|
Ubuntu is a complete operating system based on Debian Linux distribution. It is distributed as free and open source.
It is extremely easy to install, and has a number of ways that you can try it as an operating system without having to delete your current OS.
I was first introduced to Ubuntu in 2006, and since this point I have been impressed with the development of the operating system. It has all the major features you would expect, and I always have a least one machine with a version installed on. Being open source it has a fantastic support community, and is a far more credible alternative to Windows than most people would give credit. I personally prefer using Ubuntu over windows, and can normally find enough software to meet my needs without having to pay for anything.
Default installs include,
- Libre Office (Word Processing, Spreadsheets, Presentations etc)
- Firefox (Web Browser)
- Thunderbird (Email Client)
- GIMP (Photo Editing)
- Skype (Voice over IP Telephony)
Through Ubunto One it also has its personal cloud to allow you to sync content across multiple machines in much the same way as iCloud. This can be extremely useful in making sure that you always have access to the latest copies of your files.
On all machines I have installed it on, it has given them a new lease of life, as the performance is extremely good, and they feel like a brand new machine.
If you have an old laptop sat in the corner of the office that no one uses, give it a go. You will be impressed.
Remember the milk is an old friend.
It has been my Get Things Done (GTD) product of choice now for years.
I just love the way that it works. It's simple interface and the ability to add tasks using simple english was revolutionary when it first came out. I still find it really impressive today that I can write
and this task is added complete with a reminder for the next Monday. Sounds simple right, but trust me it saves loads of time over using a calender picker.
With loads of different ways to prioritise your tasks, group them and even have categories which automatically populate based on key words such as "Call" there is no reason for not getting organised.
RTM works on different platforms, and has apps for most smartphones, allowing you to have access to your tasks on the go. You can even get your daily tasks emailed to you in the morning so that you can plan your day.
I love the fact that the developers have stayed true to the original product and have not cluttered it with lots of gimicks. As such it remains an extremely slick and streamlined offering which will help you get more done.
There is a large user community and lots of people have shared how they use RTM in their life, and give plenty of useful tips as to how to get the most out of the software.
Take a look at their website
Not everyone thinks that the Cloud is a good idea. Some people still live in areas where it is not possible to get a decent reliable broadband connection, some don't trust having their data on someone elses server. For those they simply must have software that is running locally.
If you are one of those people then the chances are that you need a suite of Office programmes. For many the default position is to buy a copy of Microsoft office and be done with it however there is a very credible alternative available for Free.
Libre Office describes itself as "the power-packed free, libre and open source personal productivity
suite for Windows, Macintosh and GNU/Linux, that gives you six
feature-rich applications for all your document production and data
processing needs: Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Math and Base. Support and documentation is free from our large, dedicated community of users, contributors and developers."
The roots of Libre Office go back 20 years and it is a very stable product with a good track record. While it is not quite as feature rich as the latest offering from Microsoft it is completely free, which given that most of us don't even scratch the surface with the more advanced features of Office, means that Libre Office will do everything that we want an more. Libre Office is available for Windows, Mac and Linux, so no matter what your hardware you should be able to get a version that suits.
Users of Microsoft Office will find it easy to learn and use, with the feel of the software being familiar and intuitive. It is compatible with all major file formats, and you can easily save back to Microsoft Office versions when required.
So before you buy your next license for Microsoft office, have a look at Libre Office. You will probably be pleasantly surprised and may just save yourself a few quid in the process.
http://www.libreoffice.org/
Capsule is an easy online Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution.
The free edition comes with 10mb of space, 2 Users, 250 Contacts and unlimited opportunities and cases.
Well what does this mean for your business? Put simply it allows you to try using a good well thought out CRM solution without having to spend any money. That way you can be certain that you are going to get a good return on investing in a CRM solution when you outgrow the free constraints.
I've been using Capsule for a couple of months now, and I have to say that I'm impressed.
Why?
Because it is simple, and does what I need, without wanting me to pump in vast amounts of information. It integrates with my Accounting system, meaning that I only have to enter the contact and account details once. It also allows you to capture information from other online tools such as Twitter and Linkedin, which then appear in the contact history. This can be useful when talking to your contacts as it prompts you about recent events and allows you to interact on a more personal level.
Built in task management and the ability to have these tasks sent directly to your chosen diary system, means that your far less likely to forget to follow up on a promise that you've made, or that telephone call that you promised to return.
It can be a bit daunting to set up a CRM system if you've never used one, but Capsule has a good support and blog which will give you guides to get through the common challlenges.
I am convinced that since using Capsule I have won work that I previously would have "lost", and have much better visibility of where my work is coming from and what level of sales potential I have moving forward.
Overall if you don't currently use CRM then I would strongly recommend trying Capsule.
http://capsulecrm.com/
Google Docs is quite simply an amazing achievement, and for the majority of individuals presents a very credible alternative to buying a copy of Office.
Google describe it as " a suite of products that lets you create different
kinds of documents, work on them in real time with other people, and
store your documents and your other files -- all online, and all for
free. With an Internet connection, you can access your documents and
files from any computer, anywhere in the world. (There's even some work
you can do without an Internet connection!) "
It has some amazing features built into it, including the ability to collaborate on documents, use forms to get feedback, to name a couple. It will convert documents from most major formats, and gives a number of export options to download it to your machine.
It also integrates with other google products including google translate. This allows for quick and dirty translation of foreign documents or spreadsheets and can be an invaluable time saver, when a precise translation is not required.
For the majority of us who don't need some of the more complex features of Excel or Access then Google Docs is going to cover what you need from an Office Suite. Don't let the simple appearance of the product convince you that it isn't any good. Underneath the basic exterior is a very powerful tool.
If you still haven't checked it out, go to
So Todays Free Stuff is another file tool to help your business run smoothly.
Dropbox is an awesome bit of software. It's simple in concept and it works.
When you register for an account you will get 2gb of online data storage which can be increased through sucessfully inviting friends.
Install dropbox to your machine and it will create a folder which will automatically sync to the dropbox servers securely. Install dropbox on more than one machine and they will all synchronise up to the latest files.
No more hunting for memory sticks to transfer documents from one PC to another, just pop the file into dropbox, and the latest version is now available on all your machines associated with your dropbox account.
In addition you can also get access to your files from other devices such as smartphones, so you should always have the latest files no matter where you are.
You can also use dropbox to collaborate and share files, reducing the need to email large files backwards and forwards.
If I could only recommend one tool to a new startup business it would be dropbox.
Why, because it just works!
www.dropbox.com
Well it's that time of year where Christmas is fast approaching, and in the true spirit of Christmas I thought that I would share with you some free stuff that I've collated over the years, and find useful for running my business.
I'll be giving one tip away each day for the next 12 days so don't forget to come back for more.
1 - Evernote
Evernote is a great tool to get yourself organised. It enables you to store information, documents, printouts, photos, and just about anything else you can think of in a big digital filing cabinet. It comes with plenty of smart indexing and retrieval features to make it easy to find what your looking for, and can radically reduce the amount of paperwork that you have lying around the office.
If you haven't got it, get it, you won't regret it.
www.evernote.com
"Sales are Vanity
Profit is Sanity
But Cash is King"
I don't know who first penned this saying, but one thing is for sure they certainly understood business. I am always amazed at the number of businesses who do not do any sort of cash planning or forecasting. This is a serious weakness in their reporting structure, and can have disastrous consequence to the business, as running out of cash causes major problems to a business.
Running out of profit can be a long and slow death for a business. But running out of Cash can cause your business to fail in days.
So do I need my accountant to do Cashflow Forecasting?
Absolutely NOT.
Use them by all means to help you set up the format and templates, getting good input at this stage can make a world of difference to how easy it is to generate and maintain the documents. But once up and running I would strongly recommend that someone on the inside of the business takes responsibility and ownership.
It should be quick & easy to prepare, have simple ways to check for accuracy and data integrity. Depending on the business you may want to prepare them monthly, weekly or even daily. It all depends on the volatility and position of the business.
In its most simple weekly format it would look something like this
A key concept is that you should always look at the "Cashbook" position. This is NOT the actual bank balance of the day, but what that balance would be if all unpresented cheques cleared. That way you look at the worst case, and make sure that you always have the required funds BEFORE issuing a payment.
I've only included the minimum number of categories, and you will almost certainly need to add more, but try to keep it clean and simple to maintain, otherwise you will not keep it up to date.
So why bother? Well in the above example, the business can clearly be seen to be running into problems at the end of the year, even though the business has actually increased its cash position over the forecast period.
As such the management of this company can take action to avoid this being a
problem. This could be by raising short term finance to bridge the gap, proactively bringing receipts forward, renegotiating credit terms with suppliers to name but a few options.
So next time your thinking about your business, remember that Cash is King and take the time to decide how you will control this valuable resource.
So I finally got around to changing over my clunky desktop CRM to a nice new online offering from Capsule CRM.
So far I have to say that I'm very impressed.
It was very easy to set up and very intuitive to use. When I did get stuck their is an excellent support page to the website, with lots of articles, and if you still can't find a solution then their is a good community offering plenty of advice.
Capsulecrm appears to have the balance about right for my needs. Not too complicated, and yet still providing a rich suite of features which are helping me to get my business relationships into order. It clearly isn't as feature rich as some of the bigger offerings, but for your average business is likely to have more functionality than you actually need.
A feature that I really like is the way that it links into the contacts twitter or linkedin posts so that when you open up their contact card you get to see their recent activity. This is great if you want to ease yourself into the telephone call or meeting.
Further there appears to be plenty of options in how you integrate this with your workflows, and email system. Something which again I like, as I hate being told that I have to do something in a particular way, as this may not fit in how I like to operate my business.
With plenty of 3rd party application support, and a smartphone client I'm pretty sure that CapsuleCRM has all the functionality that I'm going to need for a while.
So if your looking to update your CRM software I would definitely recommend that you take a look at Capsule. They even give a free account if you have less than 250 contacts and don't need the integration models. So what have you got to loose other than an hour of set up time.
Recently HMRC announced that would be extending its business records checks, after a pilot study revealed that " around 44 per cent of businesses
have problems with record keeping, while around 12 per cent have seriously
inadequate
records"
It is ulitimately HMRC's aim to apply penalties of up to £3,000 for those business who have seriously inadequate records.
So if your one of those businesses who currently throw all your receipts into a box and rely solely on an external accountant, you may want to consider investing in an accounting system to keep you compliant.
There are several good systems available depending on the type of business that you run. For most smaller businesses, taking advantage of a cloud based product would make most sense, as they don't require any specialist hardware or upfront payment, with many even offering a free 30 day trial.
So why not give it a go, as if HMRC come knocking you may just save yourself a small fortune in fines.
Link to HMRC's full Article
http://nds.coi.gov.uk/clientmicrosite/Content/Detail.aspx?ClientId=257&NewsAreaId=2&ReleaseID=421306&SubjectId=36
For the last few years the buzz word in computing has been "cloud computing". Everyone has been promising that Software as a Service (SaS) is going to revolutionise the way that we use our IT.
To date, with a few notable exceptions much of this software has promised lots and delivered little.
However in my opinion Freeagent is one of those exceptions, and well worth a look.
Freeagent is designed for small business owners and sole traders who wish to run their business without needing to learn accounting. If you run a Freelance, or contracting business you really should take a look at their software.
Why?
Put simply, it will streamline your accounting process, saving you time and money. It has been thought through from a users point of view, not the accountants. As such it is extremely easy to use and doesn't tie you up in long winded processing. Whether you need to keep track of outstanding quotations, email an invoice to a client, or set automatic payment reminders, FreeAgent has it all covered.
Get a snapshot of all your current estimates, quotes and proposals
A lot of other software can also do this but where FreeAgent excels is in how it handles your bank accounts. Rather than forcing you to meticulously process all of your transactions, you just download your statement into one of the many accepted formats and import into FreeAgent, and FreeAgent handles the rest.
You "explain" the payments and receipts and effectively you've just done your accounts. This radically reduces the number of purchase invoices that you need to process, and is a considerable time saving over the traditional methodology.
Unexplained transactions are just a click away from being processed
Another key feature is the Tax Timeline. This is available on the home page and gives you a helpful reminder of when key tax amounts based on the information entered would be due to HMRC. This is invaluable as it helps you plan for these payments in advance and avoid any nasty surprises.
Keeping on the right side of the tax man has never been easier
FreeAgent integrates with other 3rd party apps, including apps for smart phones, so staying on top of your accounts has never been easier.
In addition to all of this your accountant can log in and review the work that you've done. This means that if you have processed a transaction incorrectly it is easy for them to correct it, without the need to stopping you from transacting.
I have always been a big fan of Sage Line 50, but one of it's major weaknesses was that it was too data hungry for some of the smaller businesses out there. It requires a level of commitment that frankly too many small business owners are not prepared to give. FreeAgent addresses these issues and is rapidly gaining recognition in the accounting and software press.
So if you run a small business, click on the "I love freeagent" link below, and take a look at what FreeAgent can do for your business.
I'm sure like me, you'll be pleasantly surprised.
I’ve been using Evernote now for nearly 3 years and I love it. I’m completely dependant on it, it’s my digital drug and I couldn’t image my world without it.
Over this period I’ve introduced many friends and colleagues to this wonderful world, and I always get a polarised reaction. They either
Get it, jump straight in, and never look back. Quickly reaching the point where like me they wonder what they did before they got Evernote.
Don’t get it, don’t see the point of it, and never bother with it again
As most of the people I introduced were individuals who are highly IT literate, and hold “office” jobs, I was certain that they would love Evernote. Understand my dismay when the majority of them didn’t get it.
I couldn’t understand it, they were people who could benefit massively, yet they couldn’t see how it would be of any use to them.
I then began to ask why they wouldn’t find it useful. The responses typically revolved around seeing it as just another way to organise files on your computer, and most of these people were already using a very well defined folder structure on their computer. While this is one potential use for Evernote, it can be used for so much more.
In my opinion the real power of Evernote lies in how it enables you to search not only the document title, document tag, but also the content. This has saved me hours of hunting around documents trying to find the document that I wrote for x, but used a title that made sense at the time, but now is now a complete mystery to me 12 months later.
A couple of examples of the sort of things that you can do with Evernote are
Paperless office applications
Rather than printing that invoice, and sticking it in a filing cabinet. Email the PDF to evernote, and store it in a digital filing cabinet thats far easier to search and retrieve documents. Whats more this information is now available, on my work PC, my personal Mac Book, iPhone, iPad. This all works seamlessly and saves me loads of time, as I also print all my customer invoices to PDF and save them in Evernote. So when my clients say that they haven’t got the invoice (I’m sure we’ve all heard that excuse for not paying a bill before), I can fire up whatever device I have to hand, and send the email in seconds.
Storing Instructions booklets
Fed up of never being able to find the instructions for your TV, Fridge, Freezer, Sky box etc, as lets face it you only ever need them when something goes wrong. Scan them into evernote and ditch the papercopies.
I also do the same for warranty cards and other product specific info, that used to end up in a kitchen draw, and eventually get lost.
Software serial numbers
Fed up of losing serial numbers for software that I’d installed, I started using evernote to keep all this information, so that when I had to rebuild my computer, I had all of the serial numbers to hand.
Research Articles
A really neat feature of Evernote is the web clipper. When I see a webpage that I think will be useful, I clip it to evernote and hey presto I have now got a permanent record of the webpage, it’s URL and links. Whats better is if the page becomes unavailable because the site is removed or changed I’ve still got the content which I found of interest.
I find this invaluable for taking How to guides, or news articles that I know will be useful in the future. I no longer have to try to remember how I found them in the first place, just type a few key words into evernote and up pops the article or guide. Brilliant.
Snapshots of Documents
I have to admit that I’m not great at renaming documents when I make changes, as such I occasionally overwrite a “snapshot” of a document. This can be critical if I am talking to a client and want to see the same spreadsheet that they had. By adding my evernote account as a bcc on the email that I sent to the client, I now have a backed up copy of every version of every spreadsheet or document that I have sent to the client.
Signing of Contracts
I use softsign, which is an app on the ipad, to finalise my contracts. It gives me a very simple tool, which allows me to capture a digital signature and then finalise the contract and keep a snapshot at that point. Further it also allows me to distribute the copy in seconds, which mean that my clients get a signed copy of the contract, within minutes of me leaving their offices, which rarely fails to impress.
You can find out more details at www.softsignltd.com
There are loads more uses and people find new and inventive ways in which to use Evernote daily. That is essentially it’s power. It is as flexible as you want it to be.
So whats holding you back, go to their website and open an account today. Invest the time in learning what Evernote can do for you, and in no time at all you will wonder how you lived without it.
If you trade foreign currency, you may be paying over the odds and North East Finance Directors Ltd can help to reduce this for you.
Typically smaller customers do not have the in
house expertise required to ensure that they are getting a fair deal
from their bank or broker, and as such will be paying more in comission
than they need to.
This lack of understanding can be exploited where a "no fee"
structure is in place. The broker or bank will take the additional
funds through their "commission", where commission is the difference
between the wholesale price and the price the customer pays.
We have an agreed policy with our preferred broker
FX Capital Group of London, where any clients referred by us will
benefit by having clear visibility of the agreed "commission" via their
on line trading platform.
Further we will assist in developing a hedging
strategy where required to ensure that you minimise both your cost and
exposure to foreign currency.
We will undertake a no obligation review of your recent transactions to see if there is any potential for making any savings.
To find out more email us at or request a call back.
Businesses in the North East of England are still eligible to apply for the Grant for R&D.
The objective of the Grant is to assist small and
medium sized businesses, including pre-start-ups and start-ups, to
engage in R&D projects in strategically important areas of science,
engineering and technology through which successful new products,
processes and services can emerge.
Grants are available in three categories :-
Proof of Market (up to £25,000 grant)
Proof of Concept (up to £100,000 grant)
Development of Prototype (up to £250,000 grant) categories.
If you would like to find out more, then please contact us at
The Finance for Business North East Microloan Fund
is the seventh fund of the £125m Finance for Business North East
Programme. The fund has been made possible by a unique collaboration
between the European Investment Bank (EIB), European Regional
Development Fund (ERDF) and regional development agency, One North East
(ONE).
Entrust manages the £5m Microloan Fund on behalf
of North East Finance and will aim to support the creation of new
enterprises and the growth of existing micro and small businesses
(including Third Sector Organisations) across the region. The fund will
help to stimulate the creation of new business and secure jobs within
the North East of England.
The initial investment phase will run until 31st
December 2014 with the fund open to applications from mid-April 2011.
Unsecured loans of between £1k and £25k will be made to both start-up
and existing businesses who are finding it difficult to secure
mainstream finance.
Loan support will be targeted at key customer
groups, including disadvantaged individuals, sole traders, partnerships,
limited companies and third sector enterprises.
More information is available on the Entrust website
New businesses in our region are potentially eligible for a National Insurance holiday, of up to a maximum of £50,000.
Under this scheme, for a limited period and
subject to meeting certain conditions, new businesses may qualify for a
deduction of up to £5,000 from the employer NICs that would normally be
due - for each of the first ten employees they take on.
For those of you happy to do it yourself, information on how to apply is available at
If you need help wading through all of the information, then please email us at or request a call back.
|
|
|