The best apps are the ones that give business owners and entrepreneurs flexibility. Whether they sell services or merchandise, rely on employees or work alone, an owner's talents and energies should be concentrated on the things that count. The best apps are the ones that use automation to free up an entrepreneur's already limited time. Here are six apps that help business owners manage their money, their merchandise, their marketing and more.
Get Landing Pages that Pay with Gospaces.com
Gospaces.com is designed for anyone who makes money online, from authors to artists to developers to entrepreneurs. Gospace enables online sellers to quickly and easily set up landing pages that are integrated with payments. The first $50 you earn every month are free, and any profits after that cost $9 per month plus 3 percent transaction fee. Gospaces makes it easy to set up landing pages whether you're selling physical products, downloads or subscriptions.
Make Accounting, Bookkeeping and Invoicing Easy — and Free — with Wave
Mint might be the most popular, or at least the best known, of the free, web-based personal and business accounting apps. But other software developers have expanded on the format, most notably, Wave. The crisp, intuitive dashboard gives entrepreneurs a snapshot of their bills, their receipts, their invoices, their payroll and more — and it does it for free.
Ship, Track, Record and Move Merchandise with ShipStation
ShipStation is for anyone who sells physical merchandise online. The service integrates with top carriers such as UPS, FedEx, USPS and DHL. Eliminate shipping mistakes by tailoring the service to your specific shipping needs and automating scheduling and record keeping.
Unleash Your Inner Spy with TrackMaven
Success in business is all about industry information. TrackMaven gives entrepreneurs a window into the worlds of their competitors. Identify marketing opportunities, optimize content distribution and track real-time progress by gathering data on your competition's strategies, successes and failures. TrackMaven uses competitive analysis to empower entrepreneurs
Never Miss a Call or Teleconference with MobileDay
The evolution of VoIP has given even the smallest businesses access to enterprise-level telephone networks. Take it a step further with MobileDay. MobileDay enables sole proprietors with limited communication budgets to dial into any call from their mobile phone. For extra confidence and dependability, each dial-in sequence is tested and validated by a real, live human being.
Keep Collaboration Simple with Trello
Whether it's with a researcher you hired for a marketing analysis or a freelance designer working on your logo, unified collaboration makes any business easier to run. There are several free collaboration apps that are excellent and reliable, but Trello is the most visually appealing. Users create bright, crisp boards, which contain lists and cards that contain information about a project or task. This gives every member of the team a snapshot of an entire project at a quick glance. Drag-and-drop functionality makes editing natural and fluid — especially on mobile.
The best apps empower you by automating a task you're currently handling yourself. This requires the app to be flexible and scalable — one-size-fits-all, boilerplate applications are far less likely to pass the real-world test. Focus first on collaboration, finance and any apps that makes selling easier.