Virtual Assistant Forums

#1 (**permalink**) 01-19-2016

Paid or free, which are your absolute cannot-live-without business apps or software and why?

#2 (**permalink**) 01-20-2016

My top five can't live without apps are (in no particular order):
Quickbooks Online
Freshbooks
Zapier
EmailCenterPro
HelloSign
And an extra one just because - Camtasia for Mac (I can't tell you how useful it is to be able to record videos for team members or clients on "how to" do something)

#3 (**permalink**) 01-21-2016

Teamwork
Dropbox
Freshbooks
Roboform
Boomerang

#4 (**permalink**) 01-21-2016

Adavant - I love Boomerang too!
What is Teamwork? (yes, I realize I could Google it)

#5 (**permalink**) 01-25-2016

For me:

Dropbox
Buffer
Google Docs
EchoSign
All of my Microsoft programs for Mac (Word, XL, PPT etc) - though this is an online subscription now and took me a while to get used to their cloud services I LOVE it overall and love how it works seamlessly with Dropbox.

#6 (**permalink**) 02-13-2016

Here are my top 5!

Google Drive (especially Docs and Sheets)
Harvest (time tracking)
DocuSign
WaveApp (accounting)
Asana

#7 (**permalink**) 02-19-2016

For me:

Trello (all my client projects are tracked here)
Google Drive
Zoho Suite (invoicing, CRM, Expenses - everything businessy)
Toggle (Time tracker)
DocuSign

Michelle, I need to check out Camtasia for Mac - been looking out for a good screen recording software

#8 (**permalink**) 02-24-2016

I'll jump in and share my top five too:

For day to day business/work:
Photoshop
Dropbox
Google Docs
Skype
Gmail

For business management:
Paypal
Asana
Google Calendar
Echosign
Boomerang

Yes, I cheated, that's ten.

#9 (**permalink**) 02-25-2016

Here are my top five:

MS Word - I use this for all clients.
Express Scribe - It allows me to transcribe, which is about 90% of my work
ActiveWords - With this I can program keyboard shortcuts for just about anything. In as few as three keystrokes I can go to a website, open a document or program, insert a long script into any document etc. Very helpful when I'm in the middle of a document and need to research something at a particular website.
Dropbox - Many of my clients use this to share their audio/video files with me to transcribe.

And now I'm going to cheat and say these are TIED for fifth!

FileZilla - Upload changes to my website.
Evernote - Sort and categorize notes and information
Audacity - I use this to record audio files that need to be in another format for some reason or to edit audio files.

#10 (**permalink**) 03-14-2016

All things PDF. We print a lot of legal docs.
CC4 (Control Center 4). which I think is unique to Brother, but we also do a lot of scanning to client CD's and emailing.
DropBox
Last Pass
Skype
Gimp (free alternative to Photoshop and Paint)
Google Maps/Google Earth registered signing requires a lot of travel.
MapQuest

#11 (**permalink**) 03-21-2016

I need to add Freshbooks and Gusto - these have been SUCH great additions to my resources and have changed the way I run my business.
Freshbooks will save me nearly $4k in PayPal fees this year AND helps me track time throughout the day much better.
Gusto is an awesome payroll app that I'm using to pay myself now that I'm re-established as an LLC and will ultimately help me process 1099s for my contractors, etc. end of year. The goal is to get a handle on quarterly payments so tax time end-of-year isn't so painful!

#12 (**permalink**) 03-21-2016

how does Freshbooks save you paypal fees? I've been using it but didn't see a savings?

#13 (**permalink**) 03-21-2016

Well it requires your settings on each invoice to be such that you'll only accept an eCheck - that takes the fee on *any* invoice amount to 50 cents. You need to wait a few extra days for the money to come in but for me it's worth the wait!
I learned this recently from Michelle Mangen and am so super grateful!