Apps like DoorDash, GrubHub, and UberEats were seeing explosive growth even before the pandemic.

A 2017 study by experience management partner Service Management Group found that 75 percent of consumers would order food elsewhere if a restaurant wasn't available via third-party delivery. Unsurprisingly, 2018 saw customers order a total of $10.2 billion in food from these services, making meal delivery the fifth-largest revenue stream in the entire food services industry. By 2019, the average person had two food delivery apps and used them at least thrice per month.

As for 2020? As you might expect, the pandemic saw our usage of food delivery apps more than double. At the same time, no one seemed to be making any money, save perhaps the delivery services themselves. But it's not like participation is optional — whether or not to work with third-party delivery is, at this point, a Hobson's choice.

The options are to play ball or go out of business. You're aware of this, of course. You've likely been struggling with the costs of third-party delivery for some months now.

But what have you done to adapt to third-party delivery? Do you have any unique processes intended for working with delivery companies? Have you integrated third-party delivery into your point of sale system, or are you still treating it as something external to your business?

If you play your cards right, third-party delivery doesn't have to be painful. For savvy restaurateurs, it can be immensely beneficial. Here's what you can do to adapt.

Update your operations

If you're anything like most restaurants, your reason for partnering with delivery companies in 2020 was simple. Between lockdowns forcing you to close your doors and social distancing reducing dine-in revenue, you needed delivery to survive. Once the pandemic ends, delivery will still be important, of course.

But you'll have a lot more freedom to set the tone of your partnership, especially given the agreement recently penned by the National Restaurant Association.

First, ask yourself what you want to achieve. Are you simply looking to improve brand awareness, or do you want to dive deep and learn more about your delivery audience? Beyond that, you'll also want to decide who to partner with.

Different delivery services offer different fees and opportunities. That said, many restaurants choose to partner with as many as possible to maximize visibility. Some even choose to create their own online delivery system, though this is something we'd advise you only pursue with caution.

From there, you're going to want to take a few initial steps.

• Redesign your to-go packaging. You'll want to account for the following.
  • What it's made of. Different materials are suited for different food items. Styrofoam, for instance, can actually trap steam, resulting in soggy food.
  • How it looks. Where possible, spring for branded packaging. Research indicates that this can contribute to a positive perception of your brand, improving both loyalty and revenues.
  • How it's designed. Good packaging is tailored to the individual food item it contains, easy to re-seal, and made to prevent spills.
• Update your operations. You might, for instance, consider expanding your kitchen to add a section exclusively dedicated to preparing to-go meals, or adding specialized lockers to store prepared food for couriers. You'll also want to consolidate your technology to support this redesign (more on that below).
• Rethink your menu. Certain menu items simply do not work with third-party delivery. While this is largely a matter of trial, error, and analytics, you can use a bit of common sense here too.

Revamp your technology

During the pandemic, many restaurants were forced to hurriedly start working with third-party delivery services. They didn't have time to optimize things. Given that the pandemic isn't yet over, many of them still haven't.

This has created a laundry list of problems:

• Significant manual work. Each third-party delivery service has its own application and its own interface. Typically, that means having to manually update and monitor each app individually at a time when you're likely already running on fumes.
• Inconsistent offerings between different delivery services. For instance, a restaurant might offer hot dogs on DoorDash, but not on UberEats, for instance.
• No high-level operational view. Restaurants are frequently left in the dark not only about what dishes performed well, but also regarding the identities of their most valuable, loyal repeat customers. This means being completely blind to new opportunities.
• Inefficient order management. Nearly everyone who frequently orders food during the pandemic has had to deal with an order that arrived late, cold, missing items, or altogether incorrect. The blame usually doesn't rest on restaurant employees but rather on the systems they're forced to use.
• Disjointed branding and marketing. There's a good chance that marketing and outreach have been the last things on your mind, especially if you're a smaller restaurateur. This puts you at a considerable disadvantage compared to larger, more established restaurants.
• A damaged brand. When a customer has a negative experience with your restaurant, they'll remember it. Not only will they be less likely to order from you in the future, but they may also tell friends and colleagues to avoid you as well.

The good news is that there's an easy solution for all of these problems. Simply stop treating your point of sale system (POS), menu management, outreach, and order management tools as separate entities. Instead, seek a POS that consolidates them all into a single, unified platform.

You don't have time to juggle multiple delivery, analytics, and menu apps during the pandemic. And if you plan to continue supporting delivery in the future, it's not something you can afford to do. Restaurant POS helps address this problem through efficient menu management, order consolidation, reporting, and engagement tools.

It's just the thing to help your business not only make it through the pandemic, but thrive once COVID-19 is finally gone.

Keep your eyes forward

It's no exaggeration to say that the coronavirus pandemic has forever changed the restaurant industry. It's forced everyone from small owners to large franchises to rethink their operations. At the moment, many are still struggling, limping along and praying for the day the pandemic ends.

You don't need to be among them. By rethinking your approach to third-party delivery and optimizing both your operations and technology, you have the potential to thrive. To get back on your feet and step into the future while your competitors still struggle in the past.

What you need to know

• The free tool is available now
• It combines chat and project management
• A paid version is also available.

The team behind Zenkit, the popular project management solution, is out with its latest product. Zenchat is a collaboration app that combines task management with chat. The new tool promotes a complete communication experience. Zenchat is now available across multiple platforms, including iOS/iPadOS and macOS.

In announcing Zenchat, Zenkit noted that chat apps have been growing in popularity in recent years and even more during COVID. As Zenkit CEO Martin Welker explains:

Zenchat is the first chat app that includes a task management component. In doing so, you can quickly turn any message into a task, then assign or edit it within your chat. Never switch apps for routine task management again. Better still, Zenchat has been designed with flexibility in mind. For example, you can elect to show all of your chats or only those related to a specific project. You can also connect to the larger ZenKit Universe and see your tasks in advanced views like Kanban and Gantt.

Like other Zenkit products, Zenchat is enterprise-ready: SSO, SCIM provisioning, admin tools, identity management & more.

Welker notes:

Zenchat is free and available now. An optional paid plan is also available that's designed to be used on its own and includes more advanced task management tools.

At its core, project management software titles are all the same, especially when it comes to simple tasks like managing to-do lists. Throw in extra features and collaboration, and the differences grow clearer.

From students to freelancers, to small companies and large, Zenkit has become a popular choice for many in recent years. The flexible solution offers a hodgepodge of features that move well beyond to-dos and tasks, including a basic spreadsheet, database, and calendar functions. You'll also find a mind-mapping option.

Once you set up your free Zenkit account (more on the pricing later), you're free to roam your account on various platforms, include the web, Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android. At its heart, Zenkit is a kanban solution, that will remind many of Trello and other project management services. With the launch of Zenkit 3.0 earlier this year, it moves beyond this too.

Zenkit 3.0

Under ZenKit 3.0, you'll find a more unified interface across mobile and desktop. In other words, the screen and options on both are now strikingly similar, which is how it should be across different platforms, no? The company also added a feature that gives you the ability to share your content from Zenkit with others -- even those not part of your team. The published Zenkit Collections are sharable via a link or embedded on your website. You can also tweak what content to share with others.

Zenkit is packed full of features worth exploring, starting with its ever-growing list of templates that span multiple categories. These include personal, Human Resources, CRM & Sales, marketing, education, ERP, and many more. Better still, with Zapier integration, you can connect Zenkit with other applications with ease, such as Evernote Slack, Gmail, and Google Sheets.

A free personal account (which can have up to three different users) gives you access to up to 100 collections, with a limit of 500 items per collection. For those, you're limited to 1GB attachment space and up to five workspaces. A Plus account, which is $9 per month for each user, features unlimited collections of up to 50,000 items each, a 6GB attachment space limit, up to 20 workspaces, and unlimited paid members. Enterprise pricing is also available.

Worth considering

If you or your organization are looking for a project management solution that works across multiple platforms, including mobile, Zenit is worth considering. The most significant advantage of using Zenkit is its approachability. For the most basic tasks, it's easy to get started, regardless of platform. However, as you begin adding more advanced features, things can prove dicey without proper training using Zenkit's online documentation. Therefore, you should implement new features slowly to find the most success.

You can visit the Zenkit website for more information and to sign up for the service. The Zenkit app is available on the App Store.

If you have further questions about Zenkit, feel free to ask them in the comments below.

Update Oct. 4, 2019

ZenKit announced a new Kanban subtask feature. According to the company, it includes:

• Hierarchical range filter that enables you to see only top-level tasks so you don't have to make a separate collection or view to see the big picture.
• Subtasks filter which allows you to view all subitems of a particular item in a single click. The unrelated tasks of other items disappear from your board and you see a complete overview of a sub-project as if it were its own Kanban board. This can immediately show you where bottlenecks are.
• New mind map which directly connects to the hierarchy view, offering a more expressive way to work with the same data.
• Recursive formulas that allow you to aggregate the value of subtasks.
• The ability to automatically mark all subtasks as done by marking parent task as done.

Martin Welker, CEO of Zenkit explains:

Time clocks seem like a bit of a throwback. At least in the old-school sense. Imagine... standing in line as you enter your office, grabbing a piece of paper, sticking it in a machine, and, literally, have it stamped with the current date and time.

Fortunately, most of us don't have to do that anymore, largely because of applications such as Redcort Software's Virtual TimeClock, which, as the name implies, takes your old physical time clock and lets your employees access it from anywhere.

• Centralizes time clock data on your computers
• 3 levels of security for management and employees
• Network version available from anywhere over the Internet
• Customizable features

• Possible to learn another employee's password if you happen to create one that matches
• Features may be available with your payroll service
• Remote clock in is not available for portable devices

Pick your clock

Virtual TimeClock comes in three flavors:

• Basic ($99, 1 computer, 3 employees)

• Pro ($195, 1 computer, unlimited employees)

• Network ($295-$2290, 1 computer - site license)

For the purposes of this review I looked at the network version with 2 employees, but as far as functionality, other than the location of the database, each of the applications work exactly the same. You can run Virtual TimeClock on a Mac or PC, I used a Mac.

Initial setup

Once you've downloaded and installed your version of Virtual TimeClock you need to do some setup, which includes creating a database and then adding employees and security to that database.

To ease employee creation you can import data from a properly formatted CSV file (12 commas, separating 13 fields) or QuickBooks IIF files, which you create and export directly from QuickBooks. I went the manual route, adding individual employees one by one. Simple enough if you have a few employees and you're entering a limited amount of information, but you'll want to import your initial list of employees if you have more than a few.

Once you've created employees they access your time clock using the Virtual TimeClock client application, which is available for Mac or PC. The app lists all your employees in alphabetical order and would benefit from a Spotlight-like search feature for finding employees. I found no way to search the list, so you may want to use the app's Groups feature to organize your employees in a way that makes each list a little shorter.

To log in, employees click on their name in the list of employees and choose "Start" to begin their work day. You can require employees to enter a password to clock in or out. And it's important to note that no two employees can have the same password. While seemingly more secure, there's a downside to this rule, as, if your password happens to match another employee's, you'll receive an error message stating, "You cannot use common or recently used passwords. Please try another," which, if you're not entirely clueless, clues you in to the fact that someone else has the same password that you've just entered. So... securely insecure. (Which, perhaps, describes me!)

Virtual TimeClock allows for a few levels of security, including who has access to reporting and administrative features, you can choose passwords or PINs for your employees to use to login or a combination of PIN+barcode to guarantee that one employee isn't signing in for another.

Access anywhere

If you choose to go with Virtual TimeClock Network edition, there's one huge upside: access from anywhere. Once you set your server up, you can connect using any computer in your network or from any computer that has access to the Internet.

While you can access Virtual TimeClock from anywhere on the planet, there are some limitations: There is no Virtual TimeClock client for iOS or Android. This means you have to have access to a computer that has access to the Internet in order to log in remotely, which is a limitation given that most payroll services offer clock in/out capabilities from any device with a modern web browser.

Admin and reports

Virtual TimeClock offers a number of admin features allowing you to customize your employee's experience and get the reports you need to run your payroll properly.

The program's configuration panel lets you create employees, organize them by department, create overtime rules, shifts and schedules. You can also organize employees into management groups, so supervisors can review and approve timecards for the individuals they're responsible for. You can also give supervisors the ability to approve sick, vacation, and personal leave, so that management isn't relegated to the back office.

If you're working in the payroll office, you can create reports both for archival use and, if you want, to include with a check when you pay your employees. You can create reports by individual and department, view a summary of all timecards, and break reports down by shift.

At the end of each pay period, the payroll manager uses the Timecard Review & Payroll Approval tool to review each employee's timecard, verify that the hours work are correct, and approve each employee's hours. Once approved, you can create a payroll report and export payroll data for import into formats importable by several payroll services, including: Acclivity AccountEdge, ADP Pay eXpert, ADP Workforce Now®2, CheckMark Payroll, Paychex Preview®4, Paychex Flex, PayChoice Payroll, QuickBooks, and SurePayroll.

Good for you?

So, the real challenge in determining whether or not Virtual TimeClock is a good fit for you is understanding what your needs are. As electronic payroll for businesses proliferates, even for small shops, online time clocks are often the standard as a part of your payroll package. So this may be something you already have. Personally, I prefer the idea of a time clock that isn't a "service" I'm buying from my payroll company. Virtual TimeClock's greatest virtue is that you're in control. And that's a high value virtue.

See at Redcort Software

Whose time are you on?

Still using paper? Punching a physical clock? Using a service? What are you using to manage payroll and why?

Mileage tracking used to be a hot mess of manual data entry and, and here's the key, memory. You had to remember to begin tracking your mileage any time you started a trip and you needed to remember to stop tracking as soon as your trip was done. Now, thanks to smartphones with built-in GPS, you no longer need to think about when you start and stop a trip, you just need to remember whether or not where you traveled was for business or personal purposes. We took a look at six automatic mileage tracking apps to see how they stack up.

All of the apps we're looking at work using some form of the same principal: You allow the app to track where you're going in the background while you go about your daily business, then, assuming you're super efficient, once a day you use the app to swipe left or right to catalog a trip as personal or business mileage.

It's all pretty simple and unlike manual methods, requires very little work on your part. As far as choosing the best mileage tracking app? These all stack up pretty evenly. Your best bet is to give each one a go and see which suits your specific needs.

• QuickBooks Self-Employed
• MileIQ
• Everlance
• Mileage Tracker by driversnote
• Mile Cloud
• Mile Logger

QuickBooks Self-Employed

The first app I ever used that provided background mileage tracking was QuickBooks Self-Employed, which added excellent mileage tracking as a part of an accounting package for people who often mix business and personal banking accounts and need to track mileage. Think Lyft and Uber drivers or anyone else not doing business as a corporate entity.

I feel the same way today as I did the first time I used QuickBooks Self-Employed's mileage tracking feature: It's excellent. Invisible when it runs in the background, uses almost no battery when it's tracking mileage, and pretty fun to use. It was the first app to offer the simplicity of swipe-left/swipe-right categorization of business and personal mileage. I confess I was a little bowled over the first time I used it.

QuickBooks Self-Employed's only downside is that in order to use it you also need to tie your self to Intuit's self-employment accounting package at about $120/year. To that end, it's aimed at users who need accurate mileage information to make proper payment for quarterly or annual self-employment tax filings. It's not really designed for getting reimbursement mileage from someone you work for.

Free - Download now

MileIQ

MileIQ is the newest kid on the mileage tracking block and also the one you're most likely to have already heard about, as it's advertised on everything from podcasts to NPR. It's also a Microsoft Mobile Data Labs app, so you may already be able to use it for free if you have a Microsoft 365 Business or Business Premium account.

Like QuickBooks Self-Employed, MileIQ watches where you travel and lets you categorize that travel as business or personal with a quick swipe left or right. But what it excels at is online access and reporting. Your MileIQ account includes access to an online dashboard you use to manage drives, look at where you've been, how many miles you've logged, and you can generate monthly mileage reports for reimbursement or tax filing purposes. Of all the apps listed here, MileIQ offers the best user experience across web and mobile devices.

If you don't have access to one of the aforementioned Microsoft products you can demo MileIQ for free for up to 40 trips every month. A subscription is $60 annually.

• Free - Download now

Everlance

The Everlance app is excellent and for $60/year not only offers automatic mileage tracking but lets you link to your bank accounts so it can work as an all-purpose expense tracker as well.

As with the apps mentioned above, you categorize every trip you take by swiping left or right and Everlance offers built-in workday intelligence. So, rather than tracking where you are 24/7, you can set work hours and Everlance will only log your mileage during those hours and ignore where you are when you're not working. It should be noted that most of the other tracking apps can tell the difference between driving and walking. I found that Everlance collected everything from hikes to train trips.

Everlance provides very detailed reporting. They refer to it in their documentation as IRS guideline compliant, but it includes GPS mapping information, time zones, photo and other information that seems more like TMI than IRS compliant.

• Free - Download now

Mileage Tracker by driversnote

[Mileage Tracker by driversnote][*] is an interesting duck of an app. While it is an automatic mileage tracking app in order for it to be truly automatic you need to sign up for a $9.50/month basic account to get your trips tracked automatically. That's because Mileage Tracker uses an iBeacon in your vehicle to notify the app that you've begun to travel. So the app begins and ends tracking every time your phone enters and exits your vehicle (full disclosure, I wasn't able to get an iBeacon in time to test it for this article).

There's an upside to this. Mile Tracker won't collect mileage information for every trip you take, whether it be by plane, train, or automobile. But the downside is that you you have to remember to manually begin GPS tracking in order for the app to track where you've gone. It also wants to keep odometer reading information which may make your mileage tracking more consistent with what your odometer reads, but which also seems unnecessary for something that's tracking your actual movement in time and space.

Mileage Tracker's reporting tools are good enough to satisfy your accountant and the app provides easy categorization with standard IRS reimbursement rates for medical, charity, and business mileage. You can also customize your reimbursement rates if your company pays your more than the standard IRS rate.

• Free - Download now

Mile Cloud

Astonek Inc.'s Mile Cloud tracks your mileage $20/year, with 30 automatic trips and unlimited manually trips logged for free. That's a pretty good deal. But the app's categorization process is a lot messier than any of the other apps and I found the user interface to be frustrating.

Rather than swiping left or right to categorize your trips after their collected, Mile Cloud uses a scrolling list with categorization tabs at the bottom of each trip. Tapping a category takes care of the personal/business question, but it doesn't get rid of the trip once you've categorized it. So, unlike other apps where you swipe and your next trip appears, Mile Cloud makes you tap, then slide down, then tap, and slide again. Which, after using others better designed apps, is pretty frustrating.

Mile Cloud offers reasonably good reports, which you can send to yourself or someone else in PDF and CSV format. The app's onscreen reporting tools are actually quite nice, but the way the information is displayed on-screen doesn't look as good in the mailed reports.

• Free - Download now

Mile Logger

Soooo... Dajax, LLC's Mile Logger is a free unlimited mileage tracker, which should explain why when I opened it, it occasionally threw gigantic full-screen game ads up before I got to use it for categorizing my mileage. It is ad-based, which is why it's the only 100% free mile tracking app, but anything more than an inline ad at the bottom of the screen seems way out of line.

Mile Logger has zero documentation, at the time I looked at the app the Dajax website was a blank white page, so learning how the app works and what some buttons do was more a matter of hunt-and-tap discovery than intuitive and obvious. But, once you work out the details tracking miles with Mile Logger is pretty simple. As with all the apps but Mile Cloud you swipe left or right to log a trip as a personal or business trip. Mile Logger is the only app that offers no options for categorizing charity mileage.

Reporting in Mile Logger was the most basic of all the apps I looked at. It's enough. You'll be able to use the app to capture business miles you need to get reimbursed for. But it's super limited compared to the other programs.

• Free - Download now

Questions, quibbles, qualms?

There are dozens of mileage tracking apps out there. Are there others you think are better? Are there things you hate about these apps? Let us know!

If you own a business you already know that adding devices to your service plan is not as simple as walking into an Apple Store and plunking down your money for an iPhone. In fact, in most cases you can't purchase a device directly from Apple if you a have business account. You have to buy devices directly from AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon.

If you're an employee of a company that gives you a phone as part of your employment package, your options are even more limited. You'll need permission, or the equivalent of a hall pass, to get a new watch linked to your phone.

Hiding in Plain Sight

Take a quick scan of the business sites for AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless and what you'll notice is, yes, they're all happy to sell you a Series 3 LTE, but there's a dearth of information available on how to add that device to your business plan. A fact that's also obvious if you take a spin through Apple's support forums.

I have my business service with AT&T and, as noted in that thread, there is absolutely no information on AT&T's Premiere Business site indicating how to add an Apple Watch LTE to an account. And this is the only place business owners have to add new lines and upgrade phones.

So if these websites are useless, what do you do? You make a call, which is what I did with all four carriers.

You can thank me later.

The Good News

Unlike iPads and iPhones added to your business account, you can buy your Series 3 LTE anywhere you please. So if you have Best Buy bucks burning a hole in your pocket, you'll have no problem using those to buy your watch. So, feel free to buy your watch wherever you please. What you won't be able to do is pair that Watch to your iPhone and your carrier account like you normally would. Which, if you're me, happens when you're sitting in your car in the parking lot the moment you leave the store. There are, as my mother likes to say, "gates" involved. And to get through the gates you'll have to talk to the gatekeeper.

Enter The Gatekeeper

Unlike personal wireless accounts, business accounts have managers and the manager for your business account is the only one allowed to add lines. And your new watch is a new line on your account.

So, sorry, parking lot pairing is out.

What you'll need to do is take a trip to your carrier's store or make a call to your carrier's business service line to get the watch connected to your phone.

Once you step into the store or make that call the process is pretty simple. You'll need to add a $10/month line to the account, and then link your watch's LTE number to its associated phone number. You do need to make sure that the Watch you purchase is connected to your carrier of choice. Otherwise, you'll also need to purchase a SIM card.

All four carriers use number syncing features with names like NumberSync and DIGITS so that calls made to your phone ring through to your watch. This is true whether you have a business account or not. Once the line is added and linked to your number, you can pair your Apple Watch and phone using the Watch app on your iPhone.

The Bad News

And herein lies the rub; If you're Jane or Joe employee you can't just walk into a store or make a call to add an Apple Watch to your company's account. And if you're Jane or Joe account manager, you're going to have to go through this process for every Apple Watch added to your account. At present, there is no simple way using any of the business management features on your wireless carrier's website to add an Apple Watch LTE to your account. It's a phone call or a walk into a store to get a Watch set up.

For small companies with just a few phones this isn't too much trouble, but for large companies with a ton of wireless devices, this is nothing short of onerous. Fortunately, there are some workarounds, but caveats do apply.

Each of the wireless services allows an existing manager to add other users with purchase ability to a business account. But based on my conversations with each of the carriers, only AT&T offers what they call "Retail Users," which are users who can purchase devices that are linked to their existing number only, and which are linked to your business account. These users don't have management over other users, so they can't add new numbers and buy iPhones for all their family members, but they can add a new Apple Watch to their account if you enable this feature.

The other three carriers also allow you to add people as "points of contact," but when you do this you're also giving those users more access than you're likely to want them to have on your business account. So, adding Apple Watch devices will mean making the call yourself. Although, there is one other option.

BYOD and Bye Bye

If you're a business owner and you do offer employees wireless phones as part of an employment package, that's a pretty sweet deal and maybe I want to come work for you. But if management of those phones is a hassle, and particularly if your employees want a Series 3 LTE as part of the package, here's one more option for you: Figure out how much you're currently paying per device on your business plan, then give your employees a monthly stipend + $10 if you want to offer them Apple Watch access in addition to a phone. That should make everyone happy, including your wireless business account manager and it takes all of the management hassles out of your hands.

Any questions? Better answers?

Have you had to add an Apple Watch Series 3 GPS + Cellular to your business account? Find any workarounds or different pain points? Let us know!

Hours by Tapity is a new productivity app that aims to take the pain out of recording and tracking your time. Not only does Hours work great for tracking billable time, it can also help you analyze and learn how to better stay on top of things that need your attention. Hours does this by allowing you to quickly and easily start and stop timers that are tied with specific projects and tasks.

When you launch Hours, you're presented with a simple timeline at the top and the option to create a new timer. You can choose a project name, client, and include notes if you'd like. I found the entry options to be complete enough that I knew what I was adding but not overly complicated so I felt as if just starting a timer was a task. Once you've added a timer, you can scroll through the time dial at the top and tap the timer in order to adjust the time. If you're just now starting the task, just tap on the clock face to start the timer.

Hours can be as simple or as advanced as you want it to be when it comes to organizing Hours. If you want more granular data, you can hop into settings and adjust rounding and reminder options. If you haven't set a timer in a good amount of time, Hours can even prompt you to begin one. The calendar view is another great tool for making sure you are tracking time regularly. Each day on the month view will have small visual representations of how much time you've tracked for the day. Seeing gaps instantly tells you that you most likely have data to fill in.

Depending on the type of time you need to track, the possibilities for how you choose to organize Hours are up to you. If you're a massage therapist, you can easily track each client as you begin and then email invoices or simply export clients at the end of the month for your own records. A freelance writer could track different projects for different publications and then easily export detailed summaries of each type of project for payment. This is part of what makes Hours an attractive option, it can grow with you and help you manage time more effectively, regardless of profession.

The good

• Easy to use interface that's unique from other time tracking apps, but in a good way
• Push notification support to remind you if you haven't started a timer in a while or if you've got one running that may need attention
• Sort timers by client, projects, or tasks - whatever suits you best

The bad

• No way to set a timer to end in the future
• No iPad support

The bottom line

Hours is an extremely versatile app that lets you manage your time effectively and easily. No one likes using time tracking software and it's why we often don't track effectively. Hours takes some of the pain out with smart reminders and by letting you start timers in very few steps. One thing I'd really like to see in the future is a way to set timers for upcoming days so Hours can not only be used as a time tracking tool, but to help me stay focused better on what I need to be doing in advance.

• $4.99 (on sale) - Download Now

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is the current hot trend. (And has been for a while, really.) There are many perceived advantages for a company that allows employees to bring their own devices to work and have access to your company resources, but is BYOD right for you? Can you make mistakes when developing your BYOD policies? Can you really let any device connect to your resources?

Lets look at a few top issues that you should be aware of.

BYOD used to mean Bring Your Own (Smartphone or Tablet) Device. The BYOD movement started through the failure of BlackBerry to keep up with Apple and Google as they began to dominate and revolutionize the mobile landscape with more capable devices that had much faster CPUs, more memory, larger screens, and desktop web browsing capabilities.

BYOD has now morphed into Bring Your Own (Smartphone, Tablet, or Laptop) Device. But what devices do you want your BYOD policy to include? Do you want to limit it to smartphones and tablets, or do you want to include laptops?

Today the market is awash with smartphone and tablet choices from Apple, Google, Nokia, Microsoft, Samsung, HTC, Motorola, LG, and even Amazon — to name but a few manufacturers. If you adopt a BYOD policy that includes smartphones and tablets, can you really allow your employees to bring in any device they want, and expect that the device is secure enough?

The answer is no, not all mobile devices can be secured to the same level. (Nor should you ever assume an employee's home device is safe.)

Apple leads in the enterprise because it has built strong and flexible APIs since 2010 (starting with iOS 4.0) that allow Mobile Device Management (MDM) vendors to tightly secure, control, restrict, and monitor iOS devices. Those controls have improved greatly with iOS 7. Google’s Android mobile operating system is not as popular in enterprise because Android does not provide many built-in controls and is perceived as insecure — even though that isn't really the case.

Vendors like Samsung have made radical additions to Android to try and make it more secure. For example, some Samsung devices support Samsung Approved For The Enterprise (SAFE) and Samsung Knox that allow similar kinds of controls as what is found in iOS. Windows Phone and Windows RT tablets presently lack the kind of secure compartimentalization that is available on iOS and Samsung devices.

So as you think about which devices you should allow, you need to consider how each can be secured. You can either limit the device choice to iOS and a limited selection of Android and Windows Phone/Windows RT devices, or you could use a method of device security called Containerization that we discuss in its own section below.

If you allow your employees to bring their personal laptops, which ones will you allow, and how will you ensure that they are secure? Some MDM vendors do offer laptop management, but you may choose to use virtual machines instead. Virtual machines allow you to create a “company secure build” of Windows, and have that virtual machine run on personal Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux laptops.

The traditional method of securing smartphone and tablet devices is to use MDM. This allows the IT staff to have full control over the entire mobile device if they decide to, or only control the company data and apps.

Your employees may not appreciate that you have full control over their mobile devices, even if you have chosen not to exercise that that power. Your employees may prefer that you only have control over part of their device, leaving their personal data alone.

Containerization (also known as Dual Persona) is the solution for two issues. The first issue is that of providing that same security policy across all Smartphones and Tablets no matter what operating system they are running. The second issue is that of personal and company separation.

By keeping your company email, contacts, calendar, and apps in a separate, secure, encrypted container on the Smartphone and/or Tablet, you have no way of having visibility into their personal device, apps, and data. You are limited to controlling only the container. Dual Persona is increasingly becoming the go-to choice for BYOD since it provides peace of mind, and truly separates personal and company data.

BYOA is a movement that leverages the popularity of containerization, but to the app level. The idea is that you take your company's apps and wrap them in a secure container, and push them to your employees’ personal devices. You only have control over the app in the container, and not entire parts of the device. The app is secured in its container, and may have access to data behind your firewall via a secure connection from the container.

This truly separates corporate and personal data at the app level.

When you allow your employees to use their own devices, you should consider whether you want to compensate them in some way. Do you want to take the approach that since they would be paying for voice and data anyway, that you do not need to provide a monthly stipend. Some employees may argue that they pay for the voice minutes and data usage based on their personal use, and do not have unlimited data plans. In this situation, they could argue that their voice and data usage will increase when they start accessing company resources.

You need to decide whether to offer a monthly voice and/or data stipend, and how much to offer.

If employees need to travel internationally for work, how will you handle international voice and data rates?

When you adopt a BYOD policy, you will need to decide whether you want to provide support for your employees, and how much support. Your employees may be bringing devices running multiple mobile operating systems (and in the case of Android, many variants of that operating system).

What type of support will you be offering through your help desk? How will you effectively train your support staff to deal with the device diversity, and will you need to hire more people to provide that support?

Most companies already have well established security policies that they apply to company provided laptops. These include password policies, hard disk encryption, two factor authentication, limited web browsing, and blocking of eternal storage to name a few.

While your may want to simply use those same policies on smartphones and tablets that access your resources, it may not be practical to do so. Some policies that work on laptops, may not translate to mobile, and policies that do translate may be too invasive or limiting. Plan on using a subset of your current end-point polices for mobile.

As you can see, creating a BYOD policy encompasses many different areas, and there are many decisions to be made so that your BYOD policy does not fail. Making it too restrictive or intrusive could lead to rebellion by your employees. Making it too relaxed could lead to exposed company data or data leakage. Not accounting for all variable could actually lead to an increase in cost, instead of the decrease you were hoping for.

BYOD has benefits and detractions that you need to weigh when considering implementing it for your business. But done right and the benefits can far outweigh the costs.

There's a story making the rounds about how a GameBoy emulator can be installed on non-jailbroken iOS devices. While this initially seems surprising, it's simply the result of a company abusing Apple's iOS Developer Enterprise Program, and allow users to install much more than just one emulator.

The way Apple's normal developer program works is that, for $99/year, developers have the ability to build their apps, install them on their devices for testing, and submit them to the App Store (without a developer account you can only build apps in a simulator). Each developer account is allotted 100 slots for devices to be used for development and testing. For each unique device that a developer wishes to deploy an application to, the device's unique device identifier (UDID) has to be added to the developer's account, and devices can only be removed once a year.

The enterprise program differs in that it does not require devices to be registered with the developer's account and there is no limit to the number of devices that an application signed with an enterprise certificate can be installed on. The intended purpose of this is to allow companies to distribute apps that are only intended for in-house use. Many companies require that more than 100 devices be able to install the app, but don't want these proprietary apps available to the general public in the App Store. Because of these relaxed limitations, Apple charges more for enterprise accounts and requires companies to apply and be accepted into the program.

As you may have guessed by now, the emulator that can be installed on non-jailbroken devices is signed using an enterprise certificate. More specifically, a third party company, MacBuildServer, offers a service that you can point to any public GitHub project, and the service will build the application and sign it with their enterprise certificate (though you can provide your own certificate if you wish). Riley Testut created a Github project for a GameBoy Advanced emulator that will run on iOS. By building the project through MacBuildServer, anybody can install the enterprise-signed emulator.

If you're wondering why Apple would allow its enterprise program to be used like this, they don't. MacBuildServer's service violates the intended use of enterprise certificates and it won't be surprising if we see their developer account terminated shortly. The reason people with enterprise accounts don't usually do this isn't because nobody has thought of it before, it's because there's a very high probability that it will result in losing that enterprise account.

There's also nothing that makes this emulator particularly noteworthy (though I'm sure it's a great emulator). With access to the source code, any app can be built and installed to a device. In fact, there are a number of other emulators for iOS publicly available on GitHub. Whether it be an emulator, a tethering app, or any other app banned from the App Store, these can all normally be built and installed by somebody with a developer certificate. The fact that MacBuildServer is signing any app with their enterprise certificate means that now not only can anybody build these apps for their device, but once built, the resulting .IPA can be redistributed freely to be installed on any other device. Even if MacBuildServer's account is shut down, if Testut's GitHub repository remains public, anybody with a developer account can still install the application to their device, albeit with more complicated steps than installing an enterprise app.

Though user's should be warned, installing any app through Xcode means you're bypassing security checks that are usually performed as part of Apple's App Store review process. This type of app installation is reserved for developers for good reason. Unless you're auditing the code that you're building to a device, there's no guarantee that what you're installing is what it claims to be. Installer beware.

Update 7/17/13: The enterprise signing service no longer works. A blog post on the MacBuildServer site states that they were contacted by Apple and found to be in violation of Apple's terms. While the service will still build and sign apps, they will fail to install onto devices because the certificate has been revoked and is no longer valid.

Kickoff for Mac and iPhone aims to streamline getting things done and communicating with workgroups. That means sharing task lists, splitting up who is doing what, and chatting about it in real time. Whether you run a small to medium-sized business or have colleagues in remote geographical locations, Kickoff has something to offer.

Kickoff is currently available for both iPhone and Mac. While both apps are paid, signing up for the service itself is free. You'll be asked to do that when you launch either app for the first time. After you're signed in, you can start joining teams or creating your own.

The iPhone and Mac versions both allow you to create tasks and chat with other team members in real time. The real value of an app like Kickoff is the ability to create tasks and to-do lists natively. Where apps like Campfire, Glassboard, and HipChat offer a real-time chatroom, Kickoff takes it one step further. It integrates a to-do list.

To-do lists via email and text aren't necessary anymore with Kickoff. Simply add a to-do for the group to see or that only you can see. Other members of the team can then comment on it individually or discuss it in the main team chat window. Kickoff gives you the ability to assign tasks to specific people as well so you can keep track of who is currently doing what. This allows you to see what is going on in a quick glance. You can also comment on tasks which will nest underneath them.

Most people who use workgroups know that conversation can sometimes become less work and more general chat. Kickoff allows users to private message each other directly as well as nest comments on tasks. This means the main chat window stays focused and becomes less diluted with general chat which can easily happen with work groups and teams that only allow a main chat area and nothing else. That means colleagues don't miss important information that may be lost in general chatter.

When it comes to storing data, Kickoff uses Amazon S3 servers equipeed with TSL/SSL. This means every message sent is encrypted and safe. There is also native support for social services such as Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo, Dribble, CloudApp, and more built right in.

The good

• Push notifications are super fast on iPhone
• Full integration with Notification Center in OS X
• Drag and drop file sharing in OS X
• Support for keyboard gestures and shortcuts on OS X
• Dictation support in OS X
• No monthly subscription fee, after you purchase the app you have complete access to all of Kickoff's features

The bad

• You can currently only upload photos in the iPhone version of Kickoff
• No iPad support

The bottom line

Creating a productive work environment online where you can collaborate with others isn't an easy task. The tools you use will always dictate how productive your employees are and unfortunately there haven't been a lot of great choices for small to medium sized businesses that don't want to spend the money on a custom solution. Where one excelled, the other was lacking and vice versa. Kickoff for Mac and iPhone may very well bridge that gap.

Everything from the user interface to how you share and collaborate on data blows the competition away. The only feature Kickoff is currently lacking that we'd like to see in a future update is the ability to upload files other than photos on the iPhone. If you spend most of your time on a Mac, you'll be able to share files but it'd be nice to see the same extended to iPhone whether that's through Dropbox integration or some other way.

Kickoff is by far the best chat and task management app for workgroups that is currently available in either App Store. We can only cross our fingers that they'll also bring this to iPad eventually.

• Kickoff for iPhone - $6.99 - Download Now
• Kickoff for Mac - $27.99 - Download Now

Square has just announced a new offering which gives you all the hardware equipment you need to start taking payments on your iPhone and iPad. You can select bundles based on what you need and they'll be shipped directly to you. All you'll need to bring to the table is an iPhone and/or iPad.

According to Square, businesses can select one of two bundles. One includes a square card reader, iPad stand, cash drawer, and receipt printer. This bundle will retail for $599. You can also select a cheaper option without the receipt printer for $299. The receipt printer on its own retails for around $260 on Amazon so it's not too much more directly from Square. For many, the convenience of receiving everything together may outweigh that extra $50 that Square is charging.

If you're interested in checking out what all is included and ordering, you can do so now by hitting the link below.

Source: Square

BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 is now available for download, and in recognition of the BYOD -- bring your own device -- trend spearheaded by iPhones and iPads, BES 10 will let you manage Apple devices as well.

There's a free 60 day trial available. Of course, enterprises aren't usually quick to update their server software, so it's hard to say how long it will take for BES 10 to gain significant penetration and traction, but if you're company is deploying it, let me know how it goes, how it works, and how you like it.

Meanwhile head on over to CrackBerry.com for everything you need to know about BlackBerry 10.

On Monday morning I picked up several shiny new iPhone 4S handsets that my Apple Business rep had set aside for me earlier in the week. I knew I would be traveling over the launch weekend and I needed quite a few phones, and my Apple Business rep couldn't have been more helpful in arranging everything.

one of the best things I ever did for NickelFish was to register as a small business client with our local Apple Store. The experience and service the Business Team provides is absolutely incredible. Knowing that you have a reliable resource at your disposal that can help you with almost any issue you run into is very comforting. As part of an initiative started [last summer, Apple has been reaching out more to local companies, and it's been a great move.

The funny thing is, I only registered as an afterthought. I was there one day about a year ago buying a laptop for one of our staff members, and the person I was working with saw my business credit card and offered to help me join. I honestly didn't think about it prior to this, and I figured it wouldn't hurt. I met the manager of the Business Team (who has since become a friend) and he said he would add us to the Apple local directory for vendors, and would let interested parties know about our capabilities if anyone inquired. Again, I figured, can't hurt.

Over the course of the past year, I have been able to email or call at any point and ask tons of questions, reserve equipment for purchase, set up service appointments and just generally feel that we're completely cared for in our hardware and software needs. As a business customer, you're sometimes also eligible for discounts, depending on what you're buying. In addition to this, we've had leads sent our way for web and mobile development projects through our association with Apple.

But the most important part of the entire experience for me is that every time I speak to someone at the store or stop by for a visit, every single team member I interact with is exceptionally professional and makes me feel like a VIP. It seems silly, but there aren't all that many places in which you can get this level of service without paying a crazy premium. The Apple Business Team places a high level of emphasis on making business customers comfortable and providing a completely frictionless experience. They truly are a partner to your company, and if you're running a small business and using Macs, I highly recommend investigating with your local Apple Store and reps.

Daring Fireball is spot on:

We've said for a while here that enterprise and business aren't constrained to sales forces and corporate messengers. Hospitals are big. Schools are big. Entertainment is BIG. The iPhone, especially with iPhone OS 3.0 and the iPhone 3.0 SDK are formidable tools for deploying mobile devices and applications in a wider range of businesses than perhaps anything previously put on the market.

Wall Street might stay with messengers -- every job has its best tool -- but while Main Street is considering iPhones, and a lot of businesses on every other street might just be as well.

Check out the 80+ page iPhone OS Enterprise Deployment Guide PDF via Apple.com

Apple Insider has been putting two and two together, based on web content and WWDC 2009 session info and coming up with:

If you don't mind Mac-centric geekery, check out the full article. Bottom line, however, is that anything that makes Apple invest more heavily in secure business-focused iPhone features, the better for everyone on all platforms.

With record quarters and more money in the bank than... well, many banks, it's hard to see Apple getting hit by "hard economic times", but according to CNet, they either are, or are preparing to be:

Hopefully all the workers find those other jobs inside Apple quickly.