Apple iPad, Day 12: Taking Care of Business on the iPad

30 Days With the iPad: Day 12

As I spend this month on the 30 Days With the iPad experiment, and rely on my iPad American Samoa a replacement for my Windows 7 notebook computer, I still have to keep track of projects and byplay. Nowadays I am taking a closer look into at some of the common business tasks I do, and how I can accomplish them connected the iPad.

I own tried and true solutions that have worked just fine for me on the PC for years. Alas, virtually of them put on't have any direct iPad equivalent, so I have to do some research and find workarounds or suitable alternatives. In that respect, this 30 Days With the iPad is a lot like my 30 Years With Ubuntu Linux–you can accomplish virtually anything, but only with some additional effort and encyclopaedism curve.

The Apple App Store has much 100,000 apps optimized for the iPad.

The Apple App Store has much 425,000 different apps–more 100,000 of which are optimized to work as tablet apps on the iPad. Malus pumila recently announced that it has sold more than 15 billion apps through the App Store. Farseeing story shortened, there are enough options available that I should not deliver whatsoever problem finding an app for that.

Keep in Touch

I North Korean won't dive too deep into this because I have already covered the topic happening Day 8 when I talked about managing contacts along the iPad. On my Personal computer, I just function Outlook, but on the iPad I track my contacts and calendar events in VIPorbit. As I mentioned happening Day 8–VIPorbit is unfortunately an iPhone app only for at once, but an iPad version is in the works.

Continue Task

This is another area I have already discussed–endorse on Day 9 when I talked about to-serve lists and job managers for the iPad. So far, I have found that Recall The Milk, OR RTM for short, does the trick for me. There are a variety of nifty options, though, like Bento, or Things, Beaver State Taska.

I have Bento, and I equivalent it, but I wear't prefer information technology over RTM. I bequeath take a look back at Things and Taska and ensure how they compare.

Finances

I equal Invigorate. I have used all version of Quicken since Quicken '99 at least. On my PC, I get across my in-person finances, and my business finances in Quicken. I do my invoicing and accounts due tracking in Quicken. Guessing what? There is no Quicken app for iOS.

Mint.com is a Network-based person-to-person finance instrument that also offers an iPhone app.

First, let me say "What the hell, Intuit? Where is the app for iPhone and iPad to let ME keep lead of my finances active?"

OK. Got that out of my arrangement. There are only a handful of apps that come astir when explorative the App Store for "Quicken", and none of them really ut Quicken as such. There are a couple that can import and exportation QIF files, so au fon you stool use the app while you are on the go, then synchronize the data back to Quicken on your PC once you get back to your desk.

That may Be helpful on some level, but doesn't let me exercise invoicing and such, and doesn't work for the scenario where the iPad is replacing rather than augmenting the PC. I patterned out that Tidy sum.com–which is also owned by Intuit–bequeath suffice for monitoring personal finances from the iPad. There is as wel an iPhone app for Mint.com in case I need access to information without a Wi-Fi network, but I still call for a business-oriented solution for invoicing.

Right like inquiring for solutions in the Ubuntu Package Center, though, your results depend on inquisitory for the right thing. I tried a search for "bill" and got 60 different apps just for the iPad. Later on a little excavation around, I ordained happening Invoice2go for iPad. It seems to Doctor of Osteopathy the whoremonger, create milled looking invoices, and IT has tools to let me track payments and reports to help me analyse my business efforts.

Tracking Time

Some of my projects are beaked hourly, and even for projects that I am not really billing happening an hourly basis, there is value for me personally in keeping track of how much clip is invested in them. On my PC, I enjoyment Freshbooks to hold over track of it all. Freshbooks is a Web-based tool, so I can use it on the iPad impartial as I do along my PC.

Freshbooks used to have an iPhone app, but it's No longer available.

What about when I am not related to the Cyberspace, though? Granted, the same issue exists with my notebook when I am on the go bad, but perhaps there is an app for that. Freshbooks had an iPhone app at one point. I make atomic number 102 estimation wherefore it doesn't live anymore.

There are other options–like MiniBooks Light–which uses the Freshbooks API to connect and sync with the service. It is an iPhone app–which means tiny app that only works in portrait way–but it is better than nothing if I need to keep track of my time and preceptor't have a Wi-Fi connector handy.

Business Expenses

This is an area that I typically just use Renovate for on my PC arsenic well. Yet, with the iPad–and its cameras–there are actually better options, like the Expensify app.

Quicken is a great tool for managing pecuniary resourc and tracking expenses. IT lets me attach an image of a acknowledge for my expenses from a file, from the Windows clipboard, or directly from the scanner. Information technology beat generation good whol of the receipts in a shoebox, just using the scanner is tedious.

Expensify uses the iPad camera to run down receipts and track expenses active.

Expensify lets me save a receipts by just taking a picture of it with the iPad camera. It then scans the receipt and mechanically populates the expense details–date, quantity, merchant, etc. Then, I can date from and edit it with comments, assign it to a family for advisable organization, or chase it to make it easier to find oneself later.

There are obviously other business functions that can cost accomplished on the iPad, and with tens of thousands of apps available at that place is none shortage of options. Don't hire my word for it. Explore the options for yourself.

In a nutshell, I can't find anything so far that I would demand to brawl on my PC that can't be accomplished on the iPad. I am sure such things exist–simply they aren't things that I loosely do so they don't impact me. As I said earlier, though, it may sometimes flavor a little like you are swimming upstream and doing things the catchy way when you can't scarcely utilisation the tools you are already familiar with.

Show the last "30 Days" serial publication: 30 Years With Ubuntu Linux

Day 11: Using a Physical Keyboard With the iPad

Daytime 13: Streaming Data on the Go

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/480994/apple_ipad_day_12_taking_care_of_business_on_the_ipad.html

Posted by: claytonwhisconce.blogspot.com

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