As a small business owner, you know that there’s never enough time in the day to get everything done. Between keeping track of customers, updating your website, and managing your social media accounts, there’s just no way to keep up with it all.
But don’t worry—we’ve got a solution for you! Here are five apps that can help you manage your small business without taking up too much of your precious time.
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Best Apps For Small Business Owners Free
There are many different aspects of running a small business, like communicating with your team, paying your employees and tracking your expenses. Finding the right apps to manage all of your tasks can free up time and help your business operate more efficiently. Listed below are the seven best apps for small business owners.
Best messaging app: Slack
Slack is an instant messaging app that will save you from getting sucked into endless email threads with your employees. You can create multiple public or private channels, depending on your business’s needs. There is no limit to the number of users you can add to your Slack channels.
Best of all, Slack makes it easy to share images, documents and PDFs right within the platform. It also automatically indexes and archives everything, so you’ll always have a record of your conversations.
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A 401(k) your employees can manage from a phone?
About time. Give your employees access to a personalized retirement plan and tools to help them save and invest.* And you? You’ll be able to manage your employees’ 401(k)s in one easy-to-use dashboard. Win-win.
*Investing involves risk.
Learn More
Alternatives to Slack: Microsoft Teams, Rocket.Chat, Mattermost
Best for accepting payments: Square
If you need an all-in-one payment system, look no further than Square. The company provides a POS system that makes it easy for small businesses to get paid. It’s a great option thanks to its affordable pricing, easy setup and free online tools.
However, Square is best for low-volume merchants that work in low-risk industries. As your business continues to grow, you may find that you need more functionality than Square offers.
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Alternatives to Square: Lightspeed, Payment Depot, Shopify
Best for accounting: Quickbooks
QuickBooks is the most popular accounting software on the market, and for good reason. The company’s cloud-based software is intuitive, easy to use and offers numerous integrations.
[Read more: 10 Common QuickBooks Questions Answered]
You can send invoices, pay your employees and prepare for tax season with the company’s robust software. And the company offers a number of video tutorials to help you learn how to navigate the platform.
Alternatives to QuickBooks: FreshBooks, Wave Accounting, Sage Business Cloud Accounting
Finding the right apps to manage all of your tasks can free up time and help your business operate more efficiently.
Best for project management: Trello
Trello is a project management software that makes it easier for teams to collaborate. Within each Trello board, you can create individual cards outlining the various tasks needed to complete a project.
Within each card, you can assign due dates, tag other members, create checklists and upload documents and images. The app offers dozens of integrations, including Evernote, Slack, and Google Drive.
Alternatives to Trello: Basecamp, Asana, Airtable
Best for time tracking: Toggl
If you have remote employees, you need a streamlined way for them to track their hours. Toggl is a great choice because it provides flexible, cloud-based time tracking software for individuals and businesses.
At the end of the month, you can export your time logs to a spreadsheet. These reports will give you additional insights into how much time your employees are spending on a given task. It may also help you determine what projects are the most profitable for your business.
Alternatives to Toggl: Hubstaff, RescueTime, DeskTime
Best for creating and sharing to-do lists: Wunderlist
Sometimes, a good to-do list is all you really need. In that case, Wunderlist is one of the best options available. The app lets you create multiple to-do lists, and you can assign tasks to other people on your team. This makes it easier to collaborate remotely with your employees and ensure the work is getting done.
In 2015, Wunderlist was acquired by Microsoft, and the company has said it plans to shut the app down eventually. Four years later, Wunderlist is still going strong, although Microsoft isn’t updating the app. If you’re concerned about this, you can check out one of the Wunderlist alternatives.
Alternatives to Wunderlist: OmniFocus, Evernote, nTask
Best for managing expense reports: Expensify
One of the most tedious aspects of being a small business owner is tracking your receipts and your expenses. Instead of stuffing an old shoebox full of receipts, why not track them with Expensify?
With Expensify, you can take a photo of a receipt, and the software will automatically transcribe the details for you. Expensify will also categorize each receipt, saving you a lot of time in the process.
The platform will allow your employees to submit business receipts for reimbursement, and it also directly syncs with most major accounting software.
apps for local businesses
Purchasing goods and services from small businesses in your area is a great way to support your local economy. It can be easy to go to a chain restaurant that you know you like or a convenient grocery store, but supporting local businesses will help people in your area stay afloat and may surprise you with over-the-top customer service.
There are some great apps out there that can help you locate businesses in your area to check out, and also read reviews from other locals. Here’s our guide to the best apps that will help you support your local independent stores.
- Google Maps
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google maps app local clothing stores
Google Maps is a great way to find local small business to support in your area. You can search for exactly what it is that you’re looking for and sort through businesses in map view or list view. Sometimes it helps to zoom in on an area even further and search again to bring up even more results.
Although there’s not a way to sort all the listings by local businesses only, it’s pretty easy to figure out which businesses are local based on their names. Most of us know chain restaurants and clothing stores by name so they’re easy to spot.
Download: Google Maps for Android | iOS (Free)
- Facebook
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finding local restaurants through facebook app
facebook app groups to help you find local small businesses
Facebook is famous for finding and selling used items through its Marketplace platform. But it’s also great for finding and supporting small businesses near you.
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Most areas should have local Facebook groups that either have members who own small businesses, members who mention other small businesses, or both. It’s a great way to find traders near you and actually interact with the business owners, or hear real reviews from others in your area.
Try searching “local small businesses” and you should see a few groups pop up for your local cities.
Download: Facebook for Android | iOS (Free)
- Local Flavor
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The Local Flavor app will help you find local restaurants and other small businesses to try out while also giving you great discounts at the same time. Depending on your area, there may be more deals to check out. If you live in a highly populated city, you’ll see a lot more deals than if you live in a rural area.
There are coupons to use for a variety of businesses, including restaurants, salons, clothing stores, dentist offices, and more. Once you find a deal you want to try out, you can print or clip the coupon and present it to your local retailer.
Download: Local Flavor for Android | iOS (Free)
- Nextdoor
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nextdoor app home page
nextdoor app local deals near you
nextdoor app your neighbordhood favorites of the year
You might have heard of Nextdoor for keeping track of what’s going on in your neighborhood and helping lost dogs and cats find their owners, but this app can also help you find small businesses in your area that your neighbors love.
You can browse your home page and usually find a few posts about businesses in your area. Or you can navigate to the businesses tab where you can find updates and local deals for businesses near you.
One of the best features in the app is the Neighborhood Favorites tab. Here, you can see all the local businesses that your neighbors have been loving all year, voted on with likes. While there will be chain restaurants and businesses looped in with local businesses here, it’s still a great way to see which small businesses rank best among your neighbors.
Download: Nextdoor for Android | iOS (Free)
- Tripadvisor
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tripadvisor app search for local businesses
tripadvisor app popular things to do in your area
tripadvisor app nearby restaurants
You’ve probably used the Tripadvisor app or website to find things to do when you’re going on vacation. But have you ever used it for your own home town?
Locals and tourists that use Tripadvisor will all have useful info about the best local restaurants to visit and other small businesses to support. Because so many people use Tripadvisor, it’s a great resource when you want to find small businesses to support but also want to make sure they’re worth your money.
Download: Tripadvisor for Android | iOS (Free)
- Yelp
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yelp local auto repair businesses near you
yelp app local takeout restaurants in your area
Yelp will help you see what people around you really think of the restaurants and businesses in your area. Users of the app can review businesses with a one to five star rating and give a description attached to their review if they want.
Although you shouldn’t only try out local restaurants and businesses that have four stars or higher, Yelp is a good start if you’ve never ventured outside of chain restaurants and retailers. You can discover what other people are loving in your area and even add reviews of your own if you want to!
Download: Yelp for Android | iOS (Free)
- Foursquare City Guide
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foursquare app home screen
foursquare local nightlife small businesses near you
foursquare app local lunch places near you
Foursquare City Guide is similar to Tripadvisor in that it’ll help you find local things to do and places to go. It’s just a bit of a different interface and it has separate reviews from Tripadvisor.
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The Foursquare home page lets you search for restaurants sorted by breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Then, you can also search for local coffee and tea shops, bars, taverns, and other places to go. Although you will see chain restaurants and retailers here, like Chipotle and Chili’s, you can usually find a ton of local options too.
Download: Foursquare City Guide for Android | iOS (Free)
- Etsy
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etsy app filtering products by custom location
etsy app showing an individual shop
etsy app showing an individual product marvel face mask
Etsy is a great place to find unique gifts for friends and family and support small businesses at the same time. Etsy can help you find items locally or globally. If you want to only shop from sellers in your area, there’s a filter for that in the Etsy app.
Under the Shop location tab, you can select Custom location and type in your area. This will only bring up sellers in that specific area that are selling what you’re looking for. Or if you want to just support sellers in your own country, you can filter that way as well.
Download: Etsy for Android | iOS (Free)
- LivingSocial
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living social app trending deals near you
living social app food and drink deals near you
living social app beauty and spa deals near you
LivingSocial is another great app that will help you find local deals for small businesses in your area. There are discounts for spas, salons, restaurants, events, and more.
Similar to the Groupon app, you can download the deal within the app and present it on your phone when you get to the retailer. This makes it super easy to keep track of your coupons. Whether you’re looking to have a spa day or some great food, the LivingSocial app will help you discover new businesses and save you money at the same time.
Download: LivingSocial for Android | iOS (Free)
- GettinLocal
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gettinlocal app home screen
gettinlocal app local restaurants near you
The GettinLocal app is great to use for vacations and places you’ve never been before, but it’s equally great to use in your own city. You might find restaurants you’ve never eaten at or local attractions you’ve never thought to explore.
This app will show local restaurants, attractions, and other fun things within a certain mile radius of where you live. If you’re scrolling through the app and see something you may want to try out later, you can save it and come back to it when you’re ready.
Download: GettinLocal for Android | iOS (Free)
You Can Shop Locally for Used Products Too
Purchasing new products from small businesses in your area is a great way to support your local economy, but so is buying used products from local sellers. There are some great apps out there that will help you find fantastic products from people in your area.
This helps you save some money, lets a local neighbor earn some money, and also helps out the environment by recycling used items. It’s a win-win-win!
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