Doing business in 2013 is going to be a whole lot easier if you can take your business with you on the road. I travel with an iPad and an iPhone as my mobile office, and it's made it a whole lot easier to stay on top of my business, my team and my clients.
If you have some must-have apps for your business, why not share 'em in the comments?
Expensify
I travel a lot. Speaking engagements, corporate training, client meetings and the occasional vacation even and like most entrepreneurs I have to be able to take work with me and hate having to stop and sort through receipts at the end of a trip. I hate it even more when I put it off for a month and I have to pay my bookkeeper to do it! With Expensify I can scan in my receipts on my phone, connect my credit card account, upload receipts by mobile or online and then send it to Evernote, Quickbooks, Sales Force and a whole bunch of other integrations with apps you may be using online or your desktop.
Expensify is available for iPhone and Android.
Dropbox
When was the last time you were out of the office and didn't have a file you needed to close business? That doesn't have to happen if you're using Dropbox. Securely store documents and give access to whoever needs to use them on their desktop, phone or tablet, any where, any time. Dropbox is available for Android, iPhone, Blackberry, iPad and Kindle too. Click this link to get 500MB of bonus space and I get extra space too. (yeah for the win/win!)
Evernote
I've posted my love of Evernote before and I think I show it around the conference table at almost every meeting too. It's just plain indispensable to my business. I can sketch out a design for a client on my iPad with Penultimate, save it to a folder in Evernote and share it with my designers instantly, clips web pages, take photos or scan documents on site and add it to the folder and have it all be easily accessible to whoever needs it. I record important voice notes and Evernote transcribes them to searchable text. Great for saving those middle of the night bright ideas. I can go on and on touting this one. Or you can just check it out for yourself. It's available for just about every platform.
Quickbooks Mobile
Creating invoices and tracking expenses and billable hours is easy with this one. Keep on top of your accounts in real time, create new invoices and view open invoices on the fly. It's not going to give you full balance sheets but it's a great way to keep on top of your books wherever and whenever you need to. Available for iPad, iPhone or Android.
Scanner Pro
Scan your receipts, paper files, notes or even a whiteboard then combine pages into a document, save it to Dropbox, Google Drive or Evernote or even sync it with iCloud. Scanned documents are saved as Adobe PDF files so they are easily shared. Sign a contract, scan it and send it. Easy peasy. It works with iPad or iPhone.
Social business apps
Obviously I couldn't keep from sharing a few of my favorite social apps too, it's what I do. I actually have quite a few apps on my phone but here are the ones most useful for keeping your business social. Of course there are the obvious apps like Linkedin, Facebook, Skype etc. But you probably already have those right?
Scoop.it
I already loved the Scoop.it website for curating posts in my areas of interest, but being able to scan titles and share just-out news with my social networks and my clients while I'm in line at the bank or waiting for a flight makes it just that much sweeter. Publish a magazine style page on any topic you like, then populate it with content you curate from your desktop or your mobile device. Available for iPhone, iPad, or Android.
Sprout Social
If you use Sprout Social to manage your social media accounts you'll love this app. Manage your social media team workflow, monitor brand buzz and share on the fly to keep your business social. Available for iPhone, iPod touch, iPad or Android.
Tweetbot
Because I want to keep on top of all of the accounts my team manages I needed an app that easily lets me change from user to user without logging in and out, gives me alerts on mentions and leverages smart gestures and filter Twitter lists and searches into individual timelines so I rarely miss a thing. I can even muter users who are currently over tweeting and turn them back on without having to unfollow and refollow. Re-tweet from multiple accounts and sync it all with iCloud. Upload images with just about all of the popular image and video services used with Twitter and shorten URLs with my shortener of choice. Sorry, this one is iPhone only.
photo credit: Roberto Trm via photopin cc