[dropcap]T[/dropcap]hink high-tech software is only for big, corporate businesses? Think again! Thanks to the humble iPhone and iPad, portable, effective technology has become accessible to all. There are literally hundreds of downloadable apps that can help with everything from taking notes at meetings to tracking your expenses, and at prices that won’t affect your profitability either!

Below are the top 8 must-have iPhone and iPad apps for any small business owner…

iMargin Professional $4.99
Do you spend a lot of time calculating the best prices to sell your products at, in order to make a decent profit? This handy little app lets you plug in the cost and sale prices of your items and will tell you the profit margin you’ll be making, including the ability to work out prices for sale abroad in the relevant currency and with associated tax calculations taken into account!

BizXpense Tracker $5.99
Want to keep all of your business expenses such as travel and lunch costs together in one place? Or perhaps you want an easy way to keep track of your employees’ expenses? This app will do it all for you – simply plug in expenses as you go, including photos of the receipts, and send them via email or export them directly to your desktop!

Dropbox FREE
If you don’t already have Dropbox, I suggest you download it today! Think of it as a virtual storage box that can be accessed at any time from your desktop, iPhone, iPad or even the Dropbox website, by anyone who you’ve given the password details to. Why not set up a Dropbox for a client, and upload files that they can view whenever they wish? It saves a constant flow of emails going back and forth, and avoids those “Where did I put file I sent over two months ago?” scenarios!

Business Card Reader $4.99
Networking is crucial to any small business, and may even account for the majority of your client or sales leads! Never lose a business card again with this wonderful app that lets you scan a business card and then instantly picks out the data from it and imports items such as name, position, photo and contact details directly into your contacts list. It even works in multiple languages!

MiniKeePass FREE
Once upon a time, security passes such as those ID Pro sell were the only thing you needed to keep your business safe and secure. Whilst they’re still very important, what about all that virtual data you need to protect? This app lets you store all of those business passwords (of which I’m sure there are many!) together in one place, safeguarding against access by someone that’s not you.

Note Taker HD $4.99
Tired of carrying an overstuffed notepad with you to meetings, and never able to find those important notes you made at last month’s meeting? Meet Note Taker HD, an interactive note-taking app that will let you jot down ideas, annotate PDF documents and even add a password to protect sensitive data you don’t want others to get their hands on!

Office2 $5.99
A step up from a standard Microsoft Office app, this one allows multiple users to be working on and updating the same document at the same time. It’s perfect for small businesses where you have a team of people working on a presentation or report – simply edit it on your own iPhone or iPad, rather than all trying to gather around one screen together!

Bento $4.99
Last but not least, this app allows you to create custom databases for any business need! Perhaps you want to create a record of all your client’s contact details, or maybe you want to note down specifics related to your products such as cost price and minimum order quantity. Whatever you want to record, this app will let you do it in a way that’s easily accessible when you need to pull up previously-entered information.

Please leave me a comment below if you know of any other iPad or iPhone apps your small business couldn’t live without!

Image Source | hightech-post.com

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About the author: James Duval is a tech geek and blogger for ArcIT. He has been known to make a two hour diversion back home, just because he forgot his IPhone when leaving for work.