Top 5 apps for consultants

How many apps do you have on your phone? How many of them do you consistently use? As someone who is constantly running out of phone storage (yes, I’m upgrading to more storage soon) I have a limited number of installed apps.

As of June 2016, there are more than two million apps available for both iPhone and Android users; many of them geared towards increasing productivity. Working as a consultant requires management of my time and life – through leveraging technology, I’m able to stay productive and focused on my priorities. As smart phones get smarter and applications become more and more integrated into everyday life, choosing which applications to use can be overwhelming. I’ve gathered a list of the top 5 recommended apps for consultants, to help you navigate a busy and sometimes hectic life. Check it out and share your comments below!

Manage your finances:Mint

A one stop-shop for organizing your finances, Mint has a solid spot on my home screen for the past 5 years! It allows you to pull all of your financial information into one place and categorize your credit or cash transactions to track budgets, keep up with your financial goals, and set bill reminders, making it a top contender for one of the best expense billing apps out there. I use it for my personal finances and my client related expenses. Mint allows you to flag transactions with a “reimbursable” tag, which hides these transactions from your personal budgets. Additionally, Mint will send you notifications when you are reaching a budget limit, when there is suspicious activity on one of your cards, if you’ve been charged a fee, and it will even send you personalized tips for saving money and reducing fees.

• Supports: iPhone, Android
• Cost: Free

Manage your tasks: Todoist

Todoist allows you to manage your tasks and projects on a simple, cloud-based platform, making it one of the best productivity apps out there. The app features a clean user interface, allows you to set projects, tasks and subtasks, and even supports collaborative task lists—perfect for the team-based style of consulting. The app will even send you automated reminders when upcoming tasks are due. Todoist uses natural language to make adding tasks quick and easy. For example, “remind me to update my forecast every day.” Bonus: There’s an Outlook plugin that makes it easier to create tasks from emails. Premium users have the ability to use location based reminders.

• Supports: iPhone, Android
• Cost: Free. Premium is $28.99/year

Manage travel itineraries: TripIt

TripIt simplifies the travel process –an essential and sometimes stressful part of a consultant’s job. It allows you to link your email to the app and automatically pulls important travel information from your inbox directly into a master itinerary. Better yet, your master itinerary then syncs seamlessly with your Outlook calendar. TripIt goes beyond flight itineraries by supporting car reservations, hotel bookings, train and bus tickets, tours, restaurant reservations, and tickets for shows and movies! The ability to share travel plans—the entire itinerary or individual pieces—with family, friends, and colleagues allows me to use this for personal and business travel.

• Supports: iPhone, Android
• Cost: Free. Premium is $49/year and includes notifications (delays, cancellations, fare refund), and a feature to track your loyalty programs.

Any type of delivery: Postmates

Postmates is not your average food delivery service. This app allows you to order anything to be delivered on-demand. While you can use this app for food delivery, you can also use it to outsource your errand-running, impulse shopping, food cravings, and more. The only con? This service is not available everywhere, so utilization of this app will depend on where you are.

• Supports: iPhone, Android
• Cost: Free

Manage your other apps: IF (IFTTT)

IFTTT stands for If This, Then, That. This app is the ultimate application to automate actions from other apps- it’s a simple way to create personal automated workflows. Automations are called recipes and recipes can easily be created with multiple other applications. My newly created recipe sends me a weekly email digest of all tweets posted by WMP. This makes it easy to quickly read and retweet those blogs!

• Supports: iPhone, Android
• Cost: Free

Although the #LifeOfAConsultant can get pretty hectic, utilizing the right apps can simplify your life drastically and leave you with more time and energy to focus on what really matters- managing your work and life. Which apps do you use?