As your small business owner I’m constantly pursuing the “bottom line” ;.It’s a simple formula, really. Just increase sales while decreasing expenses, right? Easier said than done I’m afraid. Truth be told that a lot of production costs like fuel, rent, access to the internet, insurance, etc, continue to increase and don’t show signs of slowing anytime soon. Meaning I’ve surely got to be downright cagey in conserving every dime I can, where I can.
So, when I upgraded to a fresh computer I went with performance for the cheapest cost. That meant no frills, especially where software is concerned. Manufacturers want an arm and a leg to pre-install software bundles on your machine. Even when you’re a bit more technologically savvy and purchase and install software yourself, Microsoft Office Standard is similar to four hundred bucks, and you still have anti-virus and other vital software to pay out for. What’s an entrepreneur to accomplish?
I’m fortunate enough to know some individuals who work in the tech sector and are much more knowledgeable than myself about them of personal computing. When I told one of my tech-head friends I was buying more affordable software solution he said to check out Open Office software.
He sent me to this site where they’ve an Open Office software suite designed for download, bundled with a free anti-virus suite! I tried it out and I’ve been very impressed in what I obtained for my dollar. The open office programs have yet features as their Microsoft counterparts, in addition to a couple of advantages unique to Open Office.
The bundle includes a phrase processor, a spreadsheet program, a database, an application for creating multi-media presentations, and a drawing program.
I haven’t got to pay a lot of time with the presentation program, Impress, however it interfaces nicely and seems to be office for students able to create anything I will require for a good sales presentation. Draw, the graphics program, is very good and creates artwork in bitmap, GIF, JPEG, and a few other formats I’ve never even heard of. Most critical to me though have been the term processor, called Write, and the spreadsheet, Calc.
Write has all of the features, there’s nothing missing. It also has its own helpful options like auto correct and auto complete, and it can cause documents in open document format, a report format produced by an industry consortium to be the new standard in compatibility. Additionally it could read and edit my old Word documents, in addition to create new ones. Additionally it may create .pdf files.
Calc shares the exact same virtues as its word processing counterpart, with the abilities to learn and write existing Excel docs. That is huge for me because the majority of my payroll, invoicing, and expense tracking are continued tailor made spreadsheets I built myself, and the capacity to keep the data I have and continue my book keeping without starting over is crucial. I also love the natural language formula feature. It allows the creation of formulas using actual words like “sales-costs” ;.It’s really slick and saves me a huge amount of time.
Now if you’ve done your homework or have a background in computers you know that Open Office software is open source code software, meaning essentially that it’s free. Why buy software that may be gotten for nothing? Well the answer is based on the excess features, bonus software and support provided in this Open Office suite. At under $50 dollars for your Open Office software bundle, the anti-virus suite alone helps it be worth the cost. Also included is one whole year of free tech support team, that is essential for the less technically inclined, such as for instance me.