The iPad has developed into an incredibly useful business tool, with hundreds, if not thousands of brilliant apps out there to help you run your new small business. The only problem with there being so many available apps is that it is sometimes difficult to work out which ones are worth downloading, or even paying for, and which ones are best avoided. This article will recommend some of the most popular and most respected iPhone apps for business and finance:
Mint – Mint is one of the heavyweights of iPad apps, having been around for a long time and proven its pedigree as both an iPhone and iPad app. Mint is a personal finance and money management app and allows users to securely access all of their separate online banking accounts in addition to tracking and calculating the user’s monthly, weekly and daily outgoings and expenditure. As well as that it allows you to input any cash transactions and pending items on the fly so you can make sure that all your accounts are entirely up to date. Furthermore it encourages you to set up individual budgets foe everything from entertaining expenses to travel and food. An indispensable financial app.
iTalk Recorder – A basic app that does what it says on the tin and turns your iPad into a Dictaphone, allowing you to quickly record all your thoughts and plans about future world domination without having to type or write.
Drop Box – Drop Box has become an important tool for many people who use iPads, simply because it provides a good place to store and organize files in a way that the iPad doesn’t let you. It will sync with all your iOs devices and backup everything important to the cloud. With Drop Box you’ll never be required to email yourself documents again!
Lynda.com – Lynda.com is one of the best sites on the web for software training, offering a massive library of tutorials that will guide you through everything from HTML to Excel, Photoshop to Quark and any other computer based learning you can think of. The Lynda app allows you to take advantage of all that training whilst on the move – so you can learn whilst on a train or plane or anywhere else you want to squeeze in a bit of training.
Evernote – For entrepreneurs, small business owners and anyone else starting out in business Evernote is an absolutely indispensable app. It’s free, simple to use and acts as a catch-all for every media you come across in your day-to-day activities, helping you to remember everything you need to remember. It syncs across all of your devices and allows you to keep your ideas and documents synced and backed up. Not only can you take notes, you can also write to-do lists, capture important photos, dictate voice messages and best of all your files will all be searchable.
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Expensify – Running your own business means doing your own tax returns and that means filling out endless expenses forms. So that you don’t waste all of your time on this kind of stuff – Expensify does it for you. Expensify syncs with all of your credit cards and bank accounts and tracks your purchases that are business-related. You can also use the camera on your phone or iPad to collect all of your paper receipts and then Expensify will collate them, even classifying them into categories such as travel and entertaining. At the end of every month it will give you a PDF outlining all of your monthly expenses.
Esther is a financial blogger. She writes about everything from small business advice to financial software and from taxes to mortgages to purchase order lending rates.
