Eleven Of The Best Free Apps For Retailers

Contributed by Mallory Russell of Square.

Smart retailers have smart business apps in their arsenals. Here are eleven fantastic tools for retail businesses, all of which have free trials (or are free altogether).

Hootsuite

Staying on top of social media can make your head spin. Hootsuite helps calm the frenzy by allowing you to manage all your social media from any desktop or mobile device. It’s easy to post (and schedule posts) as well as scan comments and engagement across all your channels in real time. Free plans allow you to manage up to three social profiles, with basic analytics and content scheduling capabilities.

Square Point of Sale

Square’s free POS is a hyper-intelligent POS system built specifically for small businesses. The Point of Sale app lets you ring up customers in seconds and includes basic inventory management features and in-depth reporting. Square Point of Sale also lets you send professional online invoices (which are free to send) straight from your mobile device. You can also set up recurring payments and keep track of everything in your Square Dashboard. Need more inventory capabilities? Try our new retail point of sale, Square for Retail.

ShipStation

Shipping and order fulfillment gets pretty crazy, especially during holiday rushes. ShipStation, which you can connect to your Square account via Square App Marketplace, helps streamline fulfillment processes through batch label creation and connections to the top shipping carriers.

Snapseed

Instagram is arguably the most important social media channel for retailers. But to stand out in people’s feeds, you need impressive shots. Snapseed is an app that comes with a huge selection of editing tools and exceptional filters to make your product photos pop.

Inventory Management Tools

Omnichannel retailers often struggle with inventory management across their brick-and-mortar and online stores. Luckily, there are excellent solutions in Square App Marketplace, like Shopventory, Stitch Labs, Intrakr Inventory, DEAR, and Shopseen, that help you manage your product listings across all your sales channels.

TaxJar

Sales tax compliance can get overwhelming, especially if you’re selling in multiple states. TaxJar takes the guesswork out of it all by automatically creating localized sales tax reports for quick and easy filing. You can hook TaxJar up to your Square account in Square App Marketplace.

Slack

If you’re still exclusively communicating with your staff via email and text, it’s time to level up. Slack is a far better team messaging solution. The app’s channels feature is an easy, less cluttered way to quickly distribute information to teams in real time.

Dropbox

Dropbox is the go-to app for file sharing among team members. It’s great for large image files (for things like seasonal lookbooks) and presentation slides. Just create an account for your business and set up different folders for projects or content types.

Genius Scan

Trello

Planning your seasonal inventory? Hosting an event? Trello is a simple project management app for you and your team. You can create boards that include checklists, due dates, comments, and attachments (from Google Drive, Dropbox, or your own computer). The app sends notifications whenever something has been edited or assigned.

MagicPlan

If you’re opening a new storefront or looking to change up your existing one, MagicPlan can help by quickly creating professional floor plans and budget estimates. Just snap some photos and the app measures the room and draws everything up. You can also add objects and photos to generate more detailed estimates.

Mallory Russell is the editor in chief of Square’s Town Square blog and resource center. She regularly writes on topics that help entrepreneurs start, run, and grow their businesses.