What apps should I use for my creative business?
What apps shoud I use?
There are a lot of apps that can make running your business easier. They can automate a lot of the boring admin stuff to leave you free to spend more time on your business. We have curated a list of our favourites that we think can help make your business run smoother and give you more time to spend on the creative projects that you love to do.
Xero
Xero is one of the leading online bookkeeping packages on the market. It is very easy to use and can connect to your bank accounts and download all the transactions directly into the software on a daily basis to start to process.
You can use Xero for submitting vat returns to HMRC, showing basic cash flow in and out of your business and for running payroll. Although for us like all the payroll in online bookkeeping apps at the moment the payroll is a little basic. We prefer to use a standalone payroll app and export the payroll information into Xero.
Quickbooks
Quickbooks is another favourite of ours, it's a little bit more technical for us than Xero and maybe geared more towards the accountants rather than the small business owner to use. That is not to say it is difficult to use. But we just feel that Quickbooks give us as accountants more opportunity to do our work better.
The choice between Xero and Quickbooks is very much an individual choice and there are accountants that love Xero and accountants that love Quickbooks. It’s a choice that you make and you probably should try them both out before making a choice which one you like the most.
Again the payroll is a little basic in Quickbooks, although they have introduced the Quickbooks Online Advanced Payroll which makes it more of an attractive proposition if you want the payroll to be in the same login as your accounts.
Dext
Dext for us is an essential addon to Xero and Quickbooks. Although if you are using Xero you might want to check out Hubdoc that does the same and is included with the Xero subscription.
Dext is a receipt and expenses management app. That means that you can send or push all of your expenses and receipts into Dext and it will extract the details from the receipt and add it into your accounts along with a digital copy of the receipt. Dext will extract the Gross, Net and Vat amounts included in the receipt and make sure that they are correctly shown in your accounts.
This makes doing your accounts each month and each year a lot easier and time consuming. You make sure that you have all the expenses included and it is really matching the payments out of the bank with the expense that you are paying.
Harvest
Being able to track the time that you spend working on a project will mean that you can accurately bill the client for the time that you spend on their work. It will mean that you can see what projects are profitable for you and the ones that are not. You will see where there are projects where there is scope creep and be able to charge the correct amount of time that you spend on this project.
You can then push this time tracking data into your invoices and Xero or Qucikbooks.
Harvest will also give you the ability to plan your workflows in your business and to make sure that you are using the staff in resources in your business efficiently. Making the best use of your resources and staff means earning the most money out of them and increasing revenue. .
Futrli
Futrli is an app that you can add into Quickbooks and Xero that will give you insights into your company. Once it is set up correctly you can see if your business is going to run out of money or you can monitor the KPI’s in your business to make sure that your business is growing in the right direction.
This app will give you the ability to access advanced reporting tools for your business and to see how you are performing. For this reason it is recommended that you don’t try to use this app by yourself and that you use it with an accountant that can help you set this and also help you interpret the information that you get from it.
Next steps
I hope that we have given you some ideas on the apps that you should be using for your business, if you have any question about an app and its suitability for your business please reach out and book a call with us and we can help you decide if you want to use it.