Running a small business can be a real challenge. You need to juggle multiple roles and responsibilities at a time. While it’s always ideal to get some help, it is not uncommon for business owners to double as their own secretaries and accountants in an effort to reduce expenses.
However, taking on all these menial tasks on your own can be easy to mess up, even during the best of times.
Fortunately, there are a lot of financial mobile applications and other online platforms that can help you manage a lot of the tedious routinary tasks that you need to do to monitor your business cash flow. In fact, some of them are even integrated with machine learning and AI technology for added features such as automation, data analysis, and report generation.
Best of all, most of these apps are free to use, and those that do require payment usually only come at a small monthly or one-time fee.
In this article, we are going to share with you our top tried-and-tested finance apps that can help you with your transactions, and more importantly, focus on what’s important – building your brand and turning your business ideas into reality. Let’s get started!
1. Bank of America – Banking
Most banks have their own mobile phone and tablet apps nowadays, but only a few of them can compete with Bank of America’s. In fact, it won first place, as the best overall banking app in the recent Keynote Mobile Banking Scorecard results. It also took home the top spot on The Ascent’s list of the best banking apps.
So, what sets it apart from others? Bank of America account holders have the opportunity to perform a lot of their services through their mobile just like competitor apps, but also with the help of Erica, the app’s built-in virtual banking assistant. She can help you with a lot of your transactions and even give you real-time insights into your financial activity.
2. Square – Payment Acceptance
Every business deserves a secure and convenient payment method. That’s exactly what Square seeks to provide and more. They allow contactless payments, access to your bank accounts, and monitor your business cash flow, manage employee payroll and benefits, among other services. And the best thing is? You can access all these features and services through their mobile app.
3. PayPal Zettle – Purchase and Payment Transactions
A lot of small businesses heavily rely on PayPal for their financial transactions, whether that’s receiving customer payments or sending employee wages. If that sounds like you, then you would certainly benefit from using PayPal Zettle. It’s an application that allows you to carry around a point-of-sale credit card reader on your phone, process checks, create invoices, and more.
Please keep in mind that all transactions are going to go through PayPal, though. Hence, it might not be the best option if you don’t currently use (or plan on using) their platform.
4. Finturf – POS Financing
POS or point-of-sale financing and Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) is all the rage right now. After all, it boosts customer buying power and makes your products and services more accessible and manageable to pay for. The question, though, is which point-of-sale financing software to use.
I highly recommend Finturf. It offers a user-friendly app solution that allows customers to apply directly for funding and receive fast results regarding their approval. When approved, Finturf then sends you the funding directly after only three to five business days. That way, you won’t have to worry about collections anymore.
5. Mint – Budgeting
Every business owner should have a reliable budgeting app that can collect all financial information in a single, secure place. This way, you’ll be able to monitor your cash flow better and catch any spending blind spots that might be pulling your finances down.
The best features that we love about Mint’s mobile app are its goal-setting and analysis capabilities. Mint allows you to conveniently set budgets, saving goals, and even spending limits. It could then analyze your transactions and create data-based weekly reports.
6. Credit Karma – Credit Monitoring
Keeping track of one’s credit score and staying on top of debt repayment is another financial responsibility that no business owner should neglect. Fortunately, Credit Karma has a mobile application already that allows you to check your scores, find unclaimed money, monitor credit usage, and protect your identity.
We also enjoy how they provide personalized credit card and loan recommendations based on your current creditworthiness and other financial information. This makes lines of credit more convenient to access especially during financial emergencies.
7. QuickBooks – Accounting
We are not going to be surprised if you have already heard about QuickBooks before. After all, they are one of the most popular accounting apps out there, and for good reason. Their business accounting software is specifically designed with non-accountants in mind.
They also understand that each business is unique. Hence, they have further developed multiple versions of their platform to accommodate all businesses regardless of their industry or scale.
For small business owners, we highly recommend checking out the QuickBooks Self-Employed plan, it is a version specifically intended for small businesses, freelancers, and independent contractors. It comes with automatic mileage tracking via the mobile application, tracks personal and business transactions separately, sorts expenses according to their proper tax categories, and even provides automatic calculations.
8. TurboTax – Taxes
Finally, if there’s one financial aspect that most business owners struggle with, that would be tax management. While some of the mobile applications we have mentioned above already come with tax-related features, nothing beats the features and capability of a tax-dedicated program.
TurboTax is designed by Intuit, the same company that developed QuickBooks. This program is designed to walk you through all the steps of filing your taxes, importing and printing your and your employees’ W-2s and 1099s, and making sure that everything is accurate.
Like QuickBooks, they also have a Self-Employed version specifically designed to fit a small business owner’s need.
Final Thoughts on These Top Finances Apps for Small Businesses
There are definitely other amazing finance applications out there. After all, financial technology is a rapidly growing and developing industry. We expect to see even more secure, advanced, and faster applications in the future. But for now, the eight that we have featured above are among the best out there, especially for small business owners.
About the Author
Martha Pierson is Editor-in-Chief at Finturf, and she provides financial and business management analysis for retailers and service providers.
