Technology is always evolving, and with that comes new software, applications, and extensions that make your job as a business owner easier. Want to keep track of employee hours? Organize your workflow? Create email drip campaigns? There’s an app for that.
Time is money. The more you automate your workload, the more efficient you become. So whether you’re just starting or you’ve been a business owner for years, these apps and extensions offer functionality that will streamline your work in every way possible.
Management Apps And Extensions
Connecteam is a program that truly does it all. The employee app allows you to connect with your staff, track work hours, manage everyday operations, create professional courses for onboarding and training, allocate tasks, and more. There’s a reason that more than 8,000 small businesses trust it.
Pricing – Starting at $39/month
Slack is one of the easiest ways to communicate with employees. Think of it as one giant chat room that occurs in real-time. Rather than hold unnecessary meetings or sending hundreds of emails, you can shoot a message over to someone in seconds. It also allows you to keep an eye on who is active and who is not, so you can see who is online/offline during work hours.
Pricing – $6.67/month
DeskTime is a time tracking software that also analyzes productivity levels. They claim to boost productivity levels by at least 30% by identifying computer usage habits. It allows you to see what sites, applications, and programs your employees use and categorizes them into productive and unproductive.
It also helps organize work schedules, contact information, and time-off requests. Not to mention you can manage projects and create invoices for clients as well.
Pricing – Starting at $95/month
When you run your own company, you wear many different hats. One of those hats being HR. With Workday, you can hire new talent with the click of a button. Once you begin hiring people, you can then use it to manage payroll, keep tabs on time and attendance, and categorize talent by skill.
Pricing – Contact the sales team for a quote
Monday is all about team communication. It helps organize tasks and allows you to assign them to different individuals. Once they have finished the task, the status is updated so that everyone can see where the project stands. With 200+ pre-made templates, the interface is extremely easy to use, with no training necessary.
Additionally, the app stores your files so that everything is in one place. Drag and drop files, use the search capabilities to find old work, give feedback, and access your files from absolutely anywhere.
Pricing – Starting at $8/month
Finance Apps And Extensions
If you have absolutely no experience with payroll or providing insurance, then you need Gusto. Before hiring your first employee, use the app’s customizable onboarding checklist and ability to send offers and new-hire paperwork to make the process as easy as possible. From there, with just a few clicks, they calculate and file your payroll taxes and automatically deduct benefits from payroll–all within minutes.
Pricing – Starting at $39/month
There’s a good chance that you have already heard of QuickBooks, as it’s one of the biggest names in the finance world. From tracking expenses and payroll to paying bills and creating invoices, there’s nothing that it can’t do. Because it’s so well-known, it has a wide variety of pricing options based on how big your business is.
Pricing – Starting at $7.50/month
Xero is an all-in-one software that makes tasks like invoicing and reporting, creating expense claims, and categorizing bank transactions a piece of cake. It stands out from its competitors because it also lets you manage fixed assets–something no other accounting software offers.
Pricing – Starting at $11/month
Along with QuickBooks, FreshBooks is one of the most popular accounting services out there. With this cloud-based software, you can bill in any currency, set up recurring invoices, oversee your cash flow, track your expenses, and allow customers to pay with a credit card with the check of a box–just to name a few. And because it is cloud-based, you don’t have to worry about losing important data.
Pricing – Starting at $13.50/month
Waves is a truly unique software because it’s free. That’s right–it won’t cost you a penny. At least, most of the features don’t. The software’s free features include income and expense tracking, unlimited invoices (and reminders), unlimited bank and credit card connections, and more. If you do upgrade to the paid option, you’re also able to accept credit card payments over the phone, pay employees via direct deposit, generate W-2 and 1099 forms, and more.
Pricing – Pay-per-use or $35/month payroll
Productivity Apps and Extensions
One of the best ways to stay productive is to keep a daily to-do list. If you prefer an electronic version over a planner, then you need Todoist. The Google Chrome extension is a straightforward, simply designed task manager that lets you keep track of your projects and manage your tasks. Color code things by priority level or create projects for ultimate organization.
Pricing – Free
TickTick is very similar to Todoist in that it serves as a to-do list. With it, you can sync your to-do’s on all devices, set recurring tasks and reminders, arrange tasks in order, add notes to tasks, plan an agenda in calendar view, and convert Google emails to tasks.
Pricing – Free
If you find that you are easily distracted or your employees are not getting work done at the pace you hope, you can use Toggl. It’s the ultimate watch guard when using your computer. It tracks your time on sites and collects data on productivity levels. You can then see where you’re wasting time and adjust accordingly.
Pricing – Free
Speaking of tracking time, Clockify is an extension that simply allows you to track time. No fluff. See how much time you’re spending on certain activities or use the time to log hours for accurate billing. Enable idle detection or use the Pomodoro timer that sets up a work schedule of 25-minutes on and 5-minutes off. After four cycles of this, you then take a 20-minute break for maximum productivity levels.
Pricing – Free
Background noise or loud office spaces can be the ultimate workday distraction. Noisli plays different white noise–such as waves, fire crackling, rain, and more–so you can block out those distractions and focus on your work.
Pricing – Free
While the internet has changed how we work as we know it, it also offers far too many distractions. From online shopping to social media, it’s very easy to get off task. StayFocusd helps you avoid these sites by limiting the amount of time you can use them. Add all of the blocked sites you want to steer clear of, choose the amount of time you want to spend on these sites, and watch how the extension blocks you once you hit that allotted time.
Pricing – Free
Related: 21 Productivity Apps for 2021
Content Apps and Extensions
Whether your business involves writing, or you just want to sound more professional when sending emails, Grammarly is a heaven-send. Typos and grammar mistakes are a surefire way to appear less than professional. This extension checks spelling and grammar as you type to ensure that content is easy to read and free of mistakes.
Pricing – Free
SEO can seem like code that is impossible to crack. Rather than spend hours upon hours researching it, why not let Woorank analyze your site? The Chrome extension gives you a deep review of a domain’s site data to give you a big picture of the optimization. You’ll get a glimpse of SEO, mobile-friendliness, usability, backlinks, traffic, and more. This is perfect for those looking to improve their sites, marketers that want to optimize a site, or a freelancer working on a client’s site.
Pricing – Free
Related: SEO For Small Business: 7 Smart Tricks
Organization Apps and Extensions
For those running a creative business, Milanote can be your best friend. The note-taking app is a pasteboard style interface, which can hold photos, color swatches, links, notes, videos, and then some. Use real-time collaboration to edit your board with your team to brainstorm new ideas or work on content management for upcoming campaigns.
Pricing – Starting at $9.99/month
If your business has grown into one with multiple employees and you need to keep the whole team organized, consider using Trello. The card-based system is great for all business needs, including project management, task lists, organization, and maintaining blogs. All boards are shareable, plus it integrates with other business apps like Evernote and Slack.
Pricing – Starting at $12.50/month
Marketing Apps and Extensions
Almost every single business should be taking advantage of newsletters. Share emails straight to your customers’ emails and create landing pages, Facebook ads, and signup forms with MailChimp. It’s by far one of the easiest campaign managers to use, and the professional templates will make you look like a pro with very little effort.
Pricing – Starting at $9.99/month
Related: Why You Should Be Using Text And Email To Market Your Business
Social media marketing is a must for every business, but if you are unfamiliar with it or looking to improve, use BuzzSumo. The extension checks engagement metrics for any page that you view. This includes Twitter accounts that no longer exist, who shared the page, the backlink count, and the most shared content from a site. Analyze this information to curate content for your business and track what is performing well for your company.
Pricing – Starting at $99/month
