Best Apps for Productivity in 2024

With costs rising across the board, many small businesses are feeling the squeeze on their margins and looking to make savings wherever possible. As we enter 2024, it's worth reviewing the current processes in your business, to see where time can be saved and productivity can be increased by implementing more streamlined operations.

Digital tools have a huge part to play in productivity, connecting your team and ensuring resources are allocated to the right place. They can also be used to highlight any areas of overspending and evaluate which projects may be costing your business money. We've evaluated the best productivity focussed apps available for small and medium sized businesses, which you can implement quickly and easily in 2023.

Best Apps to Stop Wasting Time

Zapier

Repetitive administrative tasks eat into your productive time, so identifying these processes and automating them can be an easy way to free up more time in your work day. Zapier allows you to connect your most commonly used apps and software, creating automated trigger flows and integrations. Not only can Zapier help to speed up your internal processes (connecting your communication apps like Slack to your HR platforms, such as BambooHR) but you can also automate your operations and sales pipelines too.

How much does it cost? Free plan available, or upgrade to Professional for unlimited zaps (£42.27 per month)

RescueTime

If you struggle with productivity and distractions during your work day, RescueTime may be able to give you a helping hand in refocusing your attention and getting more out of your work day. The app calculates a daily Focus Goal to achieve, taking into account how much of your time is already allocated to meetings. Throughout your day, the app is designed to send nudges and tips, to ensure you don't veer off track. Need to concentrate on deep work? Trigger a Focus Session, which will block any distracting sites to prevent procrastination. RescueTime also tracks the time spent across social media sites, so you can see the real impact that scrolling has on your productivity.

How much does it cost? Free plan available, or upgrade to Premium to add calendar integrations ($12).

Best Apps to Manage Your Team

TimeKeeper

Having full visibility over your teams' time is vital for good resource planning, and keeping accurate timesheets can help to identify overstaffing or unnecessary overtime.

However, chasing missing timesheets or spending time on repetitive tasks such as calculating your employees hours worked and overtime leaves you less hours in the day for productive work, which is why most businesses are now adopting digital solutions to automate this process.

TimeKeeper's role-based permissions allow you to delegate the responsibility for checking and approving each employee's timesheets and leave requests to their manager, freeing up your time, and giving team managers more control and autonomy too.

How much does it cost? Free trial available for 14 days. £3.50 ex VAT per employee per month after that, on a monthly contract which can be cancelled any time.

Best Apps to Plan your Projects

Notion

One of the most flexible digital tools available, Notion can be used in countless ways depending on your business' needs, including as a project management tool or knowledge base.

Organise your teamspace to include meeting notes, linked documents, databases and wikis, so your team always know where to find vital documents and information. Notion also allows you to create Kanban style boards, which can be a great way for teams or individuals to organise their to-do lists or ongoing project roadmaps.

How much does it cost? Free Personal plan available, or upgrade to collaborate with your whole team ($8 per user per month).

Asana

Potentially the most popular team-management tool for teams, Asana allows you to increase productivity by streamlining your planning.

Each task in your project can be assigned a due date and delegated to a team member, who can utilise Asana's brilliant integrations to ensure everyone is kept in the loop on each task's progress. Link important Google documents for more information, tick off 'subtasks' and even automatically send Slack messages when a task is marked complete.

How much does it cost? Free plan available, or upgrade to Premium for automated workflows ($9.49 per user per month, billed annually).

Ready to get organised?

Most of the productivity and organisational apps we've reviewed here offer free trials, so you can test them out and ensure they're a good fit for your small business.

Last updated 23/02/2024: Title and date changed by MW