The Best Free Business Software I Have Used for Start Up Businesses
We all like that idea of starting our own business. To be our own boss, work when and how we choose, be inventive, get satisfaction form our own work efforts. We all like to do that.
But there are only two ways of getting started in your own business.
Firstly, you can buy an established one which means you need the purchase price or be able to borrow it.
Or secondly, you can start it yourself. But you still need enough money to pay for start-up costs and ongoing running costs of the business until enough income is generated to make consistent profits.
In all cases you need capital funds. It’s easy to go broke and it’s probably the main reason why businesses fail, namely insufficient capital funds.
The best way to preserve your capital funds and make it less likely to fail is to use services which cost nothing or cost as little as possible.
That’s where free online business software and tools come in!
These can literally save your business thousand of dollars if you learn how to develop and use them correctly. And the internet is full of online freebies readily adaptable for your business.
I will cover some of them here that I have advised my accounting clients to use as an alternative to more costly alternatives. These have helped their businesses grow and flourish.
A business plan should be prepared for any business you start. It sets down on paper how and in what direction it’s going to take.
This is the hardest part of starting a business and it’s up to you how much detail you want to document. It can be one page to a hundred page plan. I think for most purposes the shorter the business plan the better.
Free templates and software to prepare a business plan are available online, either from government funded organisations like the SBA. Go to their website and search business plans.
Or from other online sites like Bizgym.
Or keep it simple and write down a “One Page Business Plan”. Template samples can be found online by Googling One Page Business Plan.
Computer security is next and one of the most popular anti virus programs that offer a free version is AVG.
Using this and being aware of spam and websites that contain viruses will save you a lot of lost data and effort in the future.
Your business must also be compliant with taxation laws. For that you must record all your business transactions and keep all source documentation to substantiate the transactions.
So you’ll need an accounting package. This not only keeps the Taxman happy but it’s an invaluable record of your business’s activity and can supply you with reports you can view to see how your business is performing.