As a real estate agent, you spend most of your workday on the go. When you’re holding open houses, taking clients to view new properties, or presenting offers, you’re helping your business thrive. But what about all those time-consuming administrative tasks?

All the hours you spend handling bookkeeping chores, tracking and reporting your expenses is the time you’re not spending tending to your clients.

Fortunately, mobile solutions for real estate agents, such as cloud payroll software, can help you handle these tasks quickly and smoothly, so you can get back to doing what you do best: making sales. Putting the right apps on your phone, tablet, and laptop can streamline your daily workflow and help you focus on what matters. Below is our guide to the top apps for real estate agents.

QuickBooks Online: The Real Estate Agent’s Sidekick

Keeping your financial records up-to-date is a crucial but time-consuming task for any real estate professional. Especially since your clients may ask for documentation of all the expenses you’ve amassed in their service. That’s why QuickBooks Online is essential for the well-prepared real estate agent. In addition to helping you prep for tax time, this software enables you to organize your payroll if you run a brokerage.

Because you’re often in your car if you’re a real estate agent, keeping track of receipts is a challenge. You can prevent them from getting lost, forgotten, or damaged with the QuickBooks mobile app’s receipt scanner. By turning your smartphone into a mobile scanner, you can capture receipts in the moment (and save yourself the expense of buying one more gadget). All you have to do is snap a photo of a receipt, and QuickBooks does the rest. The receipt is attached to the expense as part of its bookkeeping functions and saves the document digitally, so you can turn it over to your assistant or tax professional as needed. Attaching receipts to any expenses you charge your clients means you don’t have to waste time answering questions about their expense claims. And don’t worry — you’re not going to max out your phone’s storage since all those scanned documents are stored safely in the cloud. You can also search receipts and other scanned documents quickly whenever you need them, letting you focus on tasks that boost revenue instead of spending all your energy rummaging through papers to answer your accountant’s questions. In addition, the app organizes receipts, tracks your mileage, and more.

Want to get started? Take QuickBooks Online for a test drive.

Other Mobile Solutions for Real Estate Agents

Once you can handle all your bookkeeping from your phone, it’s time to look at some other apps that streamline workflow for real estate professionals, including those that handle documentation and promotion.

In addition to QuickBooks, these are some handy mobile solutions for real estate agents:

The Canadian Mortgage App

One of the first questions your buyers want to know when they look at a property is: “What’s it going to cost me per month?”. With the Canadian Mortgage App, you can tell them their most likely monthly payment right away. This handy app factors in data such as the property’s value, the down payment, and the projected interest rate of the mortgage to provide an accurate answer. It even throws in calculations on the anticipated property tax and homeowner’s insurance, so your clients don’t face unexpected expenses down the line.

Dotloop

Do you sometimes find yourself racing across town to get a signature on a document? With Dotloop , you can handle this task digitally. Available online and on the iOS platform, this app lets you upload documents and mark the spots where your client needs to sign. Dotloop verifies your client’s identity and walks them through the document, so they don’t miss a spot where they need to initial. All data is encrypted and kept secure, and all signatures are e-verified for everyone’s protection.

PDF Escape

Break the lock on PDFs with PDFescape , a simple app that lets you add a signature to a PDF. Now you don’t have to ask for executable files to get signatures on the dotted line. Instead, you can upload any PDF with this app and add a digital version of your signature. You can also add dates and any required notes.

Box

You may already use a program like Dropbox to transfer large documents to clients, but take a look at Box as well. Box works much like Dropbox, giving you and your clients easy access to large documents, but it also lets you edit and annotate them in the app, and you can mark folders for offline viewing as well. Box also provides an enhanced level of security. Best of all, it’s free for both iOS and Android.

Roomscan Pro

Square footage can be a make-or-break detail when you’re selling a property, and finding the perfect floor plan can seal a deal. Now, with Roomscan Pro, you can create floor plans simply by holding up your phone. It can feel like magic: You tap a wall with your phone, move to the next wall to tap, and watch the floor plan start to form itself on your screen. Roomscan floor plans are accurate to within 0.15 metres (6 inches). As a Realtor, you can take advantage of the special option that lets you add windows and doors to the floor plan as well as adjust measurements when needed.

Vert

Because imperial units of measurement are sometimes used alongside metric measurements in Canada, you may sometimes find yourself doing complicated calculations in your head. Save time and effort with Vert, which handles conversions of all sorts with just a tap and a swipe. This app even handles currency conversion calculations for those times when you’re working with a foreign buyer.

Adobe Photoshop Express

Now you don’t need to head back to your office and your desktop computer to tweak those property photos. With Adobe Photoshop Express, you can adjust contrast, exposure, and white balance to showcase the properties you represent in the best possible light (literally), saving you the trouble of going back to take new photos. Photoshop also lets you blur the license plate of the car your client left in the driveway, and it can even blur the address itself. You can also crop out the neighbor’s trash bins or other distractions to present the most attractive property photos possible. Adobe Photoshop Express is available on both iOS and Android platforms for free.

Videolicious

Sometimes photos aren’t enough for a property. When you need to post a video tour on a property’s website or send one to a client, Videolicious makes your job easy, right from your phone. You can add filters to the video footage when needed, as well as music. You can also narrate the video tour yourself to let viewers understand the features of the property thoroughly. Available on the iOS platform, Videolicious charges a small monthly fee for businesses, but you can try it out for free right away with a personal account.

Apps to Enhance Time Management Skills for Real Estate Agents

Managing time well is critical for success in real estate since you’re less likely to make sales when you’re stressed. Here are some apps that can help your time management:

If This Then That

If This Then That (IFTTT) is a mobile solution that connects all your apps, devices, and web pages so they can talk to each other, letting you avoid spending time juggling lots of online minutiae. With IFTTT, your website can text you immediately if a client asks a question on your chatbot, and new contacts can be populated automatically across all your communications channels. New photos can also be uploaded right away to all the sites on which you’re advertising a property. You can even use this app to turn on the lights at an internet-connected house you’re showing before your client arrives.

Buffer

Save time managing your social media pages. This simple app, which is free on both iOS and Android, lets you share posts automatically across Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and Twitter. It gives you the ability to schedule new posts and limit distribution if you want. Buffer also notifies you of any comments, so you can stay on top of communications without having to log onto all your social media platforms throughout the day.

Realtors Property Resource

Ever find yourself stumped by a client’s question about a property? With the Realtors Property Resource (RPR) app, you can quickly access information about a property’s value, type of neighborhood, nearby schools, and much more. The RPR solution also lets you send reports about the property to clients. You can review the property’s previous owners and any relevant tax and mortgage information. This app even provides satellite views of the property. With RPR, you don’t have to spend hours or days researching information about a house before you’re able to answer a client’s questions. And you don’t have to worry about giving incorrect replies or losing any research documents, giving you time for more important things.

The Bottom Line

With handy real estate mobile apps that enhance your bookkeeping, presentations and communication with clients, you can take full advantage of your time management skills and focus on your core business. Being prepared for the questions that clients ask and handling all your documents via the cloud helps you advance your real estate career by taking busywork off your plate. With QuickBooks Online, you can organize your business finances and stay ready for tax time. Try it free for today.