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We all seem to have a smartphone in our hands for a good part of each day. We often use our phones for fun, to watch movies, play games, send emails or mindlessly scroll through social media. The smartphone should be a helpful tool that makes our work and home life easier. Instead, it seems like we are slaves to the machine. Let’s turn that around and put your smartphone to work for you. Here are 3 smartphone applications that will help increase your productivity and can make you feel like you have your own personal assistant.
TripLog Mileage Expense Tracker
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If you track your vehicle mileage for tax deductions or work reimbursement, then this is the app for you. This handy mileage tracker is fully compliant with US IRS rules. This app comes in a free version and paid version, which is available for a reasonable $4 per month. The main difference between the two versions is that the paid version starts itself automatically whenever it senses that your phone is in a moving car.
Teach this app where your office or other locations you frequent for work and this app will automatically tag that trip as work-related and note the appropriate mileage for the start and end of the trip. Go to the drug store and mark it as medical miles for your taxes. Or, at the end of the day or week, you can go into the app and mark the purpose of trips or the names of your destinations. Next time, the app remembers and enters this information automatically.
What makes this app worth its weight in gold is the reporting. At the end of the week, you get a nice neat spreadsheet of your trips emailed to you for safekeeping. At the end of the year, just a few clicks will get you a perfect record for your tax filing. It even adds up the standard tax deductions for you and lets you know how much you added to your next IRS return. This app is rated 5-Stars by Forbes, Inc., PCWorld, and CNN. Try it and you will soon see why.
Trivago
Do you travel for work? Hate searching around online for the best prices on airline tickets and hotels? Do you feel like no matter how many places you check, you always are missing out on the cheapest tickets or the best seats? You know those sites are in business because they are making a sales commission. How can you trust them? Get the Trivago app and let it do the work for you. It will search across all the major booking sites to find the best deals for you and your schedule.
Their award-winning application has lots of great personalization and filters to get you just the right results. One of the best features is their map of available properties that conform to your search parameters. Many booking sites restrain your searches to a specific town. Say, for example, you are booking a trip to a famous beach town in another country. You may not know the precise names of neighboring towns or villages that would be a good place to stay. This limits your choices. In the main tourist area, you may pay twice or three times more per night than at a different hotel just a mile away. Put this free app to work for you.
Grammarly
This handy app will greatly increase your productivity and writing accuracy. Grammarly is a cloud-based app that you can log in to from an Android or iPhone or any web browser. You can also get a free stand-alone app for Windows. This application watches you type and helpfully lets you know when you have made a grammatical error. Typing along at work and make a typo or miss a comma? A helpful highlight will let you know what is wrong. It will even give you suggestions to fix the problem. Over time, as the app trains you to do things the proper way, you will become a better writer.
Grammarly works in apps you would actually use for work, like MS Word and Outlook and Google Docs. It has native apps for Windows and macOS as well as for iOS and Android. The app comes in free and paid versions for individuals and groups.
