When was the last time you went online shopping through your app store? If you are an Android user you have approximately 3.48 million apps to sift through weeding out the useless from the useful. Apple users have slightly less at approximately 2.2 million apps but it hardly makes the sifting through the millions of apps an easier process and you may very well be hunting for something that doesn’t exist yet.
Tam, our Head Organiser at SORT my Space, loves a good list and always aims to help people Simplify, Organise, Revamp and Tidy. So it seemed only fitting to put together a list of our top three free apps to help other women in business and small business owners be more organised ... aka work smarter, not harder.
Cut to the chase right? Yep ... we get it, you're busy. In no particular order:
Drivers Note:
Do you keep a log book to track all of the running around you do as a small business owner? If you do, and you're doing it manually you're about to love this and if not... you may just be ready to start when you hear about this app.
Driversnote is an app based log book but it takes all the drama of remembering to write down your odometer reading. Driversnote tracks your journey automatically when you start travelling above a certain speed and prevents you having to do that annoying math to work out how far you've traveled and update your odometer reading in the manual log book. 67,843 minus (152/2) to give me my starting kms for the drive back to the office and the finished kms of the drive to my clients house, then minus the other half of the 152 to get the starting kms for today. YUCK!
Advancements and Limitations:
Drivers Note will record 20 journeys per month on it's free version. The next level up is approx AU$170/year, and they send you a beacon (similar to the toll tag) that is reported to have a number of benefits I honestly haven't ever noticed.
At the beginning of each month Drivers Note automatically sends you a report detailing the Business and Personal kilometres you have travelled (as classified by you in the app) that you can file away for tax time or submit to your Finance Manager for reimbursement.
The app tracks you by registering any travel over a specific km/h speed so it will also track any journeys where you are passenger or if you happen to be on public transport. These journeys are easily deleted when you are reviewing the tracked journeys to classify them as business/personal.
Wayz:
Although any time we tell somebody about this app it is misspelt by us as "waze", Wayz is very cool. It has quickly replaced the built-in car navigation system here too as Wayz uses Google Maps and takes feedback from other users into account when advising of a hazards ahead.
**Please remember it is illegal to use your phone while driving in Australia.**
We recommend popping in the destination before departing your current location. Wayz will then advise you of any updates to your route as necessary. If multiple users in-front of you report police, you'll be alerted that police are ahead when you approach. Not that you were speeding anyway, but it's nice to have that assurance you won't get a speeding fine. Wayz can also advise of pot holes, animals and vehicles on or near the road helping you to drive in a manner fitting to the conditions you are approaching.
Advancements and Limitations:
Free
Live updates, once the route recalculated telling us to exit the motorway and take the back streets for a few exits and we were redirected back on the motorway completely avoiding a car accident and the bottleneck as people tried to merge to the right lane to get past. Super handy!
Can be used just as a map on screen, you don't need an active journey to be alerted to hazards.
If you can report hazards, or confirm those reported by others you are awarded points. It doesn't seem like they do anything... but points are points (we are very competitive here).
Petrol Spy:
There is an old English proverb, "if you take care of the pennies, the pounds take care of themselves". With that in mind this next app can help take care of your pennies. Petrol Spy will help you do just that. Without even needing to sign up/create an account Petrol Spy will show you the live fuel prices at all of the petrol stations around you. You can actually just play with the map and even check out the prices of fuel for your rellos down south.
Word to the wise, be sure not to get carried away driving 10 minutes out of you way to chase a 4c/L cheaper price. In a 60L tank (Hyundai Tucson) saving 4c/L is only saving $2.40 for a full 60L (and it's never THAT empty). Your time is worth more than that. We recommend just using the app to find the nearest petrol station to your location or on your route to your next destination.
Advancements and Limitations:
Free and no account needed, just download and go.
You can filter the results so that you are automatically shown the prices for the type of fuel you buy (e10, premium, diesel).
Petrol Stations must advise of a price update within 15 minutes of changing them. Thus far we haven't heard of anyone finding the listed prices to be incorrect.
Understand how many litres your tank holds and set a c/L threshold for going out of your way. $1.20 savings on half a tank of fuel is not worth driving 10 minutes out of your way for.
This is by no means an exhaustive list as there are plenty of other amazing, time saving apps around. If you have one you are using in your small business we'd love to hear from you either in the comments below or in our chat box/DMs.
It is worth noting too, this blog post was simply us sharing info. Our blog was in no way sponsored by any of the apps mentioned nor do we have an affiliate link or receive any kick back from the developers if you decide to start using these apps.
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