In this day and age, hiring an accountant might seem like the prudent thing to do. After all, with all the regulations, tax breaks, and write-offs possible to the modern entrepreneur, it’d be tough to get by if you couldn’t squeeze a few more bucks out of the tax man every year.
On the other hand, hiring an accountant can be an expensive – and oftentimes unnecessary – proposition.
The good news? There are plenty of apps you can use to manage regular business paperwork without hiring an accountant (though it’s probably still good to keep one around come tax season). Here are a few of those apps.
Online OCR
Transcription is perhaps the most boring – and the most tedious, cumbersome, etc. – of all the office paperwork chores that lay around a small business. That’s why apps that can take care of this problem don’t only rate well in our book, but should be considered standard practice in small businesses that would rather not hire someone to take care of transcription for them.
Enter Online OCR, an app that recognizes text, converts to different files (including files for both Adobe PDF and Microsoft Word, perhaps the two most important ones), and helps you store what’s been transcribed.
Really, Online OCR is doing what a lot of fast typists have been doing for a long time – it just doesn’t cost you several dollars an hour for every hour that you use it. That’s progress.
Smart Business Forms
You use a lot of paper forms for your business, including everything from job applications to new client signups. But you don’t have to always resort to paper to handle this paperwork – at least, not if you’re using Small Business Forms by Canvas.
Available for the iPhone and iPad (although we recommend the iPad version if you can swing it), this app helps you to take the forms your business usually requires be filled out and then turns them into electronic forms.
That makes the filled-out forms easier to manage, store – and even print out, should the need arise. Of course, if you’re trying to save on paper in the first place, printing these forms out may be the last thing on your mind.
EasySign
Part of the drudgery in handling paperwork is the fact that you frequently have to sign it – so much so that this very act was lampooned in NBC’s “The Office” when Michael Scott kept putting off simple signature work. He might not have had to put it off if he had been using EasySign, an app that makes it possible to sign a lot of stuff without the hassle normally associated with…signing a lot of stuff.
Fill Any PDF
The PDF is a great electronic medium, but it also is a medium through which many offices print off more paperwork. Fill Any PDF is an app that aims at reducing the need to fill out PDFs and re-upload them; instead, you can fill them out digitally.
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About the Author
Chris Turberville-Tully is a marketing strategist for Better Business Decisions, Brightpearl accountants offering practical financial solutions for small businesses.
