The ten best apps for auto entrepreneurs in 2018

By Fabien Paupier

Published: 5 November 2024

Have you recently started up as an auto-entrepreneur, or are you thinking about it ?Which applications are capable of helping you on a day-to-day basis to professionalise your business and get it off the ground? We've selected ten tools for you, along with all our tips and advice on business IT tools.

CONTENTS

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You're a self-employed entrepreneur. How do you get your business off to the best possible start?

Take it step by step, for a smooth start to your business...

Your needs

Whatever your status and tax regime, whether you've opted for a micro-enterprise or a sole proprietorship, as a self-employed person you have needs. Because being self-employed means... managing everything! And with the best will in the world, even if you're a jack-of-all-trades, without a minimum of organisation it's impossible.

Getting started

To start with, you contact the CFE (Centre de Formalités des Entreprises) to which your business belongs. You register. You receive your K-bis extract and NAF (Nomenclature des Activités Françaises) code allocated by INSEE (Institut National de la Statistique et des Études Économiques). That's it: your company is created.

Starting your business

Now you just have to get started. Priority: intensive prospecting and canvassing. Then it's time to produce. This is when the emphasis on sales often disappears. The self-employed person becomes absorbed in satisfying existing customers. Then there are the few support functions to manage. And you quickly become overwhelmed.

Ten applications for entrepreneurs

Identify the tasks that are taking up your time. And quickly equip yourself with tools to take the pressure off.

Pipedrive for salespeople

To keep your prospecting going, you need a structured tool. The challenge is to generate leads (sales contacts) over time. To avoid bottlenecks on the production side, you need to feed your business pipeline with different degrees of maturity. For a real-time view and to monitor your sales, you need a high-performance CRM (Customer Relationship Management), such as Pipedrive.

Sarbacane for your mailings

There are many different ways of getting in touch, but emailing remains a classic. As soon as you have an interesting contact base, you can start marketing. Address them to :

former customers
your current customers
your potential prospects
your ambassadors
your partners.

Keep them up to date. The newsletter is an opportunity to talk about your successes, developments and news relating to your sector. To send it out and measure its impact, use a tool like Sarbacane Desktop. You'll be able to track the performance of your mailing, its open and click-through rates, and adjust your strategy accordingly.

iPaidThat for managing your accounts

iPaidThat uses artificial intelligence to automate some of your bookkeeping. The application centralises your accounting documents for efficient accounting monitoring. It automatically retrieves your invoices from your mailbox and extracts the information you need for your accounts. You can also use a mobile application to manage your expense reports much more easily. Finally, synchronisation with your bank account gives you real-time visibility of your cash position. In short, iPaidThat simplifies your accounting management and saves you time!

Factomos for invoicing

As a micro-business, you don't need to open a business account at the bank. A simple personal account is all you need, as long as it is dedicated to your business. As a sole trader, however, you do. In all cases, you will have to issue invoices. To do this, and to minimise the structure of your incoming and outgoing flows, you need invoicing software such as Factomos.

Trello to help you get organised

The day-to-day life of a micro-entrepreneur involves juggling a thousand tasks. You're not invincible: you might forget a deadline, or not manage everything on time. You might as well anticipate this and get organised. The Trello task manager lets you manage all your to-do lists by setting reminders: ideal for making sure you don't forget anything.

appear.in for your conference calls

Similarly, you can't be everywhere. Fortunately, there are solutions for communicating remotely. For a meeting or work session, conference calls are useful. Without having to install any software beforehand, with appear.in you can launch a conversation with several people by simply clicking on a link.

WeSend for your large files

The weight of documents to be sent is often a problem. The maximum size of attachments is quickly reached on email servers. You need a tool. WeSend makes it easy to send large files: a fast, effective solution.

RG Backup for your data

You're starting out "with the means at hand" in a "system D". Be aware of how important your data and tools are to your business. What would happen if they were to disappear as a result of material damage or hacking? Take care to back them up with a dedicated tool. That's what the RG Backup solution is for.

Netvibes for your monitoring

Even though you have your hands full, you still need to keep up to date: on the market, your competitors, your customers and partners... But how can you do this without it being time-consuming? A highly visual tool like Netvibes lets you receive and structure information, so that it's always in the background.

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