what your actual profit was.
-Freshbooks: This app is almost the exact same as Quickbooks; you can write up invoices, track your receipts and your bank account except the only difference is that it also tracks your working hours! So if you need to see how much time you actually worked on something, or if you get your employees to download the app they can also track their hours for salary, you can see what you owe for hourly pay.
Communication
-Skype: Most people know about this since it is very popular, and honestly nothing compares to this! It will always be a classic because you can share and upload photos and files to the chat while you are face timing, you can share your desktop screen so that explaining things is easier, you can chat with up to 25 people (wow!) and if you want you can either do video calls, or just a regular call, or even just an MSN type deal where you type it all out.
-Mailchimp: This email server is probably the coolest email server I've ever seen; it shows how many people have opened/not opened, for ordering online it shows how many people added the item to their cart and how many actually purchased it. It keeps tabs on your social media posts and then the coolest thing is that you can have specific tags for your clients to make it easier to send out promotions (example of a tag would be business, female, male, wedding, etc). It also has a feature to resend out an email to people who haven't opened it yet.
Management
-Omnifocus: Yes we all have a calendar and notes and reminders in our phone, however Omnifocus is an all for one situation! You can quickly and easily add new actions with tags to separate them, organize them into specific projects or categories to see what is for work or for personal life. There is also a review page to see your projects daily. Omnifocus also syncs up to your apple watch for on the go.
-Settings: Not really a specific app but for productivity you can go into your settings and click on screen time. You can put restrictions on certain apps like social media (obviously unless you are an instagram influencer), and it'll tell you when you've reached your limit. Very helpful to not only stay mindful of your time on your phone, but keeps your productivity up by reminding you of your time.
Payment Service
-Square: I feel like most people have probably heard about Square since it is very popular, but this is perfect for anyone who owns like a small little store or if you have a food truck. It's a small, portable card reader you plug into your phone and is able to take card payment through your phone. As well as they have a point of sale option where you can have the payment through an iPad, and a small tap machine where you can use it for visa, master card, AMEX, Discover credit cards, and INTERAC Flash debit cards.
Organization
-Google Docs/Drive: When it comes to needing to see everything in one place PLUS let it be available for multiple people to see as well, Google Docs and Google Drive are perfect. You can upload files and photos, plus these two sync together to make it easier to go back and forth. The coolest feature is that you can make notes for everyone to see in real time; so they will see you typing out, deleting a comment, giving pointers, and they can immediately change it.
Hopefully one or more of these apps helps you out, if they do let us know which one you use! As well, if you have any other apps you found very helpful for your business make sure to comment down below, on facebook, or on instagram to help others know about them as well.
Well, I will see you all next week for another blog post, have a great week!
Xoxo,
Callista
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