Business on the Go: Five Apps to Run Your Business Remotely(iPhone Edition)

Courtesy of Businessweek.com

Alright, so we talked a little bit about affordable accouterments that can be used to set up a home office, but what about when you’re out pressing the flesh with potential clients? How do you handle your business when you’re on the road, away from home base? Luckily, these five applications will help you keep tabs on your investment regardless of time or location. All it takes is a smartphone and a little ingenuity to make your office mobile.

Keeping track of receipts is essential for any business, especially when the tax man comes knocking. One cool app to think about is Shoeboxed. An iPhone application, you just take a picture of your receipt and Shoeboxed turns it into a data file. After, you can just go to Shoeboxed.com and download their files into your ledger program. You can also send business cards to the folks and Shoeboxed and they’ll organize it for you. There’s a monthly$9.95 fee, but it’s a small price to pay when you don’t have to do all that tedious data entry yourself.

Cash on Delivery is a good policy to have, but how do keep track of how much to charge and get the invoice into your client’s hands ASAP? GetPaid! makes sure you do exactly that. The app tracks the time spent providing services and then generates a handy html invoice for the customer once the job is complete. You can also create timesheet and invoice templates that can be exported to your comp at a later date.

To be able to have a COD policy, you have to make sure that the “D” actually happens. Keep track of all important shipments with the UPS Mobile or FedEx Mobile so in the unlikely event of a lost or missing shipment, you can be the first to know so you can set up some kind of damage control and rectify the situation. You can also create shipping labels and access client’s addresses.

For quick access to important documents and spreadsheets, cloud computing is the way to go. Safe and convenient, you simply create your document on the cloud server and you can access it at any time from any where. You can also invite your employees to collaborate on a project or keep your files private. The best in the cloud service business is Google Docs. Since it’s initial launch, Google has tweaked Docs to resemble the word processing and spreadsheet programs we’ve come to associate with creating business docs.

Since there are never enough hours in the day make sure that you’re keeping track of all the important stuff (sales pitches, contact information, project deadlines), check out Evernote. This nifty app lets you add text, voice, memo to your notes to make them more memorable – kind of like a multimedia memo pad. Everything created with Evernote can be accessed from your home base at the office or the web so you’ll never be caught by surprise by an product order that seemingly came from nowhere.

So there you have it. Five apps to keep your productivity at a maximum and your dollars in the black. Stay tuned for the Blackberry edition!

About the Author
Sherri is a freelance writer that has a love of all things fun and geeky including gadgets, gaming, anime, and comics. When she isn't writing or out on the town living it up, she loves doing 10-12 hour marathon sessions on her Xbox 360 or one of her older consoles. It's not an addiction, it's a way of life!
See all posts by Sherri L. Smith.