Developer: Pocket

Benefit: Time shift reading

Features: Does this sound familiar? A client or colleague sends you an article. It looks interesting and you want to read it. But not right now. And that often means never. The Pocket app competes in a crowded field of apps that let you easily organize articles that catch your eye or are emailed or texted to you so that you can read them at your convenience. It’s perfect for airplane rides, because you don’t need an internet connection to read them in the app. When you have a moment, you can catch up on those reports, articles and research you were too busy to read earlier. The app is integrated into your desktop browser, so with one click you can save an article for later access on your phone. “This is the one app that I always recommend to clients and colleagues,” says Sean Vessey, New York-based municipal bond portfolio manager at Las Olas Wealth Management of NatAlliance Securities. “For me to catch up on reading, it needs to be on my terms.” Pocket organizes articles by full-text searchable tags. When you subscribe, the app saves everything in a permanent library so that even if the link to the article is removed, the content of interest is preserved. Pocket also saves video and images.

Pricing: Basic Pocket is free, albeit with limited functionality. Most users who find it helpful will upgrade to Pocket Premium ($5 per month or $45 per year), which offers features such as full-text search and the permanent library.

Devices: All mobile platforms and desktops

Developer: Citrix

Benefit: File sharing and synchronization

Features: My own advisor recommends ShareFile, a cloud-based file sharing and synchronization service offered by Citrix. He uses the app to send documents out for signatures, feedback and approvals. Recent integration with Microsoft Outlook and Gmail lets users send attachments directly from email clients. It’s easy to drop files from your desktop into the ShareFile folder and have it immediately synchronized with smartphones and tablets. The app lets users confirm whether a client or colleague has accessed a file.

Pricing: There are four tiers: a Personal Account (one user, $16 per month, 100 GB storage), Team account (five users, $60 per month, 1 TB storage), Business account (five users, $100 per month, unlimited storage plus more bells and whistles such as encryption) and the Virtual Data  Room account (five users, $295 per month, ideal for users who need to use the most secure tools for storing, controlling and sharing data with teams).

Devices: All mobile platforms and desktops

Developer: Instig

Benefit: Document scanning app

Features: In a very crowded field, Camscanner stands out for its speed and collaboration tools. Want to digitize a check, driver’s license, authorization agreement or another document? Just open the app and take a photo with the device camera. It quickly generates a sharp PDF that can be emailed or shared in a variety of secure ways. My advisor uses Camscanner to scan and digitize documents.   

Pricing: The free tier gives you 200 MB of storage. The Premium edition ($4.99 per month) allows 10 GB plus synchronization tools. The Business version ($6.99 per month) provides more storage and extensive collaboration tools for sharing documents among teams.

Devices: All mobile platforms and desktops

Developer: CNBC

Benefit: Real-time market news and videos

Features: Gordon College Professor of Finance Alexander Lowry recommends CNBC to his students and colleagues as a great app for staying on top of real-time market data and alerts. The app features 24-hour-a-day live streaming quotes for futures and pre-market and after-hours quotes for equities. If you missed an interview on CNBC, you can find it on the iPad app. With no cost to users, you can expect a few ads, but for the most part they are short and unobtrusive.

Pricing: Free

Devices: Apple iPad and Android devices

Developer: Calendly

Benefit: Scheduling app

Features: Setting up appointments with prospects and clients is quite possibly the most tedious part of an advisor’s day. Calendly, which competes with dozens of scheduling apps, gets the nod for its simple user interface that lets the people with whom you’d like to meet pick a time that is available for you. Brandon Opre, a CFP at TrustTree Financial in Coconut Creek, Fla. uses Calendly as his favorite calendaring app. Opre’s emails have a link that says, “click here to schedule 15 minutes with me.” And he embeds a similar widget on his website. Both are powered by Calendly to coordinate times for Opre’s availability. “I am able to create preset time slots and embed in an email asking the client to choose from one of the available options,” he says.

Pricing: Calendly offers a stripped-down version that exposes clients to the Calendly branding. To remove the self-promotion, most advisors will spring for the Premium version ($8 per month), which also offers more bells and whistles. The Pro version ($12 per month) includes more support and integration with CRMs, such as Salesforce.

Devices: All mobile devices, tablets and desktops

Developer: Dashlane

Benefit: Password management

Features: The problem with all these swell apps is that each one requires a password. How many passwords are you juggling? Do you write them down? Do you use the same password on more than one site? Dashlane cures you of lazy, and possibly dangerous, password habits. When you are on a site that requires a login, Dashlane offers to save your credentials. When you return to that site, it offers to automatically fill in the needed data. Suddenly, you no longer have to memorize passwords other than the master password for Dashlane. The app has a password generator, which will create intricate passwords unique to each website or app to keep your accounts secure. I subscribe to Dashlane and use it dozens of times a day. I especially appreciate it on my iPhone where typing in long passwords is difficult. Also, Dashlane saves credit card information, so when I’m doing ecommerce on my smartphone, the credit card details get filled in automatically. Two-factor authentication makes it doubly secure when I use public computers or Wi-Fi. I also appreciate that the app flags weak passwords. When a platform like Twitter or Target is hacked, Dashlane sends an alert recommending I change my password.

Pricing: If you use only one device, you’re good to go with the free version. But most users will want to synch passwords as they are updated to all their devices. For that, a subscription to the paid edition is $39.99 per year is required.

Devices: All mobile devices and desktops

Developer: SmileOnMy Mac, LLC

Benefit: Keyboard text expander

Features: If you type a lot on your mobile device, you’ll find Textpander a lifesaver, because it makes quick work of writing repeated phrases and sentences. Textpander is an abbreviation expansion typing aid that assists you to quickly enter frequently used phrases simply by typing short abbreviations. For example, when I hit the space tab after typing “wweb,” the app fills in my website address. Another snippet can insert all the boilerplate compliance requires. You can have as many of these snippets as you want.

Pricing: The Life Hacker tier ($4.16 per month or $39.96 per year) gives you unlimited snippets. The Team version ($9.95 per month or $95.52 per year) unlocks collaboration tools to share snippets, permissions etc. across teams. You can try either edition free for 30 days.

Devices: Apple and Android smartphones and tablets

Developer: Google

Benefit: Keyboard replacement

Features: Your mobile device has a perfectly functional keyboard. But if you’re not using Google’s free Gboard keyboard, you are missing out on many benefits. You can continue to type one letter at a time, but I much prefer gliding my finger over the keyboard as I spell out the word.  Gboard is remarkably intuitive and even when I guess at a spelling, Google usually gets it right. And if you prefer to type, Gboard’s autocompletion algorithm is the best of the breed. Why not have all of Google’s powers right in your keyboard? When you want to search something or find a map, it’s all right there. Google says it doesn’t record keystrokes, except when using search. There are ways to go into device settings to restrict the amount that Google can glean from your Gboard use.

Pricing: Free

Devices: Apple and Android smartphones and tablets

Developer: 1st Productivity Ltd.

Benefit: Habit Tracker

Features: Like all successful advisors, you make to-do lists. Studies show that people who write down tasks and goals have more follow-through. But if you have trouble tracking your to-do lists, consider an app to make the to-do process more rigorous. A number of advisors recommended Todoist for its clean, intuitive interface and natural language processing. The app lets you capture and organize tasks. For example, you can type or say, “make three cold-calls every day by 5 p.m.” The app records the task, highlights it if you prefer and sends you reminders at designated times. It organizes all your tasks in three ways: Inbox (for stuff you haven’t acted on), Today (for tasks due today) and Next 7 Days (for tasks due in the week ahead). And then it reminds you. The app integrates with Google calendar, allowing you to sync tasks with your calendar. And if you really feel overtasked with overdue tasks, the Smart Schedule feature will identify time on your calendar. Todoist is compatible with the Amazon Echo smart speaker, so you can add tasks with your voice via Alexa.

Pricing: The free basic plan lets you track up to 80 tasks. The upgraded edition fee ($29 per year) allows you to track up to 200 projects, tasks, reminders and project templates.

Devices: Apple and Android smartphones and tablets

Developer: Zoom Video Communications

Benefit: Video conferencing and mobile screensharing

Features: Advisors hate to lose the face-to-face connection—still the best way to establish trust—but if they are serious about engaging with millennials, they must get comfortable with video conferencing. With the Zoom app, advisors can now use their mobile devices to connect with prospects and clients using secure high-definition video and audio, and they can make and keep recordings of the meeting. To set up a meeting, just send a link. On the user’s smartphone, the Zoom app opens, and participants can immediately see and hear each other. You can share streaming video or annotate documents, photos, web pages and spreadsheets. One advisor who uses Zoom extensively has four suggestions when video conferencing with a client or prospect: turn off notifications from other apps, use a mobile stand for the device, use headphones or earbuds with microphones for better audio, and avoid striped clothing, which plays havoc with cameras.

Pricing: The basic free version allows up to 100 participants on meetings of up to 40 minutes, although the length doesn’t seem to be enforced. The Pro edition ($14.99 per month) buys unlimited meeting duration, multiple screens, and 1 GB or MP4 or M4A cloud recording. There is also a Business edition for $19.99 per month that gives users more branding options and dedicated phone support.

Devices: Apple and Android smartphones, tablets and desktops