As I eagerly await the as of yet undetermined day later this month when I will finally be getting an iPhone, I keep thinking of all of the things that I will want to do with it. Since I own and operate a couple of small home-based businesses, I decided to check out iPhone apps that are useful for people like me who work from home. Smartphones like the iPhone and Android are fast becoming important business tools for small and home-based businesses not just because of their portability, but because the ever-increasing number of apps for these devices enables home based professionals to do things that used to be prohibitively expensive or time consuming.
For example, last week I discussed mobile credit card processing. That is one thing that I find completely fascinating because credit card processing equipment and fee structures have long been a barrier to the ability of home based businesses to accept credit cards. There are other goodies out there too, though. ProOnGo Express will cost you nothing (unless you get a scanner for your receipts) and it enables you to track your business expenses wherever you are – no more waiting until you get home to enter that stack of receipts or hoping that you did not throw out the scrap of paper where you wrote down your mileage. You can even export the expense data into Quickbooks, Excel, or almost any other accounting program that you use.
If you use Microsoft Office in the course of your work, it may be worth it to shell out ten dollars to get an app called Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite. With that app, you can create, view, open, and edit Word documents and other Microsoft Office files right on your iPhone. I use Word a lot, and I can certainly understand how handy it would be to be able to send revisions of documents back and forth from anywhere without having to take out my laptop, get online, and work on them. Also, if I were working on a blog post or other document in Word, I could save it and then work on it some more while I’m waiting in line or in a waiting room somewhere. Unless my son is with me at that time. Then, the iPhone would be safely stashed away out of the reach of those little fingers. Unless a temper tantrum was imminent. Then it might make an appearance so that said temper tantrum can be averted by one of the many children’s game apps that are available.
One note of caution is that since apps take up space in your phone’s memory, you will have to be selective about which ones you choose. Try a few, especially if they are free, to see whether they really do what they claim to do. If so, keep them and enjoy but if not, don’t forget to delete them to make room for other more useful apps – or music, pictures, or games.
Photo by alvimann on morguefile.com.