Best Apps for Your Small Business in 2024

Whatever your industry, small business owners often have to keep lots of plates spinning; your to-do list is probably never ending, and there's never enough hours in the day. Utilising digital tools can help save you time and more easily manage your teams, improving your business' productivity and helping you grow to reach your 2024 business goals.

We've put together a few of our favourite free or low-cost apps, to make your life a little easier.

Slack

• £6.30 per employee, per month
• Free plan available

Communication is key in your small business, and Slack is the perfect tool to keep your team connected. Configure different channels for each project or team, to make sure everyone is kept up to date with relevant information. As it's available as both a desktop app and on your mobile device, you'll be able to keep in touch whether you're at your desk or not. Plus, Slack integrates with many other digital tools, so you'll be able to see important updates in one central location.

TimeKeeper

• £3.50 + VAT per employee, per month
• Free trial available (no card details required)

Keeping track of the hours your team are working and ensurely they're paid appropriately (including any overtime) is essential, and the best way to ensure this is to digitise your time tracking. Getting rid of paper timesheets makes things simpler for your employees, reduces errors and saves time on manual entry for bookkeeping. TimeKeeper's app allows your employees to clock-in and out (either on their phones or a central tablet kiosk) then generates timesheets and reports automatically, which your payroll team can process from the web portal.

Canva

• £99.99 per year, for your whole team
• Free plan available

Social media is a huge lead generator for small businesses, and also allows you to communicate with your loyal existing customers, but creating eye-catching content can be time consuming. Canva's easy-to-edit templates help you generate posts for all your social networks, and you can upload your brand's colour scheme and logos to keep your image consistent and professional.

Trello

• 10 $USD per employee, per month
• Free plan available

There are lots of organisation apps out there, but we recommend Trello to help keep all of your projects running smoothly and assign tasks to your team members. Their Kanban style view allows you to break down big projects and easily visualise how close tasks are to completion. You can also easily allocate team members and dates to individual tasks, so you never lose track of your schedule.

Xero

• £12 per month (Starter plan)
• Free trial available

Digitising your bookkeeping is essential; Xero allows you to link your bank accounts for easy reconciliation, helps you forecast cash-flow and keeps your business compliant with HMRC's Making Tax Digital requirements. Plus, it integrates seamlessly with other digital tools like TimeKeeper, so come the end of the month you'll be able to run your payroll with just a few clicks.

Klaviyo

• Price based on number of contacts
• Free up to 250 emails

Email marketing is a vital channel for communicating and nurturing customer relationships, and is a relatively low cost way to increase your sales or customer lifetime value. Keep content relevant and personalised with Klaviyo's segmenting abilities, which allow you to target groups based on their past behaviours. It's not only useful for E-commerce businesses; service based businesses can also benefit from keeping an up-to-date mailing list for important announcements, or offer an exclusive promotion to customers you haven't heard from in a while.

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