ShareThisDear Professor Bruce:As a small business owner trying to find ways to "save" during this recession, I am interested in tools that will help me stay organized. Do you have any free products or services available that will help me run my business?Answer: There are many free resources available, and many small businesses are unaware how easy it is to find them. There are ways to recession-proof your business by building your customer base, organizing your finances, and using tools to find documents faster and easier. It doesn't have to be expensive to make this happen, in fact, it doesn't even have to cost a dime. The resources below are a good start:-- Get online: Homestead (www.homestead.com) offers easy website design tools and services, including 2,000 design templates, to help you create a Web site and sell online. Homestead's tools and services are free for the first 30 days and inexpensive after the trial period.-- Manage your finances: QuickBooks Simple Start (simplestart.com) is free, easy-to-use accounting software to better manage your business finances. It helps you stay organized, look professional and be ready for tax time.-- Get paid: Billing Manager (billingmanager.com) is a free online invoicing tool that helps you get paid. It lets you get and stay organized, see all overdue invoices or who owes you the most, and create and send professional-looking online invoices. -- Get expert advice: JumpUp.com is a free small business resource site where new and established business owners can get the best answers to their most pressing questions. They can also join an online community of like-minded entrepreneurs.-- Talk via your computer: Skype (skype.com) allows you to make calls from your computer -- free to other people on Skype and cheap to landlines and cell phones around the world.-- Find documents: Google Desktop (desktop.google.com) allows you to find any file on your computer with a basic and advanced search function. It also can embed in your Outlook email client so you can sift through all of your emails.-- Organize your search: Mozilla Firefox (mozilla.com/firefox) is a free and fast web browser that features tabbed browsing so that you can view multiple web pages quickly and easilyFor further information, please visit www.intuit.com(Bruce Freeman is president of ProLine Communications, a marketing and public relations firm in Livingston, N.J. E-mail questions to Bruce(at)SmallBusinessProf.com.)
Tips to recession-proof your small business
Submitted by SHNS on Wed, 10/08/2008 - 15:32
Paying taxes unites us. It also divides us. People can pay five and even six times more in state and local taxes than other folks in similar circumstances making similar incomes.
Who's got your number?
In one of the fastest-growing forms of identity theft, crooks are stealing tax refunds by swiping personal information and using it to trick the Internal Revenue Service.
