Top 5 business apps for trades

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cartoon handyman with tools. isolated on white
cartoon handyman with tools. isolated on white

App stores are crammed to the digital rafters with helpful – and not so helpful – info and systems to make your busy working day easier. Well that’s the idea. If you’ve not yet managed to get yourself past EA’s Fifa or Angry Birds, then help is at hand. Here are some awesomely great apps that will make your business more productive and more profitable – which means that you will have more time to play and give you more time to play whatever…

Clever Weather

You’ve already got the Met Office or BBC Weather – right? Well if you’re meteorologically minded then why not get yourself the Weather Maps app from Daniel Tull that will give you a full screen weather map rather than the forecast so you can be the judge of how much rain that creeping weather front will bring. If the weather’s not such as serious business for you then you might want to get the stylish Weather Cube by Appsuperb or perhaps the jokey Weather Dog by FTRD UK. There are almost 4.5K weather apps so if those don’t suit, something in the app dimension probably will.

Smarter invoicing

If you’re still writing invoices out by hand and punching numbers into your calculator it’s time to join the modern world. Some people like Freshbooks but best by far is Paymo.biz which has a handy timer app you can download to your phone so you can time the work you do for different clients and projects. It will automatically update your invoice. Great if you’re a professional or delivering a business service. You need to sign up for a Paymo.bzi account online and the app will link to it.

Brilliant file management

It’s been around for a long while now and it makes life easy. If you have a smart phone, laptop, tablet and PC then dropbox gives you seamlessly wonderful file sharing between all your devices. And when you update a file, it updates it across all your platforms. You get 5GB for free for starters, and you can get more storage by recommending drop box to your friends, or by flexing your credit card – but it’s not expensive. Download the app to your phone for free.

 

Easy lead generation

With Rated People if you’re in the trades then you need to get yourself up and running on Rated People. Not quit a job board – you pay to pitch for work – but a great place to pick up new business. The more you use it the better your chances of getting good jobs as you get rated on the site for the work you do. What better that to find a couple of jobs to pitch for next time you are stuck in an endless traffic jam. Covers all trades and crafts as well as services like tree surgery and cleaning. There are two apps – one for trades to find work, the other for consumers to find trades. Cost is cheaper than advertising at around £10 a month and when writing, they were offering a 30 day free trial with free cash to spend on leads.

 

And a little twist to finish with 

This is the very clever app that stops you getting into trouble for being late. It’s called twist and it’s an SMS notifier that very cleverly calculates the time it’s going to take you to get to wherever you need to be, and sends a text to let whoever is waiting for you know. You can even request twists from people you have an appointment with. It’s going to be huge. For both apple and android platforms this gem of an app is free.

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