8 Most Essential Apps for Small Business Owners [2]

As apps become more prevalent and more powerful, entrepreneurs and small business owners are relying on these savvy tools to help their businesses grow and run more smoothly. These top 10 mobile and web apps can get you organized, connected and visible – and they will likely contribute to your success.

5. Expensify:

Keeping track of your expenses while on a business trip can be a big headache. Expensify makes the entire process a lot less painful. You can link your credit or debit card to your Expensify account so charges are directly placed on an expense report. If you’d rather not do this, you can take pictures of your receipts using your phone and Expensify will automatically extract the relevant information from the receipts. You can then make an expense report yourself, which only takes a few minutes.

6. Paypal:

This is a convenient platform with which to pay people and get paid, something you’ll have to do a lot of as a small-business owner. PayPal lets you link your credit and debit accounts and other bank accounts to your PayPal account, thereby making transactions quick and painless. PayPal reacted to the emergence of Square (more on that app below) by creating an app that lets businesses use a tablet or other device and PayPal’s card reader as a portable register.

7. My Minutes:

This is a personal time management app for iPhones and Android. If you find you can’t stay focused on the most important tasks throughout the day — or you’re wasting too much time on Facebook or browsing the web — My Minutes can help you stay grounded. With this app, you set a goal (for example, “Spend only one hour checking email” or “Work out for 30 minutes”), and the app will let you know when you’re finished. The app costs $2.99 for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

8. Google Drive:

Google’s new Drive app lets users seamlessly port and edit files from PC to tablet to smartphone. Not only is it a fully-featured office suite, the software also acts as a full cloud drive, letting you store any file type via a virtual drive app or a web interface. Google apps is already the top choice for small business webmail, and Google is moving to repeat that success in the cloud storage arena. You also get a nice 5GB of storage, free.