Top 10 Best Office Apps for Your iPad

Out of the box, the iPad is a great tool for day to day use, but it’s not quite ready for the workload of the average road warrior. Here is a quick look at some of the most useful tools for business people who need to be able to work anywhere.

Dragon Dictation

This free app turns your iPad into a voice-to-text transcribing machine, letting you dictate notes on the fly. The voice recognition isn’t perfect, but it works pretty well, and if you speak slowly and clearly it’s good enough for making quick notes.

Evernote

Evernote is a free app that can be used to store text, audio, and photos. The app is available for most mobile platforms, as well as desktops. Storage space is limited in the free version, but this tool is great for making lists, noting down email addresses, and typing quick notes during conference sessions.If your device goes flat or gets stolen, you know you will be able to retrieve the notes from the cloud when you get back to the office.

Dropbox

Dropbox is an online storage tool that gives you several gigabytes of storage for free. You can store anything you want in your Dropbox folder, sync it with other devices, and share specific folders with other users. The Dropbox app also allows you to browse your Dropbox folder, and download files if you wish.

Google Drive

Google Drive lets you create, share and edit documents in the cloud. The Google Drive app is free, and Google Drive accounts come with 5GB of storage for free. There is some limited capacity for working offline, although this can be a little unreliable. If you need to do some light spreadsheet or document editing while on the road, this is a good option. The app is certainly far faster and more stable than the browser version.

Expensify

Expensify is a must-have for people that spend a long time on the road. Just snap photos of receipts as you get them, and log each receipt against a trip. Expensify will create detailed reports of each trip for you, which you can use to bill clients, or to fill out your annual accounts.

RealVNC Viewer;

Sometimes, a tablet PC or mobile just isn’t up for the job at hand and you need to use a desktop machine. RealVNC Viewer can be used to connect to any computer that is running a VNC server. This will allow you to remote control the computer — ideal if you need to set off a task that will take a long time or that requires a lot of processing power. Both RealVNC, and the VNC server, are free downloads.

GoodReader

GoodReader is a document reader that is capable of opening PDF files, office documents, images, and audio files.The app costs $4.99 on the iTunes Store, but is well worth the purchase because of the sheer number of formats it supports, and the wireless sharing feature.

Sparrow Email

If you’re finding that the default iOS email client isn’t quite flexible or reliable enough for your needs, you should give this app a look. Sparrow costs $2.99, but for that you get full IMAP support, threaded discussions, multiple email account management features, and support for adding image attachments.

iWork

If you regularly find yourself having to work in areas with an unreliable data connection, iWork is a good investment. The suite costs $30, so for those with a reliable internet connection it may be a hard sell over Google Drive or other similar tools. However, since this app was developed by Apple, it integrates seamlessly with the iOS UI, and it is rock-solid stable. If being able to work off line is important to you then you will love this app.

Bento

This free app can be used to track inventories and expenses, work with databases, create reports, and generate invoices. It automatically syncs with the desktop version of Bento, and is a handy one-stop tool for small business owners.

About the author: This guest piece was written by Amy Fowler for Foxhall Business Centres, who specialise in office space in Nottingham.