Functioning like a professional for nothing. What do you recommend? - The Bear and Badger

Facewon

This thread may have been done before, and certainly some of the stuff we may talk about may have been mentioned in other threads, but I hope I can differentiate it enough so it's useful.

As mentioned in the Brand Loyalty threads and the gadgets thread, I've been faffing about a lot with Chrome and google apps etc. I'm also trying to build a website with no money and get some order to a basketball club that's had no back of house paperwork or player registration or real cash flow for 10 years. I'm discovering lots of cool tools along the way that are either free or cheap, but am also seeing how much shit is out there. Which leads me to the idea for this thread. . .

The game is this:

You want to start a small business or org
You have a budget of 10 pounds a month
Whatever tech (Mac, PC, laptop, smartphone, tablet) you have now
You have a solid home internet connection
You don't have MS Office
You don't have an office
You will be working with 2-3 other people (lets say they're volunteers for the moment)
You need a website
You want a social media presence
You need a bunch of stats, KPIs, business plans, invoices, logos, design etc.

(That'll do for now, I could probably tighten that list up, but whatevs.)

What apps, software, (non-MS) office suite, cloud storage etc etc would you suggest? And/or what combo do you use now?

What would you suggest for specific types of businesses? What have you used for your small business?

Or forget small business, what do you use just to be organised outside of whatever is forced on you from your employer?

Facewon

Ooooh, Mockflow.

GooberTheHat

Open office (its clunky but does what I need)
Gimp
Drop box or some other similar cloud drive thingy.
Evernote

Facewon

I must revisit evernote at some stage. Dudes seem to love it, but I found it counter-intuitive.

Facewon

MockFlow gets vote for actually useful website/design mockup tool for dummies. Free, and functional and does what it says on the tin.

Facewon

Also trying to see if I can get Ducksboard to be the user friendly analytics tool it claims to be.

Not playing the game at all with google sheets so far. Really want it to as well, as it's a nice layout for a lot of things, but if I can't get my stats and $$$ stuff in there properly, then itf.

M0stly harm13ss

Face, business plans...some nice free resource here.

https://www.gov.uk/write-business-plan

and here

http://www.princes-trust.org.uk/need_help/enterprise_programme/explore_where_to_start/business_plans/business_plan_templates.aspx

and here

http://www.barclays.co.uk/Startupsupport/Writingasmallbusinessplan/P1242559649359

In terms of documentation and processes, you need a Profit and Loss account, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow account to start.

P&L is simply your income and outgoings recorded for the year.

http://www.handsonbanking.org/biz/?p=212

Balance Sheet is the company's assets and liabilities (like the capital amount of loans, etc)

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/set-up-balance-sheet-sole-proprietor-10341.html

Cash flow account is..err..the business' cash flow! It's important (and distinct) from the P&L and balance sheet as it reflects what actual money you have flowing in and out. You can have lots of assets, but no money, therefore can't pay for anything!

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/constructing-a-cashflow-statement0.html

Apart from that, looking at the other processes, it's probably easier to cover off each one as you come to it. But to start, you'll need processes for purchasing and invoicing (such as dual signatories..mainly to protect yourself and the charity) and control spending. KPI's and targets, etc can come later. Just PM me or drop me a message on Live if you want to actually talk

Facewon

Woah. Nice. Actually way ahead of me there. I may get to that point and may indeed hit you up. Still, nice to have it all there. On a rainy day I may even collate and sort the op with people's preferred combos and such, as well as more serious stuff like you've added there.

M0stly harm13ss

There's also a few legislative and regulatory stuff you may have to comply with in various different areas as you get more serious
e.g. People. Health and Safety/First Aid, Child Protection
Finance. Accounting Standards, creation of accounts
Accommodation. Health and Safety again, etc

But anyhoo..always available, anytime.

mk64

Mind viewer (by matchware) is good software and free

beano

Pencil is free and doesn't require web.

http://pencil.evolus.vn/

[Deleted User]

I cant add much to this but wetransfer.com is a great alternative to dropbox etc if you just want to send stuff quick.

Also from my experience, clients (read dumb end of the wedge) understand how to use it easily, rather than the account, password, software hang ups dropbox has.

Mod74

Bookmarked this Dropbox add on, might be useful to some of you. I don't use it.

http://lifehacker.com/dbinbox-gives-your-dropbox-account-an-inbox-anyone-can-1071910516

Facewon

Yoink on both pencil and dbinbox. I'll be giving that a test run.

Cheers.

Not really professional stuff, but have only just realised, even though I've had it installed for a few weeks, how cool diigo is. Wish it was around when the God thread was uberpost central.

beano

dbinbox already useful, ta

Facewon

pencil gave me the shits a little.

dbinbox I can see being very handy.

Currently playing around with Hojoki. Seems to be a bit too meta for my liking. It's an app/site that seems created to fulfill a need created by all the other apps that try to talk to each other.

It's the app equivalent of there was an old lady who swallowed a fly, methinks.

Facewon

Hojoki gone.

Mikey for gmail just made me shit bricks with how cool it is. Crawls through your emails and separates things into attachments, links and images.

Very very cool

Facewon

Meanwhile, bump, as I needed reminding.

Hojoki still being used sort of, in the background. Not as meta as I thought, handy.

had a look at Mindviewer, will definitely give it a run.

Mikey went under. Which is a shame, was awesome.

Hodge360

Gonna bookmark this for future reference but now I'm thinking I need to start keeping my mobile and desktop browsers in sync. What's my best options? I'm currently on iphone for mobile and plan on putting Kubuntu on my laptop.

AJ

I don't think you can get Safari for Linux, so I'd say the best option's probably Chrome. I use it and don't have any complaints.

Hodge360

Cool. Was thinking maybe Firefox but don't know if it's on iOS.

AJ

There's browsers that'll sync with Firefox on iOS, but they're all from nobodies, so it's up to you whether you trust them to keep up to date with security patches and stuff.

Skerret

Hey, this is a good thread. No applicants leaping out at me yet Face BUT I've barely been in the place recently so there's hope.

AJ

Is there another of these threads? I'm sure I remember listing some of the things I use.

Skerret

There's 21 pages of threads, I think there's more than a few double-ups. There's a barren thread of the dead down there somewhere.

Hodge360

AJ wrote:

There's browsers that'll sync with Firefox on iOS, but they're all from nobodies, so it's up to you whether you trust them to keep up to date with security patches and stuff.

That'll be a no then!

Facewon

There's some very cool chrome extensions too. I have too many things going on with my desktop chrome to sync it completely with my phone, but it's still easy to access my bookmarks, and there's some good extensions that let you send things straight to mobile and such.

Facewon

I should probably throw some things in the mix, as I'm using things more these days.

I'm back on Hojoki, paid for the year sub. Only $55 and you can then have multiple work places and as many members as you like. In hindsight I would set up things in a more separate manner, rather than having Jobsboard as one whole workspace, but still, the filtering and tagging works well. There's some missing functionality that would be nice, but there's also good workarounds.

As a cheap virtual workspace it comes recommended. Being able to link in various apps is super handy.

Also like that they're still very small. Sent through some questions and such to their help desk, and had a good chat with the CEO.

IFTTT amaze balls, and free. Automate so many things. Have even managed to get it to do some cool things with Hojoki even though it doesn't directly links it.

I'm on trails with Hootsuite, which I can see the value in for social media, but must say I prefer Buffer, hoping to have more cashflow to play around with Buffer's business plans, as they look like they have awesome features (and good help desk support.)

Also have to give props to squarespace, which I think JonB suggested. Good cheap website builder and hosting and whatnot, and their help features and searching is awesome.

Got to mention Dropbox as well. I know it's obvious, but it's still, to me, proving to be the most integrated and user friendly cloud thing. I prefer the way it plays with gmail etc over google drive, ffs.

Google Keep should be at the top of my list of good note takers, but it just won't sync properly for me. I have no idea why. It's great for notes on my phone, or notes on my desktop, but they don't sync properly across devices, and it is doing my nut in. I have tried re-installs and forced syncs and all manner of stuff.

I'm also finding some new ways of using pocket for funneling new ideas/leads/services/webpages into Hojoki etc.

Facewon

And it looks like workflowy has improved and it might be the winner of the give me a simple list stakes.

Facewon

ffs, how do you delete a point. Apparently its very hard to design a list.

AJ

Hover over the bullet.

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