Top 5 Mobile Apps For Workplace Productivity

Our ability to connect, share and exchange information with more people than ever before is profoundly impacting our daily lives, our habits, and our identities. Mobile connectivity is changing how we work by making us more productive and efficient whether we’re communicating with colleagues in the cubicle next door or halfway around the world. The mobile app revolution is having an especially powerful impact on small businesses by helping these companies reduce expensive, redundant processes to be leaner and more cost-efficient.

In response to the mobile app revolution, web-based solutions are also increasingly app-friendly. For example, ClickMeeting, a platform for online meetings and webinars, integrates with many popular apps. ClickMeeting’s app extensions make it easy to invite colleagues to ClickMeetings using Gmail or Outlook, to schedule meetings directly from Google Calendar or iCal, to make meetings and webinars accessible via Facebook and LinkedIn, and to connect with popular learning tools via Moodle.

As the founder of my own digital marketing agency, I help companies harness the power of mobile productivity for more effective digital marketing. But it’s not just digital marketing that’s being re-shaped by the mobile revolution. Mobile apps are also upending traditional 9 to 5 jobs by empowering a new class of freelancers and telecommuters. In addition to using web-based services like ClickMeeting through mobile apps, these five apps for task management keep me focused and productive:

Best app for free mobile organization: Trello.

Is there anything more frustrating than trying to keep track of a lengthy email thread or an out-of-date spreadsheet? I’ll even admit to once using sticky notes to quickly jot down ideas when I’m on the phone with clients and then wonder weeks later where that particular note went. Trello is a free app for flexible visual organization that’s a board filled with lists and cards. You can create different boards for different clients and projects; take a quick note, save it to the board, and then drag and drop notes between these different boards to manage projects. Upload and link files from Google Drive, DropBox, OneDrive and Box. Bonus: share these project boards with clients and co-workers for real-time updates.

Best for free accounting: Wave.

Wave is a free, online software and mobile app alternative to QuickBooks. Used by more than one billion small businesses, Wave helps small business owners track more than $60 billion in income and spending, all for free. Wave apps include accounting, payroll, payments and receipts including free, unlimited invoice for iPhone users. The receipts function include fully integrated receipt scanning that goes right to Wave accounting from your smartphone. Come tax time, no one wants to get stuck manually entering a stack of receipts into an excel spreadsheet or dig through their wallet, desk or car trying to find a major client receipt they misplaced!

Best for managing legal contracts: Shake.

Shake is one of my all-time favorite apps because it makes sending and signing legally binding agreements a breeze. Shake handles everything from NDAs and freelancing contracts with a single platform. The app is simple to use and it takes just seconds to create and send legally binding agreements.

Best for tracking time: Toggl.

Let’s face it: tracking billable hours can be a real pain, especially when you hop from one project to the next. Most freelancers don’t spend the entire day working on a single client or project. With Toggl, you never lose a minute of billable time. Organize time by projects or tags, color code projects for easy visual time tracking, set billable rates for different hours and instantly get an overview of weekly/monthly productivity with the dashboard. Toggl works great with groups so you can set up your entire project team and track their hours using the app. Plus, Toggl easily integrates with other productivity tools like Trello and Asana.

Best app for boosting focus: Focus Booster.

One of the biggest upsides to working from home – that ability to manage your own time – can also be one of the biggest downsides. It’s all too easy to check your Twitter feed, browse the web or even organize your hall closet for the ultimate procrastination. To the rescue: the aptly named Focus Booster. Focus Booster uses a popular time management technique called the “Promodoro Technique” to break time into 25-minute working sections that are separated by five-minute breaks. Give a task your total concentration for 25 minutes and then enjoy a short breaking before moving on to the next project.

Do you work from home as a freelancer or telecommuter? What apps do you find to be most effective for managing day-to-day productivity and tracking project tasks? I invite you to share your favorite apps in the comments section below.