Budgeting and keeping the books in check isn't exactly the most glamorous part of a business, but the health of your company's finances is vital. Nearly all large and medium firms may have their own finance departments to deal with the numbers, but there's no reason why you can't try something different and implement your own finance software apps.
This approach is actually more popular than might seem as businesses are spoilt for choice. As such, picking the right app that's scaleable and matches your organisation's growth and ambitions can be a little tricky.
It's about looking for an app that's simple enough to understand, so it can be easily adopted throughout the business. It needs to help track expenses, create and send invoices and measure your income and costs to estimate profits, or indeed losses. There are also more sophisticated options that include financial planning for the future.
Whether you're looking for an all-encompassing application to handle the ins and outs of your business, or just an app to deal with some of the complicated math, there is an option for all. Here is our lowdown of the best apps for small, medium and large businesses to help you get on top of your business' finances.
Freshbooks
Freshbooks, like Quickbooks, one of our other favourite business finance apps, is a great choice for managing your accounts online, including invoicing, ensuring your business bank account is in order and your expenses are all logged. You can also use the application to log your time - something that isn't really offered in many of the other leading accounting apps.
However, it's important to consider that Freshbooks won't replace the software you usually use to submit your tax return or business accounts - you'll still need to use a double-entry accounting platform (or, of course, your accountant) to do that.
You can create a range of reports using the Freshbooks Classic interface and integrations with a range of third parties including Paypal, Stripe (for taking credit card payments), Shopify, Mailchimp and Zendesk make it a robust offering for small businesses and sole traders.
The app has recently undergone a major update, making it much easier to use than was previously the case, without losing any of the headline features of its original classic design. The UI though is still clean and fresh, making it a breeze to use.
Price: From £6.41
URL: Freshbooks
Competera Price Intelligence
Comptera Price Intelligence will super-charge your business's pricing strategy, using a wide range of data points to make sure you're able to compete with your rivals. It'll compare what you're charging to your competitors, combining the information with other data, such as seasonal trends and historical stats that can affect both your and other companies' pricing structure.
If it thinks you need to make adjustments, you'll find out first, with the app giving your hints and tips and notifying you if it sees a potential shift about to happen. This means not only will you be the first business to react, but it will hopefully mean more sales too. Similarly, if a competitor launches a promotion, you can see what they're offering and present a discount too, undercutting them if you feel it's necessary.
Comptera Price Intelligence will also check how much inventory you have in stock, so if your competitors are running low, you can increase your prices just when they run out, meaning more profit for you as demand increases.
The UI is super-simple to use too, with your insights being presented right from the dashboard, making sure you never miss the latest shifts and can react as soon as a change happens.
Price: Price on application
URL: Comptera
Pandle
Pandle appears to be just another accounting app, bringing together all of your finances, invoicing and reporting, however, it's a more long-term solution, with the paid version also projecting your future financial growth.
If you're happy to stump up the pretty nominal fee of £5 a month, you can take advantage of automated bank feeds, importing all your transactions every day autonomously and premium invoice templates that make your business look more professional.
If you pay VAT, you can also calculate how much you need to pay to the taxman every year and employee payroll tracking is a breeze. Everything can be viewed from a single dashboard, with all the key information available as soon as you login - so no surprises as you dig deeper into the analytics.
Because it's approved by HMRC, you can also rest assured it's all above board and it calculates your tax bills exactly as they should be, so no over or underpaying!
Price: From free
URL: Pandle
Why download? The ability to work out how much you'll earn in future is a pretty handy feature, on top of the usual transaction tracking available on Pandle.
Wave
Designed for small businesses (and hence why it's free), Wave allows you to track sales and expenses, manage invoices and customer payments, pay employees, scan receipts and generate accounting reports, making it a great all-in-one solution for businesses just starting out.
You can directly connect your bank account to automatically import transactions including income and expenditure, which Wave will then import into your account so you don't have to track every single expense or invoice when it's paid.
You can also issue invoices in just a few steps, making sure you always get paid on time and can cut the monthly slog of tracking who's paid you and when. Because you can set up all your customers you regularly invoice, it makes the entire process seamless.
Price: From free
URL: Wave
Why download? Wave makes small business accounting a breeze, meaning your annual tax return doesn't have to cause serious headaches
Spendbook
Spendboook will help you track your finances with its beautiful, easy to use interface makes it easy to keep an eye on the money coming in and leaving your account. You can take photos of items you've bought, receipts or anything else you may want to log and add them to the app, alongside notes to flag anything you want to highlight across our outgoings and incoming money.
A calendar interface will tell you when payments are scheduled to leave your account or invoices are due, while multiple bank accounts can be added, helping you keep track of what's happening in both your personal and business accounts if you wish
Price: £1.49
URL:Spendbook
Why download?
Concur
Concur has been designed for businesses requiring speed, efficiency and flexibility when it comes to financial management. With Concur, you can digitally keep all the business travel expenses in order, organise and plan trips, record your expenses and liabilities, take a snapshot of bills, enter hotel charges, submit and get the ‘expense' reports approved on Concur. If you travel frequently for business purposes or have employees who travel a lot, check out Concur.
Price: Free trial then from £6/month/user
URL: Concur
Why download? With Concur you can change the way you do business; make expense reports, record all the card charges and receipts to help you travel smartly and cost effectively.
Expensify
Expensify allows intuitive and seamless expense reporting, making it ideal for businesses. You can link your debit and credit accounts and cards, track mileage, build expenses reports, track salaries and employees spending habits with Expensify. Additionally, you can also export data to other applications and send to fellow users, convert currency, plus for those who travel frequently, set flight updates and alerts. Whether you are an existing employee or someone who travels a lot, Expensify is a cheap solution to expensive numbers.
Price: Free
URL: Expensify (subscription required)
Why download? Expensify has a simple to use interface, making it almost seamless to use for employee and management visibility
Home Budget with Sync
Home Budget with Sync lets you know your debit, credit, balance accounts all at once. With charts and funky colors, it lets you know how close you are to your budget limit and helps track your income, budget, and bills. You can scan a receipt, or sync data and share it with other users of the app (e.g. co business owners or finance staff) or can simply export it to your desktop.
Price: £3.99
URL: HomeBudget
Why download? It’s visual and allows information to be shared and uploaded quickly. Just what every person needs for a quick budgeting solution!
Intuit QuickBooks
For a more business-centric approach to accounting, Intuit QuickBooks' aim is to make your small business accounting run like clockwork. Whether you're an independent contractor, a new business, work in professional services, retail, e-commerce or a non profit, Intuit has the product for you. Not only does it help you keep on top of all your finances including invoicing, accounting, expenses and more, it also integrates with a whole variety of other services including PayPal, SafetyNet for secure backups, Receipt Bank for storing all your expenses data and Shopify so you can import all your orders.
Price: From £6.99/month
URL: QuickBooks
Why download? Suited for every type of small business, QuickBooks' range of integrations is second to none for a well-priced cross-platform app
Mint
Mint is one of the most popular finance applications available on mobile. It allows you to set your budget, have a complete look of your finances, account details, loans and credit card details. You can track how you’re spending those valuable pennies and if you go near the budget, the red flag alert is raised! You can gain saving and investment tips too, customised to your assets by Mint.
Price: Free
URL: Mint
Why download? Simple to comprehend and intuitive trends and charts with easy to understand lingo makes it one of the best online banking apps around.
Venmo
Venmo is a payment app that allows people to pay for goods and services using the app. Its specialism is making and taking peer-to-peer payments, but one extra feature it offers businesses is social exposure for the company when people pay using it as a payment method.
Whenever someone pays via Venmo, the customer has the opportunity to share that they've just used it on the Venmo feed, which then gets seen by friends and will hopefully start a snowball effect - the more people seeing your brand, the more people will use Venmo to pay and the process starts again.
The checkout experience is also super-simple, think PayPal - one click and they've paid for their goods. One con, despite all of Venmo's wonderful features is the 3% credit card fee, which has the potential to get pretty pricey for businesses that need to carry out a lot of transactions.
Price: Free
URL: Venmo
Why download? The perfect payment tool for retailers, giving your business exposure to customers' friends and family whenever they use it.
