When you’re on the go, time is tight.  Here are three apps for the traveling consultant that might make life just a little bit easier for you.

Time Tracker Pro

Vendor: Nonlinear Ideas Inc.
Cost: iOS – Free

At first, you might look at a time tracker app and dismiss it as something that’s only needed for billing clients. But even if you’re not working on a billable hours basis, time tracking might be a necessary part of your day. For example, many IT departments need to get a handle on how much time is spent working on projects vs. handling operational duties. A simple and easy-to-use time tracker can take away some of the sting.

What does Time Tracker Pro do? First, it tracks the time spent on a task down to the second, and you can quickly restart a task, which makes it easy to jump around between tasks. You can also review your work, split your time among multiple projects, and create reports and graphs.

In Figure A, you can see that it’s easy to start and stop time.
Figure A

Start and stop time with ease.

In Figure B, you can see that a number of project have been worked on, including TPS reports.
Figure B

Take a look at how long you spend on each task.

Read about Invoice2Go.

Invoice2go

Vendor: Invoice2go.com
Cost: – iOS – $9.99; Android – $9.99

Putting together invoices can be time consuming, but it’s an essential activity for the self-employed. What if you could put your invoice together while you’re still at a client’s site and get it submitted right away? Fortunately, you can do that with Invoice2go.

Invoice2go provides a quick way to invoice, estimate, bill, and collect payments. The app includes a bunch of different invoice styles and, when paired with the desktop app, you can customize the invoice templates to meet your needs. Taxes and totals are calculated automatically.

With this app, invoices are created as PDF files, and you can email them from your mobile device.

In Figure C, note that you can create invoices, estimates, and purchase orders.
Figure C

Create a new document right from your iPhone

Here’s what a blank invoice looks like (see Figure D).
Figure D

Add customers and products to your invoice.

And here’s an example of a finalized invoice (see Figure E).
Figure E

A finalized invoice.

The next two screenshots (Figures F and G) show the Android version of Invoice2go.
Figure F

Android device: You can save items into folders.

Figure G

Creating an invoice on an Android device.

Read about MiniBooks for FreshBooks.

MiniBooks for FreshBooks

Vendor: Groovy Squared
Cost: iOS – $14.99

Many businesses use FreshBooks as their primary accounting and invoicing software, but getting it on the go is a bit of a challenge. With MiniBooks, you can connect to your FreshBooks data from your iPhone and send invoices, run timers, and record payments. The tool fully integrates with your FreshBooks account, so you can always access your data from wherever you are.

From the tool, you can (among other things):

  • Manage clients
  • Manage estimates and invoices
  • Convert estimates to invoices
  • Manage payments
  • Track expenses
  • Track time – you can also create timers, and they stay running even when you quit the app, unless you stop them

In Figure H, you’ll see that you can manage client records.
Figure H

Here’s a look at a client’s record.

The next screenshot (see Figure I) shows timers in action
Figure I

Create, start and stop timers from the app

With MiniBooks for FreshBooks, you can also create invoices (see Figure J).
Figure J

Manage invoices while you’re on the road.

Summary

These are just three apps that can keep the road warrior from going insane, but there are many more. Have you discovered a particular app for the traveling consultant that you find useful? Share you experience in the discussion thread below.