Run your business with these apps

With clients across the world and in different time zones, Delhi-based chartered accountant Shitij Bahl, who runs his own taxing and accounting firm, needs to keep a lot of information handy on his phone when he’s travelling.

“You never know when I will get an urgent request from a client to see all their documents. The whole 30 MB of it,” says the 33-year-old. He relies on mobile apps to respond quickly and efficiently—Google Suite to organize team schedules and track projects; Zoho Invoice to send GST-integrated invoices quickly; and Dropbox, where he keeps all client data so it can be shared efficiently with just a link. If, like Bahl, you tend to travel on work, here are a few essential apps to keep handy.

Photo: iStockphoto

Workmate

Track your sales team in the field without giving them a call. Workmate uses MapmyIndia’s detailed maps to enable location-based tracking of your field workforce during working hours by using the GPS on their phones. “Through the web app, you will be able to see where all your field employees are on a given working day,” says Delhi-based Tarini Sundar, head of marketing, MapmyIndia. Using their phones, employees can mark location-based attendance. When offline, the app keeps collecting geo-data and syncs information the moment your employees are back online. It also has a built-in working hours tracking system so that it does not track an employee post working hours. If you have multiple vendors or clients in different cities, you can mark them on the map. This way, a new employee won’t have to call you up to find them. In addition you get handy data on how many customers he visited.

30-day free trial. Plans start at Rs350 per licence, per month. Web and Android. www.mapmyindia.com/workmate

Google Suite clubs together apps like Gmail, Google Docs, Google Drive, Calendar and Hangouts into one group.

Google Suite

Google Suite clubs together apps like Gmail, Google Docs, Google Drive, Calendar and Hangouts into one group so that your team can effortlessly collaborate, edit docs, schedule appointments, communicate and even do video conferencing, while all of this is getting stored automatically on the cloud. You can manage user accounts, devices and data for all the users that are part of the Suite. Additionally, you get email addresses in your company’s name, over 30 GB of storage, and 24×7 customer care for any issue you might face.

Plans start at Rs150 per user, per month. Web, Android and iPhone. Gsuite.google.co.inHappay, an app by a Bengaluru-based start-up that provides corporate cards to all your employees.

Happay

Track expenses of your sales team with Happay, an app by a Bengaluru-based start-up that provides corporate cards to all your employees (depending on the plan). As the owner, you can load the corporate card with as much credit as you want from a mobile or web app. Your employees use the cards, upload photos of bills and receipts, submit expense reports, check their card balance, track their expenses and submit advance requests for more balance for the card, all through the employee-facing app. “For you the app will show real-time feeds of all employee expenses,” says Anshul Rai, CEO and co-founder, adding you have the option to block a card if someone is misusing it.

Plans begin at Rs300 per user, per month. iPhone and Android. Happay.in

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