The best small business management apps will automate routine tasks, save you money and time, and will help you get work done faster. If you’re a startup founder or entrepreneur, here’s Chalkboard’s list of the best small business management apps to make your life easier.

Accounting: QuickBooks

Over 17,000 five-star reviews on the App Store should be enough for you to consider QuickBooks. Now you can automate your accounting and focus on the big-picture parts of your business.

It will take care of your invoicing and help you manage your payroll and taxes. When you connect your business bank account, it will further save you time on data entry.

Expense tracking: Zoho Expense

Zoho Expense has been designed for the needs of small and medium businesses. The app will automatically convert your receipts into expense entries and will group them as single reports. You can even add card transactions with ease.

Since the receipts are stored in the cloud, there’s no question of them getting lost. The app also has features specific to the UK that will make it easy to calculate VAT and mileage expenses at rates specified by HMRC.

Time tracking: Toggl

More than five million users trust Toggl to track their time. While other apps ask for details when you start a project or task, with Toggl, you can add those details later. If you use the Chrome or Firefox extension, the app will also track your activity across websites.

Where it excels is in its Pomodoro Technique setting that will let you focus on deep work for a certain period. What’s more, the app’s free version should be enough for a startup.

Screen tracking: RescueTime

Among the apps that let you have better work-life balance is RescueTime. Once you install the app, it will track how you use your computer.

This will reveal how much time you use on “very productive” activities (Google Docs, Evernote etc.) and “very distracting” activities (social media, e-commerce etc.). Over a period, you’ll learn to focus more and get work done faster.

Payments: Square

As a small business, you need an app that accepts payments with ease and Square does a wonderful job of that. Create an account and you can immediately start using the app and start accepting payments from several sources.

It’s easy to sign up without having to worry about tedious contracts or monthly fees. In fact, you won’t find any other payment app that can match Square's offering of free tools.

Communication: Slack

Slack is all you need to collaborate and optimise your communication. With channels, you can assign specific spaces for projects that will make it easier for teams to share documents and messages.

It simplifies teamwork and that’s the reason most organisations use Slack for both internal and external communication.

In short

With these best small business management apps, you’ll have all the tools to optimise your life and increase productivity, while getting to live a more balanced life.