With smartphones and tablets saturating the market, many businesses are finding ways to take advantage of this growing trend. According to Business Wire, 66 percent of businesses currently use mobile devices or other mobile solutions. Today I’d like to share a few of the mobile apps I use in my business, and I hope that some of them will be useful to you or your clients.

Many of these solutions are low cost, if not free, and can improve daily efficiency and organization from the day they’re implemented.

1.     Zoho Invoice and Time Tracker

I absolutely love what I do – as I’m sure you do – but in order to continue doing it, we need to get paid! I’ve found that Zoho Invoice is the perfect tool for creating invoices as well as keeping track of what’s been paid and what’s outstanding. What I love most is that it ties into my PayPal account, so when my clients receive their invoices, all they have to do is click to pay by PayPal, so it’s easy for them, and usually leads to prompter payment, which is good for me. As an added bonus, when they pay that way, my Zoho account is automatically updated to reflect the payment.

Zoho also has a feature for creating professional estimates which can later be converted to invoices. I haven’t used it yet but plan to soon, as I’m in favor of anything to streamline paperwork! There’s also a built-in time tracker which I don’t need because I use the one in Swift To-Do List when I’m working on timed projects.

The mobile app would be perfect for when you’re working on site with a client, because you can use the time tracker (unless you bill by the job), then generate an invoice right then and there instead of having to wait until you’re back in your office.

There’s a monthly fee for the service, but no extra charge for the mobile app.

2.     Echosign

Echosign is a free service for creating and sending contracts and agreements which I’ve been using for several years now. All you have to do is upload your agreement, enter your client’s email address, then you get an email when your client has signed it. You can download the PDF with the electronic signature.

With the mobile app, you don’t even have to send the agreement by email – you can have your client “e-sign” it right there during your meeting!

3.     Trip Cubby

Whether you use your car for business every day or only once in a while, it’s essential that you keep track of your mileage so you can claim the appropriate deduction on your income tax return. Trip Cubby is a simple app for the iPhone that does this quite well. At the end of the year (or as often as you like), you simply email the data to yourself and it comes in a spreadsheet. I paid a nominal fee for the app, but they’re currently giving it away for free until the new iOS 7 version is available.

4.     Pocket

Most of us love to use social media for staying in touch and sharing information with colleagues, industry partners, and prospective clients. There are lots of great tools to efficiently share information, such as Buffer and HootSuite, but for many of us, it’s consuming information that so easily distracts us.  That’s where Pocket comes in.

When you’re browsing updates on Facebook, Twitter, or any other website for that matter, when a link catches your eye, instead of taking the time to read it then and there, you can simply “put it in your Pocket.” Then, when you have a few minutes to spare while waiting for a meeting, or a longer stretch of time you’ve earmarked to catch up on your reading, you simply open up the app on your computer or mobile device, and they’re all there for you.

5.     Week Calendar

I’ve been using my Outlook calendar for many years, so when I got my first iPhone I was pretty excited to be able to sync the two and have access to that information when I was away from my computer. Unfortunately, the default iPhone calendar just doesn’t cut it for me.

Week Calendar offers a lot more different views, making it a lot more user-friendly. In addition, it offers the capability of color-coding different appointments and/or inserting one of the many available icons to add visual cues to your calendar.

A really valuable feature is the ability to directly add a location from your Contacts, which then becomes clickable to your Maps app.

What mobile apps do you use in your business? Tell us about your favorites in the comments!

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