Dead-Simple Software for Small Business

Happy New Year! As an entrepreneur, one of your resolutions should be to revisit and renew your business plan for a new year. The Premier Edition of Business Plan Pro includes a great little feature to get you started.

On the File menu, click Archive and Roll Forward

What this changes

A copy of your old plan is now Archived for safekeeping, and the financial data has rolled forward one year. This means:

1. Start-up plans become Ongoing plans: instead of a Start-up and Start-up Funding table, you will now have a Past Performance table which summarizes previous years of financial data.
2. First Year becomes Previous Year: The first year of planned data from your original plan becomes the most recent year of the Past Performance table.
3. Annual Data moves back: Third Year annual forecasts move back a year, to become Second Year annuals.* Standard term plans then have a new, blank third year column to forecast, while those set for long-term planning see their new year as year five. 

* NOTE: If your original plan was set for two years of detailed monthly forecasts, the second year monthlies retain their original value, for you to manually type over.

Review Past Performance

Before you go forward, take a look at the data in the Past Performance table. Is it accurate? The planned tables include only your original forecasts, not actual results from your real business operations. Where your plan differs from accounting data for the previous year, type in your correct past results.

Now, update your plan

You’re now ready to start planning your new business milestones and budgets, based on the insights you’ve gained over the past year. You probably don’t need to review every section of your plan - has the business moved, or changed owners? - but make sure to walk through all of the financial tables and, of course, the Milestones. And don’t forget to distribute your plan! You may not need to send it to investors, but your managers and anyone else who is affected by changes in the next year’s budgets, goals, marketing strategy, etc., need to know that your business plan is an ongoing process, and that their active participation is required.

Posted under Business Plan Pro on January 6th, 2009 | No Comments »

Sometimes, you’re right in the middle of a detailed reply when – wait, what? A fire drill? Right now? OK, hold on…Don’t worry, Email Center Pro has you covered.

Save Draft

At any point during composing or replying to a message, you can click the Save Draft button on the toolbar. Your message will be saved for editing and sending later.

Edit and Send Draft

Ready to go back to that email?

1. Click the Inbox tab
2. Open the relevant Mailbox
3. Click the new Drafts folder (along the left side, by Inbox and Archive)
4. Click to select the Draft you wish to edit from the list
5. In the Preview pane below the message listing, click Edit Draft

After you’ve made any desired changes, you can click Save Draft again, or click Send to send the edited draft and add your message to the full conversation.

Conversation Tracking

You’ll also notice a few new features for better tracking the flow of conversations. The right-hand side of a conversation now displays the full Conversation History, including actions such as assigning a conversation, moving it to a different mailbox, archiving it, as well as any internal Notes. You can even click the RSS Feed logo for an individual conversation to get instant updates about it when you’re on the go.

Premium Perks
Premium and Standard-level account users get a couple of new Dashboard widgets for tracking Starred Conversations and creating Custom rules for tracking mail. Click Add More Widgets to preview these new features.

Tags: ecp update
Posted under Email Center Pro on December 28th, 2008 | No Comments »

Like to work in spreadsheets, but want the speed and ease of automatically filling in related columns or rows? Business Plan Pro has a shortcut for you:

Fill other columns

1. Click to select the cell containing data you wish to replicate
2. Hold down the Shift key, and highlight as many data-entry (blue) cells to the right of the original cell as you wish
3. On the Edit menu, click Fill Right
4. All the cells you selected will now contain the same data (number or formula)

Fill other rows

1. Click to select the cell containing data you wish to replicate
2. Hold down the Shift key, and highlight as many data-entry (blue) cells below the original cell as you wish
3. On the Edit menu, click Fill Down
4. All the cells you selected will now contain the same data (number or formula)

You can find more tips like this by searching on “Spreadsheets” in your built-in Help.

Posted under Business Plan Pro on December 23rd, 2008 | No Comments »

Most people who use Outlook or Yahoo! Mail would say it’s like looking in the right drawer for a pair of socks, or finding a specific folder in a specific filing cabinet.

But your email conversations aren’t physical things, tangible pieces of paper you shuffle from one side of the desk to the other. They’re digital information. Little ones and zeroes that blip across the Internet to help you do business better.

Here at Palo Alto Software, Inc., we think finding a specific email exchange should be like finding information with a powerful search engine:

Dynamic results

Chances are, if you Google “economy,” you’ll get different search results from one day to another, because the relevant data keeps changing in real time. Your email changes every day, too, as you have real-time interactions with clients, customers, colleagues, and suppliers.

Sort across categories

Search engines don’t restrict their searches only to websites hosted in your city. They don’t artificially limit search results to websites created by people whose names start with A. We think finding email should be this flexible.

Saved Searches

Email Center Pro includes an advanced search function which lets you choose criteria, from full-text search, to mailbox name, assignee, most recent action date, or even whether the email had an attachment.
In addition, you can save your searches for future reference, see them on the Dashboard when you first log in, and even share them with other users.

Click here for detailed instructions on searching.

Tags: ecp update
Posted under Email Center Pro on December 18th, 2008 | No Comments »

If there are specific team members in your organization who can give you some help in crafting your core message, sales forecast, or other portions of your marketing plan, you can easily share portions of the plan content with them for input.

Invite comments online

1. On the File menu, point to Send to and click Secureplan.com
2. Use the Sign Up Now button to create an account, then Upload your plan
3. Use the features on Secureplan.com to invite specific people to view and comment on your plan online.

Posted under Marketing Plan Pro on December 16th, 2008 | No Comments »

Your Email Center Pro account has been improved, again! Today’s feature pack includes powerful new options for organizing, tracking, and connecting with your email Contacts.

Tag, you’re it!
Just as you can tag conversations, you can now add unique tags to individual contacts. Group various Contacts together to make them easier to find, and send emails to an entire tag group at once.

Calling the play
Have something so urgent it just can’t wait for email? Open a Contact, and use the new options to dial a voice-over-IP (VOIP) phone call and record notes about the conversation, or open up an Instant Message (IM) conversation. Now that’s integrated communications.

Foreign players
Email Center Pro can now mass-import your Contacts from an address book in Outlook or other software applications. And easy exporting of Contacts with the same format means you can always keep your most up-to-date contact information current across all your CRM tools.

Aren’t you glad you’re on the Email Center Pro team?

Tags: ecp update
Posted under Email Center Pro on December 11th, 2008 | 1 Comment »

Planning to submit your business plan or pitch electronically? Don’t miss all the built-in tools for high-powered hyperlinked plan support:

Add links in topics

Instead of attaching images of your company website, use a hyperlink to the site itself to get readers immersed in your online presence.

1. Open the relevant topic
2. Highlight the anchor text you want to use for the link
3. Click the Insert Hyperlink button on the topic formatting toolbar
4. Change the link type, if necessary (http, https, ftp, etc.)
5. Type in a URL
6. Click OK

Colorful tables and charts

While your content is the most important part of the business plan, online submission means a color plan costs the same as a black and white one. Consider some of these options:

Tables

1. On the Tools menu, point to Options and click Printing
2. Click the Tables tab
3. Use the down arrow under Table Style to see various colorful alternatives that work automatically with your built-in business plan tables
4. Don’t forget to set the styles for both Main Body and Appendix sections (toggle between sections at the top of the Printing Options dialog)
5. Click OK

Charts

1. On the Tools menu, point to Options and click Charts
2. Click the Colors tab
3. Use the down arrow to preview and select different chart color palettes
4. Click OK to apply the selected palette to all charts in your plan

Export to multiple formats

Ready to send it in? Business Plan Pro supports multiple export formats to present your plan the way reviewers want to see it.

1. On the File menu, click Export
2. Select an export option and click Next
3. Export the whole plan (default) or choose the items you want to export and click Next
4. Browse to the location where you want to store your exported file(s) and click Next
5. Click Finish

You can now attach the exported files to an email, transfer them via ftp, put them on your website, or burn them to CD for submission.

Publish online at Secureplan.com

1. On the File menu, point to Send to and click Secureplan.com
2. Use the Sign Up Now button to create an account, then upload your plan to this secure, password-protected site.
3. Use the features on Secureplan.com to invite specific people to view and comment on your plan online.

Posted under Business Plan Pro on December 9th, 2008 | No Comments »

Email Center Pro does a great job of helping your team get to “Inbox Zero,” especially since conversations are auto-archived after you’ve dealt with them (by default, but this setting can be changed).  Most of our users are big fans of this strategy, as conversations only hang around in the inbox when they need attention, and otherwise they’re tucked away safely in the archive.  When a customer responds, the whole thread comes right back into the inbox, ready for your next move.  The reality for many organizations is that the conversation isn’t always so back and forth - for example you’ve sent a quote but haven’t heard back… you want to give people a bit of time to make their decision, but you also want to make sure not to lose track of these leads.

Thankfully, with Email Center Pro’s saved searches feature, you’ll never lose track of another promising lead again.  I put together an example search (pictured) that will help your team keep tabs on these contacts.  When responding to a message to which you want to ensure some follow-up, add a simple tag such as “follow up.”  Then you can set up a saved search with the following 2 rules:

• Tag is “follow up” (or any other tag/tags you wish to use for this purpose).
• Action Date is older than 1 week (or your preferred follow-up window) - you could also specify Message Date as the criterion. The distinction is that internal activity such as adding a note, etc. will update the Action Date, whereas the Message Date is determined by the most recent message.

That’s it! Email Center Pro will track these threads for you and present you with a list of applicable conversations when the time comes to contact the lead again.  You can even set up alerts or an RSS feed based on this saved search and have the results delivered directly to your email or feed reader when there’s a conversation that needs some follow up.

Tags: ECP, ecp update
Posted under Email Center Pro on December 5th, 2008 | No Comments »

Lots of small business owners find that when times get tough, their salaries are the easiest things to cut. If you are an ongoing business that has deferred salaries in the past, it is important to keep these salaries on the books, for accounting and tax purposes. If you do not list them, you may not be able to legally collect them in later years, and your financials will look unrealistically positive. However, since you are in essence loaning this money to the business as a cash reserve until you collect your salary, you should treat it that way, as a liability (debt) the business owes you.

1. Include these debts as interest-free Other Current Liabilities
To keep these old deferred salaries from getting mixed in with other outstanding bills, list them in the row for “Other Current Liabilities (Interest Free)” in the Past Performance table. This makes them, essentially, interest-free loans from you to the business, which must be repaid. They won’t affect your cash outflows until you begin repayment.

2. Include repayment of these debts in the Cash Flow table
List the planned repayment of these back salaries in the “Other Liabilities Principal Repayment” row, in the expenditures section of the Cash Flow table. This will keep your plan financials accurate.

Tax Implications
Presumably, you have worked with your accountant to make sure you paid the correct amounts for Payroll taxes and other deductions relating to these salaries. A start-up business which is planning some period of deferred salaries should consult a good accountant about the proper way to handle this before starting. A few hundred dollars with an accountant could save you headaches and thousands of dollars at tax time.

Posted under Business Plan Pro on December 2nd, 2008 | No Comments »

Sound familiar? You come into the office, power up the computer, turn off the voice mail, and when the PC finally boots up, start checking multiple email inboxes to see what’s come in overnight. Wouldn’t it be nice to receive a listing of email from all addresses into one place? If you’re an Email Center Pro customer, you can. Check out this video and see how simple it is to receive email alerts:

Tags: , alerts, ecp update, Email
Posted under Email Center Pro on November 25th, 2008 | No Comments »