Highrise 250 contacts and one login with the free version.

FreeCrm 5 logins and advertising with the free version.

Zoho CRM 3 logins with the free version.

Toilet Paper Entrepreneur ‡

Since its after Christmas, and you are probably flush with a bit of holiday cash, and you are ready to start on a new business endeavor…how about about spending some of that money on a book? The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur is small book (175 pages) that cover a lot of ground about starting a business.

Ok, before I start, why might you ask would I review a business book on a tech site?  Two reason: first, most computer books are boring, you probably wouldn’t want to read them even if they were ‘good’. Second, this book is peppered with tips about how to use tech to help run your business on a shoestring budget.

The book’s primary focus is small ‘bootstrapped’ start-ups. If you are  planning a $5MM venture round, while some of the techniques in the book could be useful, you are probably not the focus of this book. On the other hand, if you’ve got an idea for a small business, or you are running small business this book may be for you.

The first two sections of the book cover motivation, and creating a vision of where you want your business to go, while the second part deals with a more nuts and bolts approach to running your business.  If you are just getting started running your business, or trying to decide where you want to go with a business,  this book could be very helpfull to you. Be warned, the author, Mike Michalowicz uses some crude language, so it’s not for the under 16 set, but its very easy to read, and he is able explain concepts well.

Here is the tech tie in, throughout the book there are gray boxes with TPE TIPS, a good number of them deal with Internet tools to help you run your business. Its like a getting an extra bonus in your book.

Whether you get the book or not, the author also has a blog that’s worth reading.

Buy this book at Amazon‡

On the other hand Google made another announcement this week, one that didn’t get the same media coverage as the Chrome OS announcement but was much more important: Google is moving Google Apps (mail,docs, etc) out of beta. (Beta is the software term for a final test version) This means that Google has reiterated its commitment to these web based applications and users who want to can adopt them and cloud/web based computing with more confidence.

Now that I’ve gotten everything set up I’m planning to convert my business documents to Google docs. I also plan to start creating websites for each of my clients major projects. I hope that will make communication easier.

By the way, Google apps standard edition is free. With it you get up to 50 users, shared calendars, shared contacts, websites sites, and docs. Since it’s free, you do get ads in the email client.

Because of it’s functionality, and value Google apps is a great tool for very small businesses. But, before you take the plunge, read my post on the the ‘Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ of Cloud Computing

If you are like me, when you started your home business, you used your current personal financial software, I used Quicken, but both Quicken and Microsoft have business features. Now, you have a  couple of options, replace MS Money with an equivalent copy of another brand of financial software, or upgrade to a full-fledged accounting software package. Here are some questions you need to ask yourself to help make this decision:

1. Does your Accounting Software handle expense/revenue categories the way you want?
2. Is it difficult to enter transactions?
3. Are you able to easily get accurate reports on profit and loss, net income, and margin?
4. Do you need online integration with a web store?
5. Do you need customized invoices/easier email delivery?
6. Do you want to better segregate business and personal activities?
7. Do you need to track inventory?
8. Do you need to support double entry/accrual  accounting?

Some options to consider are (this is by no means a complete list)

Outright — Fee basic online accounting. (Well reviewed)

Quickbooks Online (Both Free and Paid Versions)- A next step from personal financial software. (I use this for my consulting business)

Quickbooks – Also free and paid versions — Also easy to transition to, lots of free templates and wizards

Peachtree – More advanced for a businesses that need full support of double entry/accrual accounting

If you have an accountant,  consult him or her, before you make a decision about acounting software (I’m not an accoutant so they will know better then I.) Also since this is in no way a complete list, so please feel free to add your own suggestions in the comment section.

1. Everyone will pay more.  (I guess this is kind of obvious). Even if there is an unlimited plan its going be more than what we are paying now. (Look at wireless phone service plans as an example.)

2. People will finally secure their WI-FI networks since they won’t want to pay for their neighbors surfing.

3. No more free WI-FI hotspots at coffee shops and hotels.

4. Large ISPs will partner with various bandwidth heavy sites/apps  (Video,Backup) to  provide services that are ‘exempt’ from usage charges.

5. There will be less video/multimedia on the web.

6. Alternate connection methods that provide unlimited access will see an upsurge (WI-MAX,Satellite, 2nd Tier DSL).

7. There will be less “cloud” computing apps for small business and home users.

8. Google will come up with a low bandwidth items search options.

9. People will be downloading less ‘free’ software to try out. (This may help the Post Office since it may be cheaper to mail a CD/DVD than download, and the Post Office needs help.)

10. Plain-text email will make a comeback.

Those are some of my predictions, what do you think ?

Having worked extensively with the Google Applications, my general feeling is that it is good for basic word processing and spreadsheets, but if you are interested in slightly more sophisticated formatting, you will be disappointed.   Google Does not allow you to create columns, and embedded table formatting is quite limited. 

I’ve looked at Zoho as well, and tried some basic formatting on it as well and came to the same conclusion. While the tables have more formatting options, it also doesn’t support columns. Overall, I think that Zoho has better features than google, and its worth a look.

While I don’t do the most sophisticated formatting on my documents, I do like to have a certain level of features,  and I don’t feel that either of these free suites will suite meet my needs. If you choose to use them for your primary office application make sure that they will do what you need before you throw away your PC based software. I think I’ll stick with OpenOffice for now.

If you know of any other suites, please feel free to let me know in the comments.

You made a new years resolution to start a business, but you don’t have alot of money. Below is a list of quality, free applications you can use to help run your business. Many of these apps are web based so you may want to read my post Cloud Computing: the good, the bad and the ugly before you dive in.

Free Office Suites

 (Word Processing, Spreadheet, Presentations, and more)

1. OpenOffice.org–Full function office suite similar to Microsoft office
2. Google Documents – Online office suite from google
3. Zoho – Online office applications and more

Free Productivity software

(Calendar, Address Book, Task Manager, Email)

1. Yahoo (Online)
2. Google (Online, tasks are experimental apps in email)

Free Accouting Software

(Full featured basic accounting sofware for the small business)

1. QuickBooks Simple Start
2. Microsoft Office Accounting Express

Free Web Hosting

1. Microsoft Office Live 
2. Google Sites

Free Email Client

1. Thunderbird

Free “Everthing-but-the-kitchen-sink”

1. Google Apps

Starting the business

Instead of paying a company to incorporate my LLC, I got on to the Georgia Secretary of State’s website, printed the forms and followed their directions to incorporate my LLC. This saved me about $100 in fees from a registration website. It may be worth your while to get to your states website and see if you can do this yourself. (I think you can only do this yourself if you register your corp. in the state you live in, but I’m not a lawyer and this isn’t legal advice.)

Internet and hosting

I use ATT DSL (So there’s no money saved there ). I registered my sites with GoDaddy.com‡ They usually have a good deals on website registration. While there are some free web hosting services, I also use GoDaddy‡ for my web hosting. They are very reputable, and since a good deal of my business comes from the web, it worth paying for hosting. GoDaddy has applications that you can install for free on its paid hosted sites, and I use a one of those, a blogging platform called Wordpress  (So I didn’t pay for that at least). In any case I have  2 websites for less than  $120 per year  including annual registrations and monthly hosting fees. (Thats about $10/month !!!.)

Applications

I use both OpenOffice.org (a free MS office like office suite you install on your computer) and Google Docs for my Wordprocessing and Spreadsheet needs. Since both are free is saves hundreds ($250) compared to shelling out the big bucks for MS Office. For email I use Google mail (gmail). It allows me to consolodate my 5 email addressed (blog, consulting, 2 personal addresses, and one address that only my inlaws use) into a single location. Its easy to use and pretty robust for a web based email client

I do pay for my accounting software. I use Quicken Home And Business. But to save money I don’t upgrade it each year, I take about two and a half years between upgrades. I strongly belive that if it works, there’s no reason to upgrade (if you have to pay). I upgraded this last time becase they said that they were shuttng off my online bank access.

I think that, on average I have saved about $400 over the life of my business by making smart technolgy choices. 

I’m thinking of moving entirely to “the cloud” sometime soon so I’ll probably let you know how that goes.

Unplug for Dollars: Stop ‘Vampire Power’ Waste

You can save a few hundred bucks a year by unplugging electronics that aren’t in use. Get the lowdown on costs, plus some products to help you cut back on kilowatt consumption. (From PCWorld.com)

New Web App Allows Free Conference Calls

A new Web service provides free conference calling for up to six people.  (From PCWorld.com)