Jan 12, 2011

10 Handy iPhone Apps for Small-Business Owners

[caption id="attachment_393" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Mobile Business"]

[/caption] If you’re an iPhone owner, you already know that “There’s an app for that” isn’t some overstated marketing slogan. With more than 100,000 applications, there’s pretty much something for everything—or if not, it’s probably on its way. As the App store increases its offerings, business owners may find it difficult to discover the best apps for particular needs, especially productivity-type applications that improve the day-to-day grind for business owners. Here’s our list, in no particular order, of 10 handy apps for small-business owners: 1. iXpenseIt Price: $4.99 Category: Finance With what some iPhone users might consider a steep price for an app, iXpenseIt makes up for it by doing a good job of simplifying your daily expense tracking and monthly budgeting. Taking a client to a lunch that you’ll be expensing? This app lets you document the expense in seconds, and it stores photo receipts. 2. AT&T Virtual Receptionist Price: Free Category: Business If you’re concerned that the small size of your business might scare off some customers, this app can help. With AT&T Virtual Receptionist, you get your own business phone system, with custom call forwarding, an auto-receptionist with company greeting, visual voicemail, and 60 free toll-free minutes. 3. Dropbox Price: Free Category: Productivity Once you start using it, you’ll see why Dropbox for iPhone is one of the most popular productivity apps available. Like a virtual drive that exists everywhere you need it, you can store, access, and share your files between your phone and any computer. 4. Scanner Pro Price: $6.99 Category: Business Like something out of a spy movie, Scanner Pro turns your iPhone into a portable scanner. Scan items such as documents, business cards, receipts, notes, and whiteboards, then email or upload them to Dropbox. 5. Evernote Price: Free Category: Productivity This app works like a personal assistant who follows you around and jots down all of your great ideas. Easily create notes, snap photos, and record voice memos that you can later access from your iPhone or computer, or from the web. 6. EasyTask Manager Price: $19.99 Category: Productivity Don’t just make a to-do list on a pad of paper—what is this, the ’80s?—stay organized and get things done with the help of your iPhone and EasyTask Manager. It syncs up with your Mac or Windows computer, and even supports David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” method. 7. UPS or FedEx Mobile Price: Free for both Category: Business for both If you business ships items through UPS or FedEx on a regular basis, you will like these apps. You can track packages, assign nicknames to shipments, find pickup locations or delivery times, and more. 8. mSecure Password Manager Price: $2.99 Category: Productivity I don’t know about you, but I have at least a dozen extremely important logins and passwords to remember at any given time. If you’re a business owner, you probably have even more. The mSecure Password Manager app uses data encryption to securely store your passwords, credit card numbers, or other important information. 9. Analytics App Price: $6.99 Category: Productivity A bit on the steep side in terms of cost, this app quickly makes its value known if you’re regularly on the road or in meetings during which you need to check Google Analytics for your website stats. In fact, this app is probably easier to use than a web browser. Get a quick view of reports or drill into your site’s traffic data, all on the fly. 10. BeamMe Price: Free Category: Business Run out of business cards at the conference, or forgot them at home? This networking application lets you send your contact information to any phone or email address, and it integrates with Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. So there you have it—just a few of the many iPhone applications out there. Do you have any that we didn’t mention? Let us know in the comments below.