Using accounting software is smart. It’s beat’s the heck out of managing the lifeblood of your business –your finances– with a checkbook. But in almost every case the learning curve for accounting software like QuickBooks resembles the St Louis Arch, steep and high. QuickBooks does, however provide a lot of support including QuickBooks Pro Advisors, but the scope and depth of that support is telling to me. It leads me to believe that small businesses get lost when they transition from their checkbook to an accounting package. Managing your small business finances sounds great in principle, but in practice it’s difficult and time consuming.
As a mall business, you frequently pay your accountant upwards of $500 per month every month to get your accounting in order and often pay more when you need financial advice or QuickBooks help. That’s a lot of time and money at your expense. Don’t get me wrong, the service your accountant provides is probably the most important service you spend your hard earned money on. But I suspect that many small businesses don’t focus enough on their accounting data. Many don’t have the time or the tools needed to reap the ROI (return on investment) of all the key performance indicators embedded within the financial data.
But that’s all changed. Now there’s a free online financial tool that gives small businesses the tool you need to manage the day-to-day finances of your small business and leverage your accounting investment for better ROI. You’ve spent good money to have your accountant reconcile your accounts and more, now it’s time to leverage that investment by using the only free online financial dashboard from www.MyBizHomepage.com. Accounting ROI skyrockets when you use a financial dashboard like MyBizHomepage.com because you can see the important key performance indicators of your finances as easy-to-understand charts and graphs. This free service is a great start and a good solution for day-to-day monitoring of the financial health of your small business. The dashboard automatically and securely pulls all of your QuickBooks data and displays it on easy-to-understand dashboard. Not only that but Alerts and Notifications will tell you when, for example, your receivables are overdue, and will offer advice for next-step action. Notifications are sent by email and to your cell phone. And to wean you off accounting by checkbook, MyBizHomepage also offers a free copy of QuickBooks Simple Start when you sign up for the free service. And with lots of other Web 2.0 features for small businesses, what’s not to love about staying informed and staying connected. Sign up for a free account at www.MyBizHomepage.com.
Since our new strategic relationship with the ASBDC in September, we’re excited to announce that MyBizHomepage.com has launched over 100 private label SBDC MyBizHomepage.com financial dashboard websites. SBDC Centers are invited to sign up for their free financial dashboard website here. Your MyBizHomepage.com website includes online financial tools for small businesses and SBDC centers.
Georgia became the top requesting state for the 4th quarter followed by Virginia and Ohio respectively. After those states, the highest demand came from the regions outlined below.
Audio is probably the cheapest way to use multimedia for your SBDC. The only real need is a headset with a microphone, which many of us already have in our possesion due to Skype and other voice over internet protocal (VOIP) programs. If not, they can be picked up between fifteen and fifty dollars at any store that sells electronics. Unlike Skype, if you are making audio recordings for a website or podcast you will need to edit them. There is free software that can do this admirably, most of them even allow you to do separate tracks and merge them into one. Thus, you can add background music or have several different people in several different locations record different parts and merge them into a single continous file. Of all the ones I have used Audacity is by far my favorite. It works on PCs & Macs and allows you to both edit & record in the same window, which makes it easy to learn, but there are many others options.
Once finished, the audio file is as easy to add to a website as an image or document or you can host it outside of your website, using sites like Odeo or Audiofarm, and link back to it.
The cost of both producing and distributing multimedia has declined greatly in the past few years thanks to the internet and the number of electronic recording devices in the United States. No longer is making an audio or video recording quite the production it was when most of us were growing up. Lets go over the different types of media and how they can be used to spread your message much more effectively.
Video: The price of high quality camcorders has dropped immensely over the last five to ten years. It used to be only the studios and television stations could afford cameras that could produce broadcast quality images now you can buy digital camcorders that shoot in HD for under one grand, here look at this google search.
What are other SBDCs doing?
Here is a Video produced by Florida’s SBDC Network.
and here is one from the PA SBDCs.
and from Oklahoma.
However there are other options, most of the SBDCs around the nation are located in universities most of which have a broadcasting program. These programs are full of kids who are eager and willing to produce anything they can. Most university’s broadcasting programs have cameras that they will lend out to students, faculty or staff and even if they do not the student are likely to have this equipment themselves. So if you would like to produce a video for your SBDC contact your school’s broadcasting department.
Cell phone cameras, while most of the videos shot with cell phones are horrible, there are some amazing videos from cell phones and even an entire movie, SMS Sugar Man. You definitely want to make sure you only use close-ups no wide scenes and the sound is often horrible due to the fact that the phone has an omnidirectional mike that pics up all sounds but all these problems can be overcome with good planning. Here is some from a video from Auburn that I believe was shot on a cell phone camera.
Well while we were planning on making this a post that included Audio, Video & Websites. The video portion went long so we are going to break it up into three parts and I will continue this topic on Monday. Let me leave you with one last idea. Creating a public relations style news story for your local news stations. Most news stations, especially in small towns, are dying for content; thus, if you can create an impressive “news” style story about your SBDC center there is a good chance they will pick it up and show it on you local news. This can also usually be done in print for your local newspaper but your chances of being successful for either decrease depending on the size of your community. Let me leave you with one last video, a video Christmas card from the Colorado SBDCs.
Intuit, the software company that brought the world Quickbooks, Turbo Tax & Quicken, runs a website for SBDC centers across the country, sbdccommunity.org. The website’s main feature is a forum where you can post and ask questions to other SBDC counselors accross the nation. It is a great resource for the SBDC community that we are not yet using to its full potential.
