Running a small business can be a real challenge. You need to juggle multiple roles and responsibilities at the same time. While it’s always ideal to get some help, it is common for business owners to double as their secretaries and accountants in an effort to reduce expenses.
However, taking on all these menial tasks can be easy to mess up, even during the best of times.
Fortunately, there are a lot of financial mobile applications (apps) and other online platforms that can help you manage many of the tedious routine tasks you need to do to monitor your business cash flow. Some 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’re sharing 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. Year after year, it tops the list as the best overall banking app in Javelin’s Keynote Mobile Banking Scorecard results and continues to appear on The Motley Fool’s list of the best banking apps.
So, what sets it apart from others? Bank of America account holders can manage their account services through their mobile device, just like competitor apps, except it comes with the help of the app’s built-in virtual banking assistant, Erica, which can help you with your transactions, find answers to your questions, 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, monitoring of your business cash flow, and management of employee payroll and benefits, among other services. And the best thing is? You can access all these features and services through its Android or IOS mobile app.
3. PayPal Point of Sale – Purchase and Payment Transactions
Numerous small businesses rely heavily on PayPal for their financial transactions. That includes receiving customer payments and sending employee wages. If that sounds like something your business needs, it could benefit from PayPal Point of Sale (POS).
PayPal POS, formerly Zettle, is an online application that allows you to accept payments anywhere by carrying a point-of-sale credit card reader on your phone, and it can process checks, create invoices, and more. You can download the app from Google Play or the Apple store using your cell phone or tablet.
You can also accept payments using the PayPal POS terminal preloaded with software and connected to the internet, as well as Samsung Pay, Google Pay, Apple Pay, via a web browser, and more.
4. Finturf – POS Financing
Point-of-sale and Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) financing are all the rage. They boost customer buying power and make your products and services more accessible and manageable to pay for. The question, though, is which point-of-sale financing software to use.
Finturf offers a user-friendly app solution that allows customers to apply directly with multiple lenders for funding and receive fast results regarding their approval. When approved, Finturf sends you the funding directly after only three to five business days. That way, you won’t have to worry about collections anymore.
5. YNAB – 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. That’s where You Need A Budget (YNAB) comes in.
The best features we love about YNAB’s mobile app are its goal-setting and analysis capabilities. YNAP allows you to set spending targets, budgets, and savings goals. It can then analyze your transactions and create data-based weekly reports.
6. Nav – 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, Nav has a mobile application and website that allows you to check your personal and business credit scores, protect your identity, watch your cash flow, and get matched with vendors offering flexible payment terms.
They provide personalized credit card and loan recommendations based on your creditworthiness and other financial information. This makes personal and small business lines of credit more accessible, especially during financial emergencies.
7. QuickBooks – Accounting
We’re not surprised if you’ve already heard about QuickBooks. 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 and have developed multiple versions of their platform to accommodate companies regardless of industry or scale.
For small business owners, we 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 capabilities of a tax-dedicated program.
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 ensuring that everything is accurate.
TurboTax is designed by Intuit, the same company that developed QuickBooks. Like QuickBooks, they have a self-employed version designed to fit small business owners’ needs.
Final Thoughts on These Top Finance Apps for Small Businesses
The financial technology sector is a rapidly growing and developing industry with plenty of amazing finance applications to choose from. 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.