Top 5 iPhone Business Apps
Are you using an iPhone as part of your mobile office? If you’re still finding it’s lacking some features, check out these five great apps that can help you add the business functionality you want and need.
- Documents To Go
Purpose: Productivity
Company: DataViz
Price: $14.99
Need to create, access, or edit documents from your phone? Documents To Go, which supports Microsoft Office formats, lets you do just that. It helps you open e-mail attachments, make last-minute changes to presentations, and even write new documents, all from your phone. This award-winning app retains the original document formatting, lets you view embedded graphics and other custom elements, offers many formatting options, and lets you undo/redo changes. It also gives you an advanced PDF viewer and supports syncing with Google Docs, Dropbox, Box.net, iDisk, and SugarSync. - JotNot Scanner Pro
Purpose: Productivity
Company: MobiTech 3000
Price: $6.99
JotNot converts your iPhone into a multipage scanner that lets you optically import documents, receipts, whiteboards, business cards, and more. With your scans, you can create PDF documents, e-mail them as PDFs, JPGs or PNGs, or upload and sync them with iDisk/WebDAV, Evernote, Box.net, or Google Docs. It also works with Google’s OCR engine to translate your scans into text, and the app processes images to help remove shadows, correct contrast, and adjust white balance so your document images are crisp and readable. It has presets for receipts, documents, and more, and will automatically detect paper size. - Roambi Visualizer
Purpose: Analytics
Company: Mellmo, Inc.
Price: Free
Roambi Visualizer connects to a free or paid Roambi.com account and pulls information from Excel documents, Google Spreadsheets, Salesforce.com, and other business data programs, depending on the level of your account, to create beautiful data visualizations. With Roambi, you can get the insight you need for analysis on the go, the power to create attractive impromptu presentations, and quick access to up-to-date metrics for smart decision making. You’ll benefit most with a paid Roambi.com account, which starts at $99 a year and allows for live refresh and Google Docs integration, as well as group functionality. - Air Sharing Pro
Purpose: Connectivity and printing
Company: Avatron Software, Inc.
Price: $9.99
If you need to bring documents along, Air Sharing Pro lets you create a wireless hard disk on your iPhone. You can easily connect to your computer or other remote file servers, such as MobileMe, Box.net, and WebDAV, and view many different types of documents, including PDF, iWork suite, Microsoft Office, Web Archive and HTML, RTF, Plain Text, Source Code, movie, audio, and image files. It also lets you print documents with Mac or Linux Printer Sharing. You can move, copy, paste, rename, delete, and reorganize files, as well as e-mail attachments and transfer files via FTP, SFTP, and SSH.
Bonus Tip: If you need to print data other than documents, like photos from your camera or web pages, or if your print setup isn’t supported, check out Wellala Inc.’s Print Magic ($6.99), which will print almost anything from the iPhone on many types of networked printers. - iXpenseIt
Purpose: Expense tracker
Company: FYI Mobileware, Inc.
Price: $4.99
Easily monitor your business expenses by keeping them on the one device you always have on hand. This app will simplify your expense tracking by letting you enter expenses quickly and store photo receipts. You can also set up recurring expenses, track income and cash flow, and set budgets. Your information is password protected and you can back up and restore it or import information from a CSV or HTML file. If you’d like to give iXpenseIt a test drive, you can try the free iXpenseIt Lite version.
Lastly, there are plenty of other programs that can help you make your iPhone a more powerful business device. Look into apps for the programs you already use day to day, like Salesforce, Dropbox, Box.net, Basecamp, WebEx, LinkedIn, and FreshBooks, which all have strong business apps. Also look at any additional functionality you may need, like tracking mileage for business trips, accepting credit card payments, sending and receiving faxes, or giving dictation -- because just like the iPhone commercials promise, there are apps for that and much more.
