When a friend from college decided to turn his hobby of playing violin into a career, he got serious and incorporated his band as a registered business. Starting a small business is challenging enough for anyone, but for my friend it was even more so because frankly he’s more of a musician than a businessman. Along the way, I suggested a few apps to help grow his small business and keep it on track. Since these apps worked so well for him, they may help guide your small business, too.

 For business travels

We all know how stressful it can be to organize multiple travel itineraries and keep contacts in the loop. An app like TripIt consolidates all of your travel arrangements into a single itinerary that you can access from your smartphone or tablet. Just forward all travel emails such as flight confirmations, hotel reservations or car rental arrangements to TripIt, and they’ll merge everything into one easy travel plan to use and share with your business contacts. You’ll also get weather updates, maps and directions with the free version of the app.

If you have more extensive travel plans in mind, upgrade to TripIt Pro. For $49 a year, this version offers additional features that make sense for frequent business travelers including mobile alerts for flight delays and cancellations, information about alternative flights and access to over 1,700 business lounges around the world. While TripIt Pro will save you time with travel updates, keep in mind that there are ways to save on miles too, such as using a good travel credit card. You can get ahead if you strategize your business travel from the start.

For tracking expenses

Traveling, buying supplies and paying vendors generate expenses; to keep track of them all, you can’t beat Expensify. This secure app works with your Android, Windows phone or iOS device to create expense reports, provide flight updates and track mileage using GPS. You can also track time spent on individual projects, analyze spending with colorful graphs and charts and scan up to 10 receipts a month for no charge. Expensify is free to individuals and individual contractors. As your business grows, you might want to upgrade to the team version at $5 a month per user, or the corporate version at $9 a month per user.

For customer payments

Accepting credit card transactions as a small business just got easier. The Square app uses a nifty card reader inserted into an iPhone, iPad or Android to let you accept credit and debit cards. Rather than charging a monthly fee, Square takes 2.75% from each transaction. There’s no contract or commitment. The cool thing is that you don’t have to be in your store or office to accept card payments. This is particularly useful if your business performs out-of-office services, such as home repairs or dog training, or if you sell merchandise from off-site locations. This app made it easier for my musician friend to sell CDs at gigs.

For employee payroll

Instead of doing piles of paperwork for every employee paycheck, the ZenPayroll app can streamline the process for you. As you pay employees and contractors via direct deposit or checks, the app also calculates payroll taxes and electronically pays them to the government. To keep track of payroll, the app syncs with popular accounting software such as QuickBooks. Additionally, employees can view records of past pay stubs and government tax documents. The app’s pricing varies by number of people in the company — if there are five people in the company, the monthly price is $45, and 99 people comes to $243.

These apps certainly helped my friend with the business side of his band, giving him plenty of time to devote to his music. If you find yourself spending too much time tracking expenses or organizing your business, consider using these apps too. Of course, for any small business, so much more is involved than payments and traveling, and there are many other small business apps out there to help with efficiency on everything from organization to time management.

Posted on 7/15/14

Writer bio:

Alexandra Rice is a writer who loves talking about all things education. After living in the Mid-Atlantic, South and Midwest, she has finally settled down out West in San Francisco. When not thinking about education, Alexandra can be found at the beach, playing with one of the many dogs at her office, or searching for the perfect cup of coffee. Catch her on Twitter day or night at @Alexandra_Rice.

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