Top Ten Software Programs for Small Businesses

Today’s small businesses are organized, pro-active, and tech savvy. How can a small business keep up with accounting, tax records, payroll, schedules, orders, marketing, and documentation? Software makes all of these tasks manageable. What software do you need? Take a look at the ten most essential software packages for small businesses.

MS Office: This is a must-have for any business. Microsoft Office is a bundle of several programs, and though you can buy them individually, it is worth it, and cost-effective, to get the Office bundle.

Included is the most popular word processor on the market, Word, Excel for spreadsheets and managing data, Outlook for organizing your email communications, Power Point for presentations and slideshows, Publisher for creating professional documents and stationary, One Note for shared note taking and task lists, and Visio for diagrams and other visual data. This is a powerful package that you clients will expect you to have.

Quickbooks: Powerful accounting software designed for business owners with no accounting experience. With Quickbooks you can manage your accounts and monitor the performance of your business. It’s easy to create invoices, purchase orders, estimates, and sales receipts. Advanced features include inventory management and employee hour tracking.

Quicken Home & Business: Quicken allows you to bring together multiple bank accounts for review. This software is particularly useful at tax time, as it allows you to identify potential deductions and track deductible expenses throughout the year.

ACT! 2009: This is the software for managing your customer base and contacts. With ACT! you can keep all of your client details in one place. ACT! has a procedure for following up with contacts and creating task lists. The customer bank you build in ACT! is also compatible with Microsoft Outlook and other Office programs.

Small Business Advantage Deluxe: This software package has numerous capabilities in areas of marketing, organization, and business resources. For marketing, it assists you with e-mail campaigns, creating stationary and business cards, publishing newsletters, creating mailing lists, and more. The office organizer has a scheduler, an employee handbook template, task manager, and a contacts manager. The business resources include legal documents, tax information, and how to set up an e-commerce website.

Adobe Acrobat: Adobe’s PDF file format changed the way we share files. Files from word processors and spreadsheets change format drastically from one computer to the next. The PDF file format maintains consistent file formatting and is a file type that everyone can read; to create your own PDF files you need Adobe Acrobat.

AVG Anti-Virus & Anti-Spyware: Protect your computers from viruses, worms, and spyware spread via the Internet. This software runs in the background, always protecting you, without slowing your computer down.

Microsoft Expression Web: This program makes creating an extensive website easy for anyone. Your site will incorporate CSS, XHTML, ASP.NET, XSLT, and XML. Expression Web applies the latest in web standards and is compatible across many browsers.

Norton Ghost: Norton Ghost prepares a backup of all your files, folders, applications, and settings. This software will help you keep your data safe on all the computers in your network.

My Attorney Home & Business: Now you can have thousands of legal documents available to you on your own computer. Small businesses will benefit from the legal forms, contract, and agreements for any situation. In addition, there are articles about incorporation, licensing, and copyrighting.

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