Best Business Apps For Visual Artists For Mac

1. Best Free Apps For Mac
2. Best Business Apps For Visual Artists For Mac 2017

Best Small Business Apps for Team Communication Though project management apps let you stay up to date on who’s doing what, you may still need a more immediate way to get in touch with employees — especially if your email inbox is a nightmare.

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Auto. Problem solver. Financial whiz. Running a small business involves wearing a lot of hats. If you’re looking to increase productivity and organization — or just make your life as an entrepreneur a little easier — a good business app might be just what you need.

To help you navigate the seemingly endless sea of business apps, we’ve compiled a list of our favorite 25 apps and broken them down by category. Check with the individual companies for current pricing information. JUMP TO BUSINESS APPS BY CATEGORY. Best business apps for finance and accounting These apps can streamline all of your business’s financial tasks, including payroll and taxes, and give you a better picture of your company’s financial health. Gusto This app, formerly known as ZenPayroll, streamlines your company’s payroll, tax and benefits process. In addition to managing online employee onboarding, automatically reports new hires to the government; handles all local, state and federal tax filings; automates deductions for benefits and workers’ comp payments; and emails digital pay stubs to employees. QuickBooks accounting software helps you run your business and provides a sense of your company’s overall financial health.

You can use QuickBooks to track your business’ sales and expenses; view financial statements, such as profit and loss reports; pay your employees and vendors; track unpaid invoices; and more. QuickBooks connects to thousands of accounts — including your business bank account, credit cards, PayPal and Square — and uploads data from these sources seamlessly. It also simplifies doing your business taxes, as it tracks expenses and lets you upload photos of receipts from your phone. With QuickBooks Online, you can access QuickBooks on your iPhone, iPad, Android phone or Android tablet. Or sign in for e-book FreshBooks This app gives small-business owners and freelance workers a simple way to manage and track invoices. Lets you create personalized, professional-looking invoices; automatically bill your clients for recurring invoices; and accept credit cards on your mobile device. Other useful features include the ability to track and organize expenses from anywhere and create customizable business reports, such as profit and loss statements.

Wave is an easy-to-use accounting software platform specifically for small businesses, independent contractors and sole proprietors with nine or fewer employees. Wave lets businesses track sales and expenses, manage invoices and customer payments, pay employees, scan receipts and generate accounting reports. The company recently added free personal finance software to help small-business owners manage their finances in one place. Best business apps for communication Communicating effectively is critical for the daily operations of small businesses.

Here are some of the best communication apps to improve productivity within your company. Addappt makes it easier to manage your contacts. It gives your business associates, friends and family the ability to update their contact information in your address book, provided they also use Addappt. You can also organize contacts into groups and send messages via the app. Fuze i s a videoconferencing app that hosts online meetings for all devices and operating systems, including iPads and tablets such as the Samsung Galaxy. It offers high-definition video and crisp audio, and it’s easy to set up and download.

Pushover This app is a game changer for well-connected small-business owners with more than one phone or device. Sends push messages to any smartphone and organizes messages and notifications from your devices in one common space. You can send 7,500 messages each month and receive an unlimited amount of notifications on Android and iOS devices and desktops.

Slack With instant messaging platform, you can organize your team’s conversations into separate private or public channels or send a direct message. The app also makes it easy to drag, drop and share images, PDFs and other files right in the chat.

It automatically indexes and archives any message, notification or file, and there’s no limit to how many users your business can add. Skype Competitors have tried to knock off its videoconferencing throne, but the app remains effective and popular, with more than 10 million reviews on Google Play. You can use Skype to video or voice call anyone in the world; get up to 25 people together on a call; transmit video, photos and files of any size; share your computer screen; and send text or voice messages. Best business apps for time management Time is your most valuable asset. Here are some of the best time-management apps to help you organize your schedule and stay focused on the most important tasks at hand. RESCUETIME automatically tracks time you’ve spent on applications and websites and sends you detailed reports and data based on your activity, giving you an accurate picture of how you spent your day.

It works for Mac, PC, Android and Linux. My Minutes If you find you can’t stay focused on your most important tasks — or you’re wasting too much time on Facebook — can help you stay grounded by setting goals, such as “Spend only one hour checking email” or “Work out for 30 minutes.” OmniFocus shows users what’s due and when, reviews completed tasks and syncs between your phone and desktop. It works with iPhones, iPads, Macs and Apple Watch. TripIt consolidates your travel plans into a single, master itinerary that you can access at any time and on any device, regardless of the website you used to buy your ticket.

Users must forward all their travel emails to TripIt, and the app takes it from there. You can also check departure times and delays, find directions to the airport and view weather reports.

Best business apps for mobile payment Mobile payment apps allow your business to accept payments from customers on the go, and they can track business expenses. Here are our top options. PayPal HERE reacted to the emergence of Square — more on that product below — by creating an app that lets businesses attach PayPal’s card reader to a tablet or other device and use it as a portable register. The PayPal Here app is ideal for businesses that need to get paid on the go. Square This payment app is a good fit for businesses such as food trucks, beauty salons and retail shops. Its users get a small, portable card reader that attaches to a phone or another mobile device to take fast, convenient payments. Also offers a called Square Register for businesses with a brick-and-mortar store.

Best business apps for organization Stay on top of all of your errands and work tasks with these top organization apps. Asana If your business is looking to improve its communication and collaboration, look no further than. The web-based and mobile app lets you view all tasks and projects and follow progress on the Asana board, and you can share notes, upload files and communicate without having to rely on email. Asana also integrates with Google Drive and Dropbox to attach files, and with Slack for communication to post updates to a Slack messaging channel.

PROVEN helps you organize your hiring, letting you post all your job listings to multiple job boards with one click on your smartphone. You can also sort through dozens of application responses in just minutes; categorize applicants into “yes,” “no” and “maybe” buckets; and note when you follow up with a candidate.

It’s an especially good fit for companies that have sporadic hiring needs, such as restaurants and retail, or for an entrepreneur who juggles multiple business tasks and needs to save time on hiring. Boxmeup The Android app organizes and tracks your packages, containers and other bulk storage items. It allows you to print the proper QR labels, which you can scan with your phone to access a list of items in each container at any time.

There’s no iPhone app, but you can access Boxmeup’s mobile website using an iPhone. Evernote is the app for syncing notes across mobile and desktop devices.

To-do lists, reminders and notes about ideas are accessible across your devices. Trello is an easy-to-use project management app that tracks your team’s workflow. Each card you create on a Trello board represents an assignment or task. You can add members, comments, attachments, checklists, due dates, and labels and stickers to make the cards as descriptive as possible. Whenever you change a card, Trello notifies each member via email and on mobile devices. KanbanFlow Managers can use to assign tasks, upload documents and file attachments, schedule due dates and visualize overall workflow.

The Kanban board is divided into columns to give you an overview of your current work situation. You can also divide tasks into subtasks to track progress more easily, and filter tasks to view only the ones that are assigned to you or someone on your team. Other favorites Here are some of the most popular and effective apps on the market.

Expensify makes keeping track of business trip expenses less painful. You can link your credit or debit card to your Expensify account so the app will place charges directly on an expense report.

Or, if you prefer, you can take pictures of your receipts with your phone, and Expensify will automatically extract the relevant information. You can then make an expense report yourself, which takes only a few minutes. DROPBOX Boasting 500 million users and 200,000 businesses, is the most popular platform on which to store and share files on the cloud. It’s especially useful for companies that need a reliable way to share information with telecommuters.

MailChimp helps you build and manage your mailing lists and easily create and send newsletters. You can also build and customize email templates and view performance reports about your emails. This information can help you send your customers more relevant emails. Polaris Office is a reliable alternative to Apple’s iWork that lets you edit, create and sync Microsoft Office files from anywhere on your phone or device, as well as view PDF files.

Things Platforms: MAC only Price – $49.99 for the Mac (only!). Where To Get It: Created by Cultured Code, downloadable online. How I Use It: Things is a wonderful task management program that’s a one-time buy. I’ve been using it for over a year, and it’s been my “goto” assistant every morning. It also syncs with my iPad and iPhone so that I can update and cross things off my list while I’m on the go. Why It Makes Me a Better Artist: The biggest usability factor I find with it is that I can enter a task into the list, date it, assign it to a project or a person on my team and then FORGET ABOUT IT.

That leaves my head clear for other creative matters that need attention in the immediate time frame. Sometimes there can be a lot to remember, so having a virtual system in place for task management is an excellent way to gain more brain and physical space in the studio. Favourite things about it: I can prioritize items by things needing to be done “Today”, “Next”, “Scheduled”, “Someday” and “Projects” and then review the list for priorities according to those categories. I love the project management aspect of it, which allows for specific assignments of the tasks required to complete a project.

A+ on this for me. I can assign team members to tasks and projects. That’s great too, because I can email my team members with their task listsand forget about it, or as more often happens, I have them sync their iPhones with “Things”. Works wonderfully – but you have to be on the same WiFi network, if I recall. What Would I Improve About It: I’d like to be able to program a timed reminder alarm that goes off via an email or sound cue. I can do this via iCal but I prefer using that for appointments and not task management which in my mind are totally different “things”. Evernote Platforms: Mac and Windows Price: There is a FREE version but I’ve got the yearly subscription.

It’s $45.00 per yr. Where To Get It: Site link takes you to the Mac App Store. How I Use It: Electronic filing for receipts, sales and expenses. Saving links to sites that I want to revisit. Blog-writing on the go. Workshop information (for workshops I’m giving).

Basically, it’s a cloud storage database and organizer of information. Why It Makes Me a Better Artist: It makes me a better artist because I don’t have to spend as much time worrying about critical files that I need if my hard drive or computer systems go down. What’s mandatory and quickly accessible to me is available.anywhere I can get internet access. I can e-file everything that I want to keep into “Notebooks” that are in categories and sub-categories. I’m able to share my notebooks with my team members and it all syncs with my iPhone and iPad so when we’re on the go, those resources stay with me wherever I can access the internet.

I can save up to 1 gig a month online, so do save some photo references as well there. I can email things directly into Evernote, so for instance if I get an email from a client that I want to keep, I email it into Evernote, then delete it off my hard drive or iPhone, knowing it’s there later. It keeps my hard drive and email InBox clean and I’ve “processed” and archived that information for later reference if required. Efficiency is the keymore time for me in the studio! Favourite things about it: Emailing into Evernote.

Saving and emailing photos for reference into the database. How incredibly detailed I can get with it by tagging things for further reference. It becomes my own reference library.

That there are so many add-on applications that work with Evernote such as Skitchit’s endless and developers keep adding to it. I’m happy with the updates to the product and that they are quite on top of any bugs that appear in system operations. Shortcomings: I wish it were a one-time purchase, but I’m actually amazed at how incredible a value it is for 1 gig of cloud storage a month. Overall, I don’t have a suggestion yet as to how I’d improve the program. I’m very satisfied with it! Bento Platforms: Mac Price: $49.99 as a single user, $99.99 in a Family Pack (allows up to 5 computers at one time). Where To Get It: Bento is made by the Filemaker folks.

It’s like the little sister to Filemaker. For those that require a more powerful database management system, check out How I Use It: Bento is a database management piece of software that allows me to keep track of mailing lists, addresses and sort into categories of collectors. It acts as a “one stop shop” for archiving all of the information on works that are created, where they are shown, when they are sold, etc. As Bento is customizable, you can pretty much get as detailed as you want to regarding the categories in which you want to classify and sort your artwork. I also use it to keep track of investments (not a hard job, because I’m a poor artist), iPhoto catalogue, iCal Events and Tasks, User Names and Passwords – just about anything that you need to sort, classify, record or archive. Why It Makes Me a Better Artist: AgainI’ll say it again.because it saves so much time for me so I can be in the studio. Entering all your works and contacts into a database program at the get-go can be a daunting experience.

(Hire someone if you have to – I hired my son and that worked out well. He learned more about the businesswe got the work done!) Once the database information is entered, you have a beautiful archived library of information on your entire career and THAT helps you become more organized, more efficient and independent. There’s no downside on any of that from a business or artistic perspective. Favourite things about it: There are numerous ready-made available for free on the Bento website, including one for art inventory. These are super as starters, and allow you to then sort through and add fields for classification as you require. It’s super easy to use and quite visual and user-friendly. There’s a version for my iPhone and iPad that allows me to carry them “on the go”.

It’s customizable, expandable ANDif you need to “grow it up”, you can upsize the data into Filemaker Pro. Shortcomings: Bento doesn’t sink over the internet, so you have to sync only when you’re on wifi.

Best Free Apps For Mac

I’d love it if there was a remote feature that updated remotely, but it’s a picky thing with me. Constant Contact Platforms: Mac, PC, Linux – it works over the web so any platform will do.

Price: Monthly fee depending on the size of your contact list. Where To Get It: Site How I Use It: Newsletter, Email Communications, Facebook Page Site Integration Why It Makes Me a Better Artist: Constant Contact does a bunch of html email programming in a WYSIWG editor, allowing me to create great graphic design on my newsletters.

I don’t have to think about how “beautiful” it is. Professional looking email communications are de rigeur these days if you are wishing to stay in contact with your collector base. It’s “expected”, I believe. Favourite things about it: The interface is super easy to use, and you can try it out for free for awhile to see if it’s for you. What I absolutely LOVE is that they have amazing support people who are there to help you out and are really organized and proactive. They call.they helpthey send tips and there seems to be a personal connection with the company. THIS.I love about ANY company.

If you take the time out to call me and check in, see how I’m doing and really know how I’m using the product without me having to complete a silly “5 minute” survey, you’ve got my vote. I can import my mailing database from Feedblitz or Bento, categorize lists and send out specific communications to certain client lists as required. This is a huge timesaver. VIP collectors may get different communications from me than blog subscribers, so being able to categorize and send to specific lists within the program is a bonus.

Best Business Apps For Visual Artists For Mac 2017

It’s all online. I can design a newsletter from my local coffeehouse if I feel like it. This is goodgets me out of the studio and office. They always seem to be improving their services. I’ve seen two major improvements in the past month alone that allow a campaign management through Facebook. I get notices when someone joins my mailing listsor leaves. This is great because I can be more proactive and know who is interested in my work and develop a relationship with my clients and followers.

They just “get it”. I feel the love from them. Shortcomings: As a visual artist, I want LOTS of images in my emails. They only allow for five at a time unless you purchase an upgrade to allow you to upload more images. I don’t mind – it’s a small amount, but I’d rather have that included in the package somehow.

Just seems to be a bit “nickel and dimey” for such a powerful program.