Help me organize my business.

November 26, 2006 5:36 AM

How to keep track of business? Please help me find software.

As my business is taking off, I'm finding myself struggling with a few things:

- I want to organise and streamline my account information (basic contact information, number of projects completed, number of projects active, commercial ideas for further development of account)

- I currently keep track of individual projects and freelancers attached to projects in an Exell sheet. It's cumbersome and risky (Exell doesn't remember my deadlines). I'm looking for software that helps me track projects, freelancers and deadlines.

- I want to have a good overview of billing, payment & future deadlines for each account.

Preferably, all this would be integrated in one package, accessible & editable in real time (even by multiple users) from all workstations on my network.

Freeware is great, but I'm more than willing to pay for this. Google is burying me in possibilities, so I'm looking for hive recommendations. Thanks.

posted by NekulturnY to Work & Money (6 answers total)

Every time I've had to tackle this, we ended up hacking something together that was web based ourselves.
posted by SpecialK at 6:41 AM on November 26, 2006

I think 37 Signals' Basecamp can handle all this. There's a free trial too.
posted by Mick at 6:58 AM on November 26, 2006

Response by poster: Basecamp functionality is what I'm looking for, but I don't like it for two reasons:

- I don't want to keep my data online
- I don't want to pay a monthly fee (I do want to pay for software, though)
posted by NekulturnY at 8:48 AM on November 26, 2006

Except for the freelancers, those goals sound familiar for my small design firm. You need Quickbooks and maybe this
Big Time Accounting

Unfortunately, all of this software does take a lot of dedication to learn. I bought Big Time Accounting a couple of months ago, got 1/2 way with it, and had to stop because of other projects.

Haven't given up on it though.
posted by donp17 at 9:27 AM on November 26, 2006

I use Quickbooks.. I still haven't figured it out completely, but after it at least does contact management, invoicing, and accounting really well.
posted by cmicali at 12:10 PM on November 26, 2006

I don't know much about the product, but Microsoft is giving away their Office Accounting Express 2007 software for free, and it looks like it might handle your needs.
posted by JDHarper at 5:56 PM on November 26, 2006