Amplify your work with these great apps and tools
The day-to-day rigors of business are all-consuming and when you start managing a team, the workload becomes prohibitive. Thankfully, there are a myriad great tools out there that not only speed up the work you’re doing, but make it more fun. We’ve selected 6 great apps that do everything from managing your money to improving the emails you write.
For productivity: Slack
Despite the name, Slack is for people who don’t want to be lazy. It’s a nifty app that cuts the fat from team communication. Sick of sending dozens of emails to staff? Want your team to get on board and get talking? Slack stimulates conversation, and helps teams get in sync. Better yet, it’s totally free.
For Money: Spendee
With Spendee, budgeting is easy. It syncs with your online bank account, allowing you to keep track of what you’re spending when you’re spending it. If you have several bank accounts, or want to add employees and family to the app, Spendee obliges. There’s even a multi-currency plan for those weeks you’re traveling. Most importantly, Spendee comes with a 100% data guarantee and has been vouched for by The New York Times, Cult of Mac and LifeHacker. It sports both a free and premium option.
For organization: Trello
Get yourself organized using Trello. The main board gives you a clear overview of all the major projects you’ve got going on. From here, dig into individual boards and add cards (to-do items). Trello is great because it not only works on a personal level, it’s easily synced with entire teams.
For organization: KanbanFlow
An even simpler alternative to Trello is KanbanFlow, which is a self-styled “lean project management” tool that acts like a to-do list.
Create items and then drag and drop them between “to-do”, “do today”, “in progress” and “done”.
Next, add users to your board, extending Kanban to the entire team. There’s even start a timer that tracks how long a task takes, and a productivity mode dubbed Pomodoro which encourages spurts of activity broken up by notifications when you’re due a break.
KanbanFlow works on mobile, desktop and tablets.
For email: Hemingway
In a world where we much of our time is spent communicating over email, the ability to write well has never been a more important asset. Clear, crisp communication can make all the difference and Hemingway recognizes this. It’s a beautiful tool for Mac and PCs that grades your writing, placing an emphasis on clarity and simplicity. Named after Hemingway himself, you simply paste your text into the box and follow the software’s advice.
Hemingway works on Mac and PCs, and while it’s not compatible with mobile phones, it’s a great addition to your toolkit. It’s not free, coming in at a $20 asking price, but it doubles as a word processor too.
For social media: Hootsuite
Hootsuite puts all your social media profiles under one roof and lets you schedule posts, interact with your audience and track engagement without having to log in and out of multiple accounts. The free option enables one user to manage 3 profiles, while the $19 a month Professional plan extends the umbrella to 10 social media profiles (syncing with all major platforms, like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, etc). An even more expensive Team package weighs in at a hefty 99 bucks, but it lets 3 separate people manage 20 accounts at the same time. If you’re paying a content team to juggle clients, Hootsuite could be worth its weight in gold.
