Small-business owners have a full plate. And having to juggle multiple tasks throughout each day, like scheduling clients, communicating with team members, tracking expenses and assigning tasks, can be exhausting. The good news is that there is a treasure trove of apps that are available to help your small business reach its potential — and many of them are free.
It’s time to stop muddling through spreadsheets and ledgers and download solutions that will allow you to seamlessly complete business tasks. You’ll be able to update expenses or send invoices with a few taps, quickly assign tasks or communicate with customers in real time.
Pocketsuite
Pocketsuite, which is billed as the “No. 1 app for anyone with clients,” helps small-business owners and contractors get booked and paid. Through the Pocketsuite app, you can send clients direct messages that appear just like a text. You can also send appointment confirmations and payment requests — and you can receive payments too. Clients don’t need to download the app to communicate with you and there is a FREE Forever Plan that offers core scheduling, payment and messaging features if your small business is on a tight budget.
Slack
“Slack is an excellent communications app for growing a small business,” said Kevin Huang, founder and CEO of Ambient Home. “It makes work more efficient and organized through dedicated channels, so conversations don’t get lost or muddled. It can integrate almost every app you need for productivity and growth, such as Zoom, Salesforce, Google Workspace, Live Chat, ClickUp, ZipBooks, and so much more, so everything is in one place at your team’s fingertips.
“Besides internal communications, Slack also enables you to create or join Slack communities that help grow your business’s network and be updated with the latest developments in your industry.”
Monday.com
”Monday.com is my go-to app whenever I have to recommend it to any small business owner,” said Tommy Mello, the founder and CEO of A1 Garage Door Service. “It organizes my tasks for me and creates a central point of communication for me and my entire team. The app provides easily created tasks and allows you to add personalized steps to each task or a group project. It also provides real-time updates on activities and integration with third-party services which makes Monday.com an even better app for small business owners. You can also store your documents and other related information in the app itself as it also maintains a timeline for each project and created the knowledge for documentation. Project management and communications are the two functions that the app provides best.”
Divvy
Divvy is a Bill.com company that allows you to apply for a business credit line and receive Divvy cards for all of your employees. Through the app, you can build a budget, divvy funds and track spending in real time.
“Absolutely recommended for small businesses that are just starting out,” said David Wurst, founder of WebCitz. “Aside from it being free, it’s great for expense tracking, and it’s designed so small businesses don’t go ever their budgets.”
Trello
“We began using Trello for our marketing team and after I began to understand how useful it can be, started using it more extensively as a collaboration tool within our company,” said Brent Thurman, owner of Bear River Mutual Insurance.
“After working in what now feels like the stone age, it was amazing to assign tasks or projects to specific people so easily. It’s also been really helpful in building our weekly staff meeting agenda since anyone can add an item to discuss. It is such an easy tool, and I have committed myself to use it in as many ways as possible because of its effectiveness.
“It’s been helpful as we have random thoughts to do things or ideas we could pursue as a company as well. With Trello, we can all put them in one central place where others can see them, update them and even contribute. Essentially, it’s the perfect collaboration tool for remote teams!”
Airtable
“One of my absolute favorite apps that has changed the way we run our business has been Airtable,” said Larisha Bernard of Make It Dairy Free. “We are easily able to organize a wide range of information on any part of our business, assign different tasks and keep up to date with where our team is on what they are working on. It has made our ability to streamline the processes of our business all into one place easily, and we always recommend it to every business owner we know.”
Shopventory
“Personally speaking, as a business owner, the best app for supporting small business growth is Shopventory,” said Jean Will co-founder at NiaWigs. “This app allows small business owners to keep track of their inventories and to have an idea of which products are not selling well, which makes them create smarter decisions about what should be done about them. It will also send you alerts on what products need restocks and what products are almost sold out.”
Expensify
Small-business owners have a need to complete financial tasks, such as tracking expenses, paying bills and generating invoices. “As a financial expert, Expensify is one of the best applications/platforms for small businesses that can streamline their financial reporting and monitoring,” said Robin Suh, The Net Lender. “This app records your purchase data, financial expenses and offers other financial functions. Expensify helps you to easily understand and monitor your business’ financial transactions.”
Deputy
“Deputy puts the scheduling platform in the cloud,” said Jack Kelly, CEO of Trusted Gift Reviews. “This means all the data is accessible online, so that employers and employees can access it through apps on their own devices. Employees can submit shift requests and block out when they aren’t available, and management can create schedules in minutes by defining the criteria for each shift; the software does the rest. Everything is transparent, so no one can claim they didn’t know they were scheduled to work.”
