Small business owner’ success lies in their finance management. Every cent matters and overspending can easily push you into the danger zone of financial hardship or even closure. Nowadays, in a market where profit margins are usually small, finance management is a must. In spite of this, there are a number of finance apps, which perfectly fit for this purpose and help small business owners get through with ease.
In this article, we will look at 5 top finance apps, and identify the unique features of each to provide small business owners with a more effective way of managing their expenses.
Table of Contents (Apps for managing small business)
Why Should Small Business Owners Track Expenses?
Small Business owners should track expenses because of following reasons:
Financial Health:
Tracking of spending allows a clear understanding how well the company is doing financially. Hence it provides a better way to track inventory and make the decisions.
Budget Management:
It facilitates home budgeting, preparation and adherence to prioritized objectives, ensuring executing of tasks without wasting any resources.
Tax Compliance:
Expense tracking will help you to track receipts, report business receipts appropriately and prevent inappropriate penalties for yourself or your business.
Business Growth:
Spending monitoring and analysis generate the technique of finding ineffective and expensive to track spending on stuff and thus provide cost-saving as well as give place to sustainable growth.
Investor Confidence:
An accurate and transparent income statement expense tracking ability Uplifts the confidence of potential investors and thus helps in a responsible financial Management Earns the investors’ trust in the business.
5 best finance management apps for small business
1. Mint
Mint is a widely recognized expense management application for its simplicity and the features developed specifically for small business owners.
It is great at categorizing expenses and auditing them with various accounts which leads to a complete overview of financial conditions.
Mint bears the flag for simplifying budgeting tasks, putting one on track with where they are and where they are headed financially, helping to avoid late payments.
Mint goes beyond presenting analyses of single expenditure items, so that business owners may make competent decisions and ensure stability for their company.
The user-friendly dashboard which is also visual based is designed to present financial data in a compressed and a summarized manner.
Beyond that, Mint offers a secure platform which safeguards private financial information.
This builds trust to the users and they can have no worry when using Mint to manage personal finances.
In simple words, Mint acts a trustworthy friend to small business owners by equipping them with powerful tools to monitor their finances, manage expenses, and attain greater financial security in the long run.
Download the app from here.
2.Good Budget
Goodbudget is an effective app for small business owners that could be used to gain control of their finances.
What mainly differentiates this budgeting method from others is and is that it employs the envelope budgeting technique, an approach that involves creating a fixed list of categories into which each and every spending gets allocated (thus the metaphor of the “envelope”).
People can assign virtual envelopes for the various expenditure categories, e.g., office supplies, marketing and utilities as well.
It has an easy and practical system to see the money flow on a temporal basis and therefore, utilize the financial resources in an appropriate way avoiding overspending in each category.
Goodbudget goes further toward simplifying the process with linking in the user’s bank accounts and giving the user real-time updates to the expenses through the regular syncing of transactions.
Therefore, its simplistic and flexible options are designed to meet the irregularity of the businesses on the guiding weight of their budget and spending trend.
Goodbudget is the platform that permits small business owners to train up in financial management and to adopt a disciplined financial management method, thus allowing small business owners to make better decisions and to have small business budgeting be in a better financial state.
Download the app from here.
3. FreshBooks
FreshBooks is a fantastic app for the small business owners trying to take command over the finances of their business.
The program is based on the principle of the envelope budgeting method, which is presented as the tool for division of the total amount of money among different categories of spending, represented by the secure envelopes.
Users can open virtual envelopes to pay bills or allocate different expenses such as office supplies, marketing, tracking expenses or utilities.
FreshBooks is a Cloud accounting software product that was developed to serve the needs of small business owners, freelancers and self-employed professionals.
Its user-friendly interface and rich features are the reasons that makes it the most favorite tool for all the efficient users for financial planning.
FreshBooks has invoicing capabilities which allows users to create and send the invoices themselves among clients and receive the payments easily.
Furthermore, Freshbooks provides its users with the task of time tracking. Such a feature allows billing clients after they actually worked on something.
In other, expense tracking functions will provide users the opportunity to upload receipts and categorize their expenses for proper arrangement and tax payments preparation. Also,
Froshbook gives reporting tools that give users valuable business insights on the finances that are great for their business.
Freshbooks being user-friendly and powerful in toolset greatly simplifies accounting tasks for small business owners thus freeing up their valuable time, and ensuring that all their financial reports and functions are correctly carried out and managed.
Download the app from here.
4. American Express/Kabbage
American express previously known as Kabbage is the best financial option for small businesses that are ready to overcome financial challenges and receive financing, which is created to match the requirements of entrepreneurs.
In addition to the convenient and fast finance providing, the streamlined application process and fast approval turnaround help ease the struggle of businesses needing quick capital for seizing growth opportunities or dealing with large unexpected costs.
One of the most noteworthy features of Kabbage is this huge flexibility, which is built to take care of business partners of every shape and kind, including those with a less credible history, yet still manage to go ahead.
Along with this, Kabbage’s different kind of model in which real-time business data and performance metrics are utilized, goes for an assessment of risks, which most likely increases approval rates compared to traditional lending institutions.
Moreover, Kabbale offers line of credit rather than loan capital, hence a business has the opportunity to withdraw from the funds when it is needed most and hence maintain financial agility, thereby catering to the rapid fluctuations of cash flow.
In simple words, Kabbage is enabling small businesses to access financial markets that before only big businesses have used thereby accelerating their growth and equipping them with the resilience to navigate through today’s challenging economic environment.
Download the app from here.
5. TurboTax
TurboTax is the indispensable tool for small businesses, developed to provide all-inclusive features necessary to make the business owners’ lives easier while simplifying the complexities related to managing various aspects of taxes. Tax regulation and requirements for small business owners can be so intricate that they might be confused on how to move forward.
TurboTax is a platform created for individuals and businesses that provides step-by-step instruction for online payments, and ensures their tax compliance with the laws of the country.
A very effective advantage of TurboTax is its simple display, which helps small businesses through tax preparation in a manner that requires them only to supply relevant finances and deductions information.
Thus securing the precision and reducing error concerns that might bring up penalty or audit cases.
In addition to that, the TurboTax platform also features a number of helpful tools advanced features and resources that can contribute greatly towards small business owners qualifying for the maximum amount of business deductions and credits, which in turn would result in the reduction of their taxable income and increase of their refund.
TurboTax remains up-to-date with the most current tax laws and changes, to ensure its users stay informed of any upcoming changes that might affect them. This intra-precision and adherence to the code by the small businesses is so vital as they are less endowed with the resources and the experts in the course of trying to navigate complex tax codes on their own.
Download the app from here.
Factors to consider when selecting financial apps
When selecting financial apps for managing small business expenses or most other apps used for managing finances, several factors should be considered to ensure they meet your specific needs and goals.
Features and Functionality:
Assess the app’s security features, and functionality to make sure that they are following the business needs. Look for options such as allocated expense, and budgeting apps tracker, invoicing, payment reminders and reporting.
User Interface and Ease of Use:
Go for apps with an interface and navigation that is simple to work with by the user.
An intuitive of budgeting features a friendly design if you are going to ease the management of expenses through it; this will obviously reduce the team’s and your learning curve time.
Integration and Compatibility:
Ensure that the app is connected to other systems in your office and has the functionality of the existing software program.
Compatibility with accounting software, bank accounts, and other financial resources becomes an advantage for this as it ensures real-time data synchronization and flawless workflow.
Cost and Pricing Structure:
Think about the fees made, the pricing and sales structure of the application, such as a subscription fees, transactional charges, and additional cost for premium features.
The app should allow you to know the true cost and security features of the platform so that you can be sure of the worth of the product purchased.
Security and Data Privacy:
Give priority to installations which emphasize data security and privacy.
The presence of encryptions, multi-factor authentication, and agreement to us Compliance with industry standards should help in safeguarding your high-risk financial information.
Customer Support and Reviews:
Check customer reviews and ratings on the app rating to assess whether it is reliable or not.
In addition, ensurethe customer’s overall satisfaction. Moreover, assess the availability of and the immediacy of the support channels that customers can use to quickly seek help in case of any problems or questions with the product or service.
Features to Look for in a Budgeting App
When selecting the right budgeting app for your needs, consider the following criteria:
- User-Friendly Interface: Better opt for a program with a straightforward user friendly interface.
- Comprehensive Budgeting Tools: Consider things like category management, cash flow monitoring, and budgeting which would be customizable for you.
- Automatic Syncing: Make sure that your app can code information to your bank accounts and credit cards using real-time updating.
- Goal Setting: Choose an app which allows you to set and to monitor whether you have achieved financial goals.
- Reporting and Analysis: It is suggested to use the apps, provided by various organizations that offer detailed data and analysis to trace spending patterns and highlight categories that need better management.
Summary
Managing finance is crucial for small businesses. The above list of five applications are selected specifically to get your current finances inspected and tracked. The budgeting application Mint gives a robust analytic tool while the envelope approach implemented by the Good budget app serves as a vital organizational tool for businesses of all kinds. Moreover, sites such as Kabbage provide the path to business budgeting and loans, and also TurboTax helps to solve the problem of tax management. Using the resources of planning, marketing, accounting and identifying funding sources allow entrepreneurs to have a clearer vision of their financial health, make excellent decisions, and eventually promote the business.