The apps entrepreneurs live by - Brought to you by NatWest

Friday, 14 June 2019

From keeping a minute-by-minute track of sales to managing their team, entrepreneurs and professionals reveal the apps that make running their businesses quicker and easier.

 

Trello

“For internal project management – such as a recent office move – we use Trello,” says Charlotte Bowen, founder, finance and marketing director of 50°North architectural consultants. “You can write tasks, which have been assigned to different staff, on virtual cards. People move the cards [from a ‘doing’ to a ‘done’ slot] when they’ve completed their work. Documents and notes can be attached, too.

 

“We can all see what each other is up to and any issues that have come up, so we don’t need to have as many meetings or crowd round a big Excel spreadsheet. Moving the cards around is quite fun, too, which motivates people to get on with their jobs.”

Trello is free to download.

 

CascadeGo

“We expanded from six to 14 staff recently and keeping up with HR admin in a busy PR office is no easy task,” says Chris Norton, founder and MD of Leeds-based Prohibition PR. “CascadeGo saves me two to four hours a week. It receives and records leave requests all in one place and allows us to share documents and announcements with staff. It also provides an analysis of how much sickness is costing the business each year.”

CascadeGo subscription prices vary depending on number of employees.

 

FreeAgent Mobile Accounting

“The FreeAgent app gives an overview of your finances,” says Norton. “You can see everything from your profit to your expenses and sales. It automatically generates regular invoices, too, and tracks which customers tend to pay late, so we know who is most deserving of our time.”

FreeAgent starts at £9.50 a month.

 

Evernote

“I frequently see billboards, read articles or hear comments that might provide inspiration for some future project,” says Marc Nohr, CEO of Fold7 advertising agency. “But I’d forget it all unless I captured it somehow. Evernote is like a filing cabinet you can instantly put pictures, article links and written ideas into. It’s searchable by date and other categories and each item has a little visual icon, making them easier to identify. I can be talking to someone about some work, vaguely recall something I saw six months earlier that might be helpful and find it in Evernote to show them in seconds.”

The basic Evernote app is free. A business version costs £10.99 a month per user.

Google Analytics

“We had amazing coverage online for our Power Foundation dress last October,” says Nayna McIntosh, owners and CEO of women’s fashion retailer Hope. “Using the Google Analytics app I could track traffic to the website, sales and other metrics by the minute. Even in meetings, I could glance at my phone and see the orders mounting up, then liaise with our Italian manufacturer by the hour to advise how many dresses we would need. The app helps us maximise sales.”

The standard version for Google Analytics is free to use.

 

Instagram

“Instagram can be a free daily source of creative inspiration and insight. You can search for anything,” says Heather Seed, senior designer at Manchester-based creative agency Dinosaur. “It could be food trends, looking at real people and their behaviour or the latest work by big agencies. And you can collate your ideas in your own personal area.”

Instagram is free to use.

 

Capsule

“One of the apps I use most is Capsule,” says Rob Chant, owner and managing director of the Cambridge Web Marketing Co. “It keeps details of our business contacts all in one place, along with information and documents relating to the projects we’re doing with them. It helps us schedule work, too, which makes it hard to forget important tasks.”

Capsule is free for up to two users or costs from £12 a month for small teams.

 

Receipt Bank

“Receipt Bank is awesome,” says Frankie Fox, co-founder of condiments company The Foraging Fox. “I constantly bore the team talking about it. You take a photo of a receipt or invoice and the app extracts data such as the total cost, tax paid or even the supplier and feeds it directly into your accounting software. It also stores digital copies of the paper, so we can work towards being paperless.”

There is a free trial, and then subscription fees vary.

 

RescueTime

“As an entrepreneur, I don’t have much time to waste,” says Joy Foster, founder and MD of Oxford digital training company TechPixies. “RescueTime records how long I’m spending on various activities on my computer each day, such as working on sales, marketing, or looking at entertainment websites. I can set targets to make sure I’m giving enough attention to the important stuff.

“It shows me if I’m working too much, too,” she says. “It’s important to step away from your business sometimes so you can come up with new ideas and return refreshed.”

RescueTime starts from around £7 a month.

 

Canva

“Canva allows you to create professional-looking business flyers, social media posts and presentations, even if you’re not a designer,” says Foster. “It has thousands of templates, you can add text to photos and use your company’s colours and fonts so the branding is right.”

The standard version of Canva is free to use.

 

Citrix Workspace

To simplify the logistics of working remotely, James Walsh, partner at GA Solicitors, uses Citrix. “I can access my office computer system and my exact desktop appears on my laptop screen, with a smaller version for phones. I can also access work emails.”

Around £10 a month for a standard version but prices may vary.

 

BigHand

Walsh also uses dictation software. “BigHand lets me dictate notes or letters into my phone when I’m visiting a client, say, and send them directly to my secretary. It lets me review and amend the dictations, too.”

There is a free trial, then subscription fees apply.

 

LinkedIn Recruiter

“Our teams use LinkedIn Recruiter to search for job candidates,” says Ewan Anderson, associate marketing director at Eden Scott recruitment. “It means they can monitor messages, keep up to date on projects and track potential employee activity (such as if they update their LinkedIn status to suggest they’re open to opportunities) when they’re out and about. The quicker we can react, the more likely we are to get the right person for the role.”

LinkedIn Recruiter is free to download.