One of the biggest challenges that almost all business owners face is managing or handling their finance. Indeed, financial management can be a daunting task – and something that small businesses might need entirely separate expertise for. Most often, the simplest solution is to hire someone who can provide the necessary skills-set to handle the finances, but for many businesses, that may be unfeasible from an economic-standpoint.
Luckily, there’s a rather simple solution to this problem – and the key is your smartphone!
Yes, there are tons of smartphone apps out there that let you manage and control your business finances easily and conveniently. And while a piece of software can never replace the skills and expertise of someone who is equipped with handling and managing finances, it can allow business owners and quick-fix or an easy-solution to sort out their business finances.
And as you’ll discover, these apps are pretty good for managing personal finance too!
Here are 5 of the best finance apps for business owners:
1. Mint
Mint is as good as it gets as far as financial management apps go! Created by the folks behind the popular Mint.com, Mint for iPhone, iPad and Android smartphones is a finance, budgeting, money management, financial management, budget planning and online banking software that lets business owners track their cash-flows easily, prepare budgets, keep an eye on their finances, and accomplish a lot more money, finance and budget-related tasks. You’re then easily able to see where every dime goes and make wise decision as far as expenses are concerned!
2. OfficeTime
$7.99 (iOS)
OfficeTime is a great little finance and billing app for small and medium businesses (SMB’s). Developed by the team at OfficeTime.net, OfficeTime the app lets people track billable hours and expenses, especially if you or your firm is providing services as a freelancer or contractor, working part-time, or working offshore. The app automatically generates invoices and reports, and allows you to keep track of any and all income and expenses – rendering paperwork completely redundant and a thing of the past! Apart from tracking billable hours, the app can also be used for tracking team projects. And not to forget, the app is very easy-to-use too.
3. Expensify
Free (iOS | Android | Windows Phone | BlackBerry)
Expensify is a godsend for travelers, businessmen and entrepreneurs-on-the-go. This app lets you rack and keep a record of all expenses, receipts and records (receipts can be scanned), making it easy to monitor all expenses and expenditures, and claim them if need be. Expensify also lets you generate detailed expense reports easily, in a clear and easy-to-understand manner (their motto is ‘Expense reports that don’t suck,’ and they stay true to it!). Furthermore, you can easily track your mileage with the app as well and link it with your credit card(s) so you know what’s going where at all times.
4. Manilla – Bills and Reminders
Manilla is an amazing bill management app for smartphones. The app allows you to manage your bills, consolidate your financial accounts, lets you organize your bills, statements invoices and notices digitally and very easily, provides bill payment reminders in order to help you avoid late fees (Manilla will send out a reminder text or email to you for this purpose), and a whole lot more. All of which makes keeping paper copies of your bills a thing of the past. You can access your bills and view records right from the app whenever you want. Manilla supports more than 3,000 leading providers and is adding more each week. In addition, the app’s Custom Accounts feature allows you to easily manage any account like your rent, your babysitter, your cleaning service, your debit/credit cards, bank accounts, etc.
5. FreshBooks
FreshBooks provides buinsess owners with accounting solutions ‘on the cloud’. It is a cloud accounting service, accompanied by excellent smartphone apps. Used in over a 120 countries (!), FreshBooks is the “#1 Cloud Accounting Solution Designed for Small Business Owners.” FreshBooks is a complete financial management and accounting solution, which makes book-keeping, expense tracking, and monitoring cash-flows of your business as easy as anything. And the best thing about the app/service – perhaps it’s forte – is that you can access and edit all your information from anywhere you like to.
6. QuickBooks Online
Many people reading this might have heard of QuickBooks – one of the most popular financial management solutions available out there. QuickBooks Online is essentially an extension of QuickBooks that puts the power and awesomeness of QuickBooks in your hand! Using their terrific smartphone app, you can create and edit customers, invoices, bills, sales receipts, expenses, cash inflows and outflows, and estimates. And since the app is connected to QuickBooks and your data is stored on the cloud, it is available in QuickBooks Online at all times. Like the online version, the QuickBooks mobile app is an absolute must-have business finance app for all people responsible for handling the finances and accounting for a company.
7. Accounts 2
$1.99 (iOS)
Accounts was a very popular financial and checkbook management app on smartphones. Accounts 2 is like a bigger and better version of it’s predecessor! Accounts 2 essentially lets you replace your paper checkbook. The app also provides users with a much more quicker and convenient way to track their daily business (or personal) finances. According to their description: “You can schedule transactions, transfer funds, capture photo receipts, reconcile, export data, view reports, graphs, and much more.” The user sets up the accounts and can record all business transactions. The app calculates the balance according to the transactions, categorized and assigned to a specific account. Reports can also be easily generated, and you can also set up recurring transactions. The app’s UI is fairly easy-to-follow and all information can be shared easily (don’t lose your phone though!). All features of the Accounts 2 application are designed to be quick, clean, intuitive, and easy to use.