Arguably the best solution for any business

sage software

Accounting is for accountants and what’s worse is they want to keep it this way, so it’s not really suprising that people similar to me who run a small business and cannot and don’t want to pay an accountant discovered the shortcut I want to share with you here. People in startups tend to prefer doing more key tasks such as getting, listening to and keeping customers in preference to looking after their bookkeeping. All organisations have to be committed to doing their bookkeeping if they want to avoid disaster.

When I first began my accountant suggested or should I say insisted that I used a small business accounting software package developed by a company called Sage Software. Without even seeing the software I blindly went ahead and bought the lowest cost version I could find. This was arguably one of the biggest mistakes I made as the software turned out to be really difficult to get to grips with and use. To be frank whenever I discover the word accounting next to the word software I am immediately reminded of the first piece of advice I want to share with you and that is the majority of small business accounting software makes the assumption you have a good working knowledge of accounting.

I had to find an answer that worked for me so reluctantly I cancelled everything in my diary and allocated quality time to find an answer. The great news is I discovered a really excellent answer, it’s an internet system known as salesorder.com.

Definitively the best application I have discovered, salesorder.com works on the web and is thoughfully designed and of course lets me do my job anywhere I can access the net. Better still and the third piece of guidance I want to tell you is that the team who work at salesorder.com are not just very knowledgeable of their application but they know a tremendous amount about the problems of operating a small business and have taught me the accounting I need to know.

Remote Working Part 3 – ‘Tools of the trade’

Quickbooks online

Self discipline more….

Before I present to you my list of really good net tools that almost certainly help you to work remotely, I need to write about one more item about self management and specifically to do with maintaining your focus and levels of concentration

I’ve uncovered and established a common habit in friends who work on the web and I’ve known for a substantial period and I call this behavior the fifty minute effect. I discovered these men and women who concentrate and work for 50 minutes and then kick back for a complete 10 minute break and are much more productive and produce a substantially greater quality of work than colleagues who don’t have similar working methods.

OK as promised for your consideration is my list of preferred remote working online services:

E-Mail

Google Mail is free. But in my opinion the search & label (a bit like folders) functions are the best implementation I have encountered. Googlemail can be a little slow on aging PC’s

Phone calls

Skype used to drive me crazy as the service stability was unacceptable, but a big pat on the back for the developers at Skype now as they have substantially changed the quality of the service. For meagre amount of money a quarter ! can call and conference in any telephone and Skype user on the planet. The current edition of Skype has a ton of excellent features and there are now plenty of of valuable add ons.

Organising Content

Evernote has connected over a million users in no time at all – it lets you to store, organise and add notes to any type of digital content on the web. Just go check it out…it’s free.

Invoicing, Time and Expenses capture, Accounting and CRM

You almost certainly know that my burning desire to work remotely was originally encouraged by Quickbooks Online, a small business accounting software web application. But it is easily beaten hands down by the free edition of salesorder.com – a lead to cash system that’s as easy to use as a kettle I looked at NetSuite whose pricing (and people) scared me off. My choice here is salesorder.com – Go check it out.

Remote Working Part 2 – Staying focused and maintaining concentration

Quickbooks online

The top reason individuals fail to adjust to working remotely is they fail to recognise the neccesity of high-quality organisation and solid self discipline.

I have been working remotely for almost a decade since I first found Quickbooks online an ‘on demand’ small business accounting software service and was mesmerised by the fact that if you can do accounting on the web then why shouldn’t it be workable to perform other important types of work away from the conventional office?

Whilst working remotely has substantial gains there are numerous pitfalls which lead to problems that result in decreased productivity and reduced morale. The most significant reason for low work output from remote professionals is interruption and it is a established and well known fact that it can take a person up to 0.33 hours to establish their original output level after experiencing a distraction.

Research also shows that men and women who are regularly experience interruptions are more likely to be susceptible to lower memory ability and are prone to developing mental health trouble in later life. We live in an over communicated era and it is essential that you recognise the problems this causes before you commence working remotely. When working remotely you should do everything feasible to reduce the jeopardy of being disrupted.

Here are my most important tips:

1, Get a habit, communicate it to absolutely everyone and obsessively maintain it!

Good examples are a specific time of day when you look at or send electronic mail and make or receive telephone calls. Before I began working remotely I used to receive in the region of 200 e-mails a day. Now I think I am unfortunate if I receive more than 4. To start over with my electronic mail experience I modified my e-mail address and obsessively took precautions to protect the details being made known to anyone. I then made sure every individual who I gave my e-mail address to, to use it with special care. I also created an automatic reply that swiftly told anyone sending me mail my schedule for attending to mail and if an e-mail required my urgent consideration to mark it as ‘Urgent’.

2. Get rid of alerts.

Turn off every function that can send you a interruption. This includes mobile and
ordinary phones and types of alerts from e-mail such as display events, audible warnings, screen changes to your inbox folder and of course facing a window. Get a door on your study and put up a ‘do not disturb’ sign on it.

In ‘Remote Working Part 3 – What should be in your tool box’ I will reveal my favourite tools and software.