Firm Management
Apps We Love – Organizational Tools for Professionals
Who doesn't want to be better organized? With today's apps, there are lots of opportunities available to organize various aspects of your business and personal live. We asked members of the CPA Practice Advisor audience and family to share some of their f
Apr. 17, 2015
Who doesn’t want to be better organized? With today’s apps, there are lots of opportunities available to organize various aspects of your business and personal live. We asked members of the CPA Practice Advisor audience and family to share some of their favorite organizational apps and this is what we learned.
Barrett Young, CPA, founder of The Green Abacus, uses Evernote “for everything!” Evernote provides a workspace for daily projects and syncs across all devices. Young told CPA Practice Advisor, “Evernote is everywhere I am and has many ways of bringing information inside and making it useful. AICPA President and CEO calls Evernote “a great app” and tech guru Rick Richardson states that Evernote “is the focus of all my research, storage, and organization. It’s the say I’m going almost paperless. Don’t know what I’d do without it.”
Shane Pickett, CPA, tax supervisor at Provo, Utah-based Hawkins Cloward & Simister, is a fan of Feedly, the app where you can read your favorite newspapers, magazines, and blogs. “Feedly app organizes the flow of news and information I’m interested in. With a swipe or touch, I can easily read, share, and mark ‘to read later’ all within the app,” Pickett explained. Futurist Rebecca Ryan adds, “Does anyone do RSS feeds anymore? Feedly is my feeding tube.”
Angie Grissom, owner and president of The Rainmaker Companies, recommends the project management app Basecamp. “I set up projects for work and invite others to be a part of it. It’s a great way to share files, have discussions, collaborate on documents, assign tasks, and check due dates. Basecamp is accessible at anytime from anywhere. I also use it to coordinate our kid’s sports schedules and our travel. I can create various to do lists and then mark off items as I complete them.”
Jim Boomer, CIO of Boomer Consulting, Inc., stays organized with Clear, the to-do and reminders app. “It’s a simple app to create and manage all kinds of lists. From to-do’s to grocery lists, this app has helped me to limit the number of paper lists I’m managing.” Boomer also likes Key Ring. “The number of rewards and customer loyalty cards that were in my wallet and on my keychain had exploded to the point I couldn’t take it and went looking for a solution. Key Ring was the answer and I’ve now consolidated all these cards on my smart phone along with bar codes that can be scanned directly at checkout.”
John Higgins, strategic technology advisor for CPA Crossings, LLC, recommends OneNote. The note taking organization tools is accessible across all devices. “The direct integration with MS Office lets me link appointment details, contact records, and email messages directly into a meeting note page. The organization model for managing all of my notes is second to none.”