Recurring billing can be a recurring headache for small businesses and new startups. One company has stepped in with automated billing and subscription services. Today I am reviewing ChargeBee, a company that is focusing on subscription and billing management. These tedious but essential jobs are not my strong point, tasks that many small Internet businesspeople don’t like. So this will be a very helpful review for me to do. Let’s get started.

Are You Spending Too Much Time On Billing?

ChargeBee can automate the entire billing cycle, from signup to invoices to collecting the money, even internationally. They make it easy to offer special promotions and various fee schedules. They provide an easy-to-use dashboard that gives you a current snapshot of users and revenue.

Relief For New Startups And Growing Companies

Letting ChargeBee handle the money end of your subscription billing and recurring payments means you have more time to concentrate on what you do well, which is run your business and deliver a good product. Do you want to introduce a new pricing plan but keep your old users at the original price? No problem! Do you hate dealing with card charges that fail? Let ChargeBee handle it.

Save Time, Let Experts Handle Your Subscription Billing

ChargeBee lets you offer your customers flexible billing dates, up-sells and coupons, all of which makes happy customers who spend more. ChargeBee makes it easy to send email notifications for sales, end of trial period and renewals.

When you are trying to figure out what to offer your customers, you can test it and work out the bugs in ChargeBee’s test environment before any notifications are sent out. They offer copy/paste code for payment pages. You can change the prices, give discounted fees and run special promotions without the need of a developer.

If you do have in-house developers, they will love ChargeBee, which is at home with numerous computer languages and provides copy/paste code for payment pages.

The Basics: What Does It Look Like?

Here is the dashboard for ChargeBee. You get a practical snapshot of current revenue and subscribers.

You can check over your users on this screen.

Here you see how it easy it is to check over the plans that you are offering your subscribers.

It’s easy to see what coupons are currently available.

Automation Takes The Headache Out Of Billing

The best feature of ChargeBee is the fact that you don’t have to worry about the nuts and bolts of how to bill your subscribers, how to offer special deals, how to handle credit card problems and international billing. ChargeBee automates it and offers expert advice to you.

ChargeBee can also transact via multiple gateways. As an example, businesses using PayPal can de-risk dependency on one processor by signing up with Stripe / BraintreePayments (available in Europe too) and process via multiple processors without any additional effort or money. They don’t charge extra to have this extra feature.

In terms of integration, ChargeBee recently released a Mailchimp integration to send newsletters and they are planning a SalesForce CRM integration to be released soon.

Will It Fit Your Budget?

ChargeBee offers a free trial. If you like the service, you pay a monthly fee plus a charge for each transaction. Support is offered in a substantial KnowledgeBase, video tutorials, forum, plus online and phone support.

Is It For You?

If you are a subscriber-based small to medium size online business, ChargeBee can simplify your monthly billing. In addition is makes it easy to offer personalized promotions  that increase sales and customer satisfaction. We also like the fact that they have a free sandbox environment with demo data, to explore the solution and find out if the product meets the business needs.

Ratings: ease of use 5/5, features 5/5, value 4/5 and ease of deployment 4/5

If you like this article, follow us on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and grab our GetApp.com blogfeed

Though it is easy enough to put a document into PDF format, making it look interesting costs you either money to hire a designer or time to figure out how to get the business graphics and type arranged well. Thankfully, the The PDF Chef offers an alternative.

Tired Of Designer Fees And Long Learning Curves?

The PDF Chef lets you design attention grabbing documents for print or posting on the web. Use its  templates or create your own. Choose images from its fee-based library or import ones you already have. The design is simple and intuitive requiring no technical skills. The process is quick to figure out so you’re not spending all day putting together your document.

Great For Online And Print Documents

If you regularly produce newsletters, brochures or flyers for print, The PDF Chef is for you. You can create distinctive documents to publish online, on smartphones and tablets. Pretty much every business needs to product marketing collateral, so any business can use this service successfully.

Save Money, Time And Frustration

The interface is easy to learn and uses drag and drop. It’s all automated and geared to the rank beginner. Because it is free in design-mode, you can experiment with numerous designs to find what works best. Try that when you’re paying a designer! You can save documents and templates for ongoing updates.

Graphics and fonts are a snap. You have access to their fee-based image library or you can import your own. Don’t know how to crop a picture? The image editor makes suggestions for cropping. The PDF Chef has a large library of fonts and will also let you upload special ones of your own. You have total control of size and positioning.

The Basics: What Does It Look Like?

From the dashboard you choose either a new document or a template and then move to Content Mode where you select the picture panel or the word panel. Adding elements is quick and easy with drag and drop.

To find images, click on Image Gallery. Here you can search for photos and clipart to illustrate your document. These are all free to use while you design your document. The cost is clearly shown if you want to use it in the final version.

The Image Editor makes it easy to crop photos. It tells you if the graphic is the wrong size and makes suggestions for cropping.

 In Design Mode you play around with placement and the graphics, finding what works to get your message across.

It’s Fun, Easy and Fast!

The PDF Chef eliminates the need to learn complex design software. This cloud-based tool makes it possible for the absolute beginner to sit down and design an effective, attention-grabbing document quickly, without a long learning curve.

The image library has over 19 millions photos and graphics for an additional fee. However it is simple to upload your own. If you do use of theirs, they are upfront about what you will pay.

The ability to use the design mode for free means you can play around to your heart’s content with possible approaches to your document, giving you plenty of time to get the input of others involved. Documents can be updated quickly and templates can be saved for future use.

The tutorials cover all the basics plus advanced skills like adding shapes, creating a template and posting the document to a Facebook page. The wiki and forum provide answers to a wide range of questions. Anything not covered can be handled by emailing support.

Will It Fit Your Budget?

The PDF Chef offers several fee choices. The monthly subscription becomes quarterly automatically if you choose to continue. The yearly option is by far the best deal. They charge nothing if you just want to try a design. Only when you are ready to publish do you need to decide on a subscription choice.

Is It For You?

If you create documents for print or publish on the web even occasionally, The PDF Chef is worth checking out. The savings in design fees alone makes it a good investment. In addition it is easy for anyone to pick up. If you have documents that you update regularly, it makes it easy.

If you like this article, follow us on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and grab our GetApp.com blogfeed

Every single business, no matter how big or small has paperwork. Pretty much all businesses have purchase orders, expense reports, performance appraisals, and more.

TurbineHQ was created because of Matthew Stibbe’s, CEO of Turbine, personal experiences running a company in the 90s with 70 people and way too many forms. He sold the business in 2000, but he always wondered how could he make that type of thing better with software. He wanted to “take the work out of paperwork”.

Eventually, he started a successful marketing company and decided he had to solve the problem of too many forms and bureaucracy without reinventing the wheel. So he built an online software application called Turbine.

Today I review Turbine to see if he accomplished his goal.

No Job Is Complete Until You Finish The Paperwork

All businesses have paperwork. This paperwork gets more intensive the more employees the business has. There is paperwork each time an employee wants to buy something, request time off, or get feedback for a job well done. Email can be used, as can PDF documents, but having everything in one place where it can be tracked, organized, and accessed by every member of the team is truly priceless.

Any Small Business With Employees Can Benefit From Turbine

As mentioned earlier, Turbine was created so that small businesses can manage online tasks that normally require paperwork, such as purchase orders, time off requests, expense claims, employee evaluations, feedback and more. Any business with employees who need to manage these aspects of their business can benefit from Turbine.

As Stibbe puts it, “I wanted to avoid every company spending days and weeks doing these same things that all companies have to do. I think if companies use Turbine they can save themselves money and time. I can’t promise to abolish all this paperwork, but I can make it easier, faster and more sympathetic. I mean, at the end of the day , nobody on their deathbed wishes they spent more time filling out forms”.

Small Businesses With Paperwork Need Turbine

If you do appraisals, purchase orders, purchase requests, time off requests, yearly evaluations, or need to file expense reports, which you probably do, then Turbine works simply and easily to accomplish these tasks without having to know code, or even be at a certain computer. The software is cloud based, so you can use it from your PC or other devices, such as your mobile phone.

For example, if an employee is out to dinner with a client, and wants to file an expense report, he or she can just snap a photograph of the receipt and send it straight to the system to be filed rather than waiting until they get back to the office. Similarly, they can make a time off request on a Sunday night using their iPad and their manager can approve it on the train to work the following morning on his or her smartphone.

The Basics: What Does It Look Like?

Turbine is customizable for your business. You can upload your own logo, and make it integrate seamlessly with the way your business works. The interface is responsive, designed superbly, and efficient.

When you first sign in, you’ll see the dashboard. On the left you’ll see the various features offered such as Time off, Purchases, Expenses, Appraisals, Feedback, and Messages. You can be customize the name of your business, your logo and you can turn on and off features so that you can make the software your own.

This is a sample view of purchases, where you can create purchase orders. An employee can be pre-approved for various amounts without approval. It can be set up so that an email is sent automatically to the managers that need to approve a purchase order. All that is configured via the admin settings feature.

Below is a view of creating a purchase order. Remember, you will be able to set this up in many different ways according to your wishes. These images are only examples.

What’s Good About It?  What’s Bad About It?

Turbine is simple to use and implement. You don’t need to know any code, or have any special computer skills. Turbine leads you through the setup process without any specialized knowledge about any aspect of coding. Simply click on settings to set up each area that you plan to use with your business. You can use as much or as little of Turbine as you want with a simple tick of a box.

I honestly can’t think of anything bad about Turbine. The interface is easy to use, intuitive, and simple. It works fast, and it works well. When trying to eliminate too much paperwork it’s exactly what a small business needs. However, it still offers the opportunity to download PDFs, and CSV spreadsheet files when needed. You can also provide a link to purchase orders to businesses that you deal with electronically with a simple link in your email. The reason the program is so good is that the creator actually uses it himself in his business. Therefore, it will work well for you too.

Will It Fit Your Budget?

The pricing structure (as of this writing) starts at $8 ($5 / €6) per month in total for up to five users and increases in line with the number of users up to $99 (£59 / €69) for up to 250 users. The price is for the whole company, not per user.

Every plan gives you access to all features of Turbine giving every level of service the same full featured functionality. If you have more employees than the largest plan, 250, then they’re delighted to talk to you personally about meeting your needs.

Is It For You?

Every business with employees has paperwork. Every manager and employee wants to save time and money handling that paperwork. In addition, handling the paperwork needs to be seamless and simple for everyone to understand. Remember, time is money, so any time you can save doing daily tasks will result in a monetary savings. Even if you purchased the most expensive plan, you’re going to save money due to the time you save handling these basic paperwork needs that all businesses with employees have. I believe that Turbine has accomplished the goal of  “taking the work out of paperwork”!

If you like this article, follow us on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and grab our GetApp.com blogfeed

Etsy is an awesome and busy place in which you can buy and sell handmade items. Thousands of business minded crafters, artists, and creative people use the platform to sell their products. Most are handmade but some are vintage items and supplies for crafters. Etsy has a great set up that is easy to understand, however, there are definitely applications that you can use to be more successful if you want to start an Etsy business.

All businesses have similar needs such as accounting needs, financial needs, marketing needs, inventory needs, communication needs and more in order to be successful. The following apps and services give you an answer to most of your business needs to make your Etsy business super successful.

Outright.com –  This is a wonderful accounting program that automates much if not most of your accounting process by connecting with your bank accounts, Etsy Direct Check Out and Paypal account in order to eliminate a lot of data entry normally associated with bookkeeping. What’s more is that it’s recommended by Etsy to help you keep your business organized.

Run Inventory –  With this application you can manage your Etsy inventory very simply, you just supply your Etsy ID at sign up and Run Inventory takes care of the rest! They also have awesome step-by-step videos to help you.

Kabbage.com — A way to borrow money to help your business grow. They have a partnership with Etsy which enables you to get money if you qualify to grow your business faster.

Aweber.com — Use Aweber to automatically add people who pay by PayPal to your mailing list, then you can thank them for their orders automatically, and use the nifty blog broadcast tool on Aweber and your ETSY feed to tell buyers when you add a new product! This is an excellent way to keep your business in the mind of your buyers.

WordPress.org – This is an awesome and simple and free application that enables you to quickly build a website to promote your Etsy business. Even if you don’t really know totally what you’re doing you can figure out WordPress.org. It’s also simple to find professionals who can build your site for you for as low as $500.00.

Stamps.com — The US Postal Service is set up to help your small business with all your shipping needs. You can print postage right on your computer, pay electronically via credit card, and that’s it. You can get a scale, boxes and many tools delivered right to your home or business address.

Use Etsy’s Apps — They have a great app that lets you put your store on Facebook, plus many other useful applications that are very simple to set up. Use everything Etsy has to offer to make your shop stand out from the others. There is a lot to choose from, but you can discuss it on the forums Etsy provides to their sellers.

Social Media — Use all your social media to stand out. A lot of times people love seeing your crafty and artistic process. Try filming a video and putting it on YouTube.com, then Facebook it and Tweet it, don’t forget to send it to your newsletter subscribers via Aweber so that it is shared with everyone, and watch the huge response. When people see the work that goes in to creating something wonderful they’ll be more likely to pay more for it.
If you like this article, follow us on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and grab our GetApp.com blogfeed

Creating a business plan is the first step to starting a successful business. I stress the word “successful” because it’s a proven fact that people who have a plan, even when they modify it as time goes on, are more successful than those without a plan. Having a business plan shows how serious you are, lays out short and long term milestones, helps you understand your competition, and your customers. It’s a document of how you will make money, determines your financial needs, and attracts investors.

The process of writing a business plan isn’t really that hard. In fact, it can be a very interesting to learn about your competition and discover issues you may not have considered before you started writing it. During the process you’ll source product, software, and all supplies, services and needs that you may not have thought about before without doing a business plan. Luckily there are applications that can help you with your business plan. I highly recommend you check out the various programs, read the reviews, and pick something to assist you.

The main components of a business plan are as follows, but keep in mind you can skip over some of them if they do not apply to your situation. However, try to be as complete as possible because the more thorough you are the better your results will be.

• Executive Summary — This can be as small as a paragraph or as long as two pages. This is usually written after the rest of the business plan is written and is essentially a summary of your entire plan.

• Business Overview – This section will include problem you will solve, your unique selling point, your companies mission statement, values and actual products you will sell.

• Environment Overview — Discussion of the marketplace, who your customers are, who is your competition and how you will differentiate yourself. Essentially it’s a SWOT (Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats) overview.

• Description of your Business — Describe everyone who is starting the business and include people you know who will be employees. What makes you (as a group) capable and perfect for performing the business you plan to start successfully?

• Strategic Overview — This section is a point by point discussion of what you want to achieve. Use the SWOT to mention every aspect of what you’ll do over time in every aspect of your business: Management, Technology, Marketing, Growth, Human Resources, Accounting and so forth.

• Financial Overview — This includes all your financial statements, along with a summary of where you stand today financially and where you plan to be for the short term and long term.

• Tactical Overview — Using your strategic plan, this section describes the exact steps you’ll take to meet your goals.

Some businesses need a huge binder or several binders for their entire business plan, but many small businesses can write their business plan in a few pages. The important thing is that you understand why you should write a business plan, and do it now. It is because you take your business seriously and want to be successful. Anytime you take a trip, you can’t be fully successful without a map to get you there. Your business plan is your road-map to success.

Let us know your success story with your business plan. Or maybe you came across obstacles when writing it? We would love to hear from you!

If you like this article, follow us on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and grab our GetApp.com blogfeed

Getting answers as soon as possible as a customer is a wonderful thing, being able to deliver those answers as a small business, is priceless.

I checked out Userlike, live chat software for websites and iOS apps. I know if I have a question about a product and can’t find the answer quickly, I simply move on. I always like sites that have live chat so I can ask someone right away. I’ve purchased more products each time I get an answer right away. I checked out the features on Userlike.com and here’s what I found.

Answer Customer Questions When They’re On Your Site

For customers the problem is getting questions answered when they are at the online store, not later. For the Internet shop owner, the problem is finding software that isn’t too expensive, looks professional and isn’t complicated to install. It’s also nice if the chat box looks like a natural part of the web page.

For service employees it is important to have software that is flexible, making it easy to answer questions quickly by guiding the customer requests to the right person.

Online Stores Want Chat Software That Keeps Customers Happy And Increases Conversions

Userlike was developed out of a market gap spotted by Timoor and David. Timoor, an ecommerce entrepreneur, wasn’t happy with what was available on the market. He wanted a software that was affordable, that looked professional, and that was easy to use. Together with David they set out to develop a software that fulfilled these criteria. As one happy customer, VS-Elektro puts it: “we are regularly selling products over the chat. We love it and so do our customers.”

Userlike Is Reasonably Priced, Easy To Operate And Looks Professional

With Userlike you can chat with customers right at the moment they have a question, when you have the chance to make a sale. Once a visitor leaves, he might never come back. Installation is quick. In the words of one satisfied custom: “installation and configuration process is a breeze.” The site provides easy-to-understand tutorials to help with customizing. The service is available in a number of languages.

The interface is very comfortable for the customer to use. It is integrated right into your website so it looks like an integral part of it. You can even add your own logo.

It’s simple for a chat operator can pass an inquiry to another operator so that questions go to the customer service person who handles that particular request. It’s easy to group operators into departments for specific topics.

The Basics: What Does It Look Like?

Here is a screenshot of the chat administrator’s dashboard, as you see, all the information available in one spot.

Here is a picture of a chat session with a service person’s photo, a great way to make the service more personal.

 Administrators can locate operators through this panel.

Userlike makes it easy to check chat stats.

Operators can pass chats back and forth to get the right answer quickly.

Userlike Is Easy To Use For Both The Customer And The Chat Operator

Userlike’s biggest plus is its ease of use. The customer has a professional and attractive looking chat window that’s a natural part of the web page. A chat operator can easily move the session to the right person without any fuss. It is even possible to group your operators into departments to make it easy to guide chats to the right person. The result is a happy customer who gets answers to her questions and the moment that they come up.

Administrators love how simple Userlike software makes it to install and customize. Userlike can be integrated with Zendesk and a long list of other CRM tools. Chats can be answered from any smart phone with a mobile IM client.

Will It Fit Your Budget?

Userlike has a 14-day free trial that requires no credit card. They have three pricing tiers geared to small, medium and large businesses, as well as a free version with a limited amount of chats. You get a discount by signing up for a six- or twelve-month package. Userlike offers chat and phone support, plus an extensive library of tutorials and a FAQ.

Is It For You?

Whether it is to offer support or to sell your products proactively, Userlike is a great tool for any business where the website plays a central role. Stay in touch with customers at the moments that they need an answer. It is easy for you to administer and flexible to use for your operators.

Ratings: ease of use 5/5, features 4/5, value 5/5 and ease of deployment 5/5

If you like this article, follow us on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and grab our GetApp.com blogfeed

As a small business owner providing that personal touch is so important in helping you stand out from the “big guys”, but using a support system that can scale with your growing customer base is also needed so that you can continue to make excellent support a consistent part of your business.

I often find that, although help desk software can be really handy in this regard, most of it is far too complicated, and takes forever to set up. Worst of all, it often doesn’t play nice with the other key pieces of software that help you run your business, or comes with a bloated feature sets that you never use.

The problems don’t end there. Your customers are stuck with having  to open an account and writing  a new ticket before they ever get a hold of someone from your team. With the canned responses that often power these other help desks, your buyers feel more like a number waiting in line than a valued customer. With Help Scout however, they feel like they are getting a personal email from you.

Since I already covered some of the main aspects of Help Scout, today I am going to focus on third party integration and other new features.

If you read that review, you’ll see how Help Scout helps you create a personalized service process by maintaining a collaborative experience for your team, but stays invisible to customers so that they only see plain text replies from a “real person”.

Today, you’ll get to look at how Help Scout is making it easier for small business owners to solve customer problems while integrating seamlessly with their existing chat and CRM products.

Too Much Software, Too Much To Learn, Not Enough “Help” In Help Desk Software

All help desk software runs the risk of being way too complicated, way too bloated and far too impersonal for the customers using it.

The problem is, if you have several people handling support, you need a way to coordinate responses, and at a certain volume, Gmail inboxes and complex filter sets no longer work.  You’ll end up with emails slipping through the cracks or customers getting multiple responses for the same  inquiry. What’s worse, it’s hard to find help desk tools that work with your current products, andit’s expensive to keep buying new ones.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a way to integrate a good help desk with what you already own and use?

Help Scout To The Rescue

As a business owner you already have enough on your plate. Help Scout has stepped in with software that is easy to use, provides a personal experience for the customer and integrates with a number of the products that you already use e.g., software for customer relationship management, chat, group chat, IM and/or satisfaction rating software. As a bonus, it also provides real time notifications with Webhooks. Users can subscribe to events and post them to a URL for their app. In addition, they’ve launched keyboard shortcuts and a new more user-friendly text editor.

Save Money And Time By Using The Products You Already Have

According to Denny Swindle, co-founder and CTO of Help Scout, “We built Apps to help small businesses improve their support work-flow by plugging in to the products they already use and love. With Apps, every customer interaction can be visible within Help Scout, making it easy for the entire company to engage loyal customers.”

Help Scout provides one-click integration with Highrise, Capsule, SnapEngage, Olark, HipChat, Campfire, Nicereply, Hively and Webhooks for real-time notifications.

Help Scout  is the answer to the dangers of impersonal email support responses. Your customer never gets hit with a “ticket” nor do they have to open  an account of any kind. That first email is all it takes to start communication.

At the administrative end it’s simple to see who is viewing the email in real-time, avoiding the chance of two people responding to the same message. You can always see the customer profile and the query history at the click of a button.. Each support person can add notes and hold conversations with others that the customer can’t see. In-house communication is easy and efficient and never interferes with helping your customers.

The Basics: What Does It Look Like?

Here is a typical help desk conversation with Help Scout. Remember these are representative screen shots, yours will look different based on how you set it up.

You can save chat from apps like SnapEngage and Olark in Help Scout.

You can get a look at the customer profile from Highrise, Capsule and other CRM software.

Help Scout saw a huge improvement in its own support statistics using the Highrise app.

Help Scout Lets You Use What You Have And Make It Even Better

Help Scout by itself is awesome help desk software, as I mentioned in my other review: it’s easy to install, customer friendly and simple to use for the people in your business who answer customer questions. Beyond that, Help Scout lets you use software in which you have already invested time and money into, which makes it a no-brainer to add to your arsenal of tools to better serve your customers.  It supports many CRM, chat, IM and satisfaction rating packages. In fact it extends their usefulness and makes you and your support system more productive.

Will It Fit Your Budget?

Help Scout has a free 15-day trial with no credit card needed. The subscription plan is monthly and based on the number of users. In addition it has the Free Forever Plan for three users with one mailbox. Emails are Help Scout branded with this choice. However, you’ll still get the same fabulous customer service from Help Scout whether you’re a free user or a paid subscriber via email, chat and phone.

Is It Right For You?

If you run a small business, Help Scout is the answer to your customer support woes. If you view customer support and word of mouth marketing generated from superior service as a “must have” for your business, you won’t find help desk software as personal, streamlined and easy to use as Help Scout.

You can keep using the CRM, chat, IM or satisfaction rating software you already have while integrating the awesome features of Help Scout (basically, you don’t have to change what you’re doing at all!)

In short, Help Scout turns customer support from a headache to a pleasure.  If your small business loves customers, then you’ll love Help Scout.

Ratings: ease of use 5/5, features 4/5, value 4/5 and ease of deployment 5/5

If you like this article, follow us on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and grab our GetApp.com blogfeed

Confusion is common with the volunteer organizations I belong to. That’s why I was interested to review NeonCRM by Z2 Systems, Inc.  They say they can offer nonprofit organizations and associations an easy-to-use, accessible platform to house all of their most important information about their members, donors, event attendees, Board members, and volunteers in one system.  The system allows staff and constituents the ability to interact, organize, donate, join, renew, sign up, purchase and anything else you might want in your online platform. Let’s see how it works.

Knowing What Your “People” Are Doing

NeonCRM is a Constituent Relationship Management system, or CRM. Most nonprofits and associations have trouble tracking donor or member activity and involvement because the organization is working off three to five different databases, all independent of each other.   This means that different types of data about the same people who contribute or interact with your organization may be scattered between several systems making it is hard to see the full, 360-degree view of all of their involvement.  The  NeonCRM consolidates the traditional silo-based “donor database”, “membership database”,  ”event database”, “online store”, “email communications” system, and more into one system where all of a nonprofit organization or association’s data resides. Information about all aspects of the nonprofit is consolidated into one system and easily available.

In other words, within one NeonCRM, clients can track donors, event attendees, volunteers, members, and store purchases.  Plus the system allows you to send mass emails, automate system email responses, process real-time payments, pull reports and it even integrates payment pages with the client website to feed the data into NeonCRM instantly.  NeonCRM can be considered as an all-in-one “People Database” because there an organization probably has people who may be long-time members, have donated multiple times, possibly volunteered in the past, and attended the major event each year. With NeonCRM, you can pull up one person’s record and see all of this 360-degree activity/involvement on one record.

Turn Your Donation and Membership Transactions Into Individuals, Help Them Feel Connected

Any nonprofit or association that wants to make it easy for donors, volunteers, members and employees to communicate can benefit from NeonCRM. You can track how much individuals donate, how often they attend events, whether they have been a Gold Member for 10 years, if they open your emails, what other people in the database they have relationships with, or if they sit on the Board of a certain committee. This lets staff personalize outreach to donors, members, attendees and volunteers. The more information you have about these individuals, the better you can reach out in a personal way. The more they feel a connection to your nonprofit, the more active they become. That’s easier to achieve when all the information about them is in one place.

A CRM Should Contribute to Your Revenue

Bill Bro, President and CEO of The Kidney Cancer Association, offered that testimonial to the effectiveness of NeonCRM. He went on to say, “The NeonCRM is the single best investment our organization has made in technology. Any Charity that is considering improving how it interfaces with donors and other constituents would do well to consider NeonCRM.”  The bottom line for any nonprofit is raising the money to do their work. The NeonCRM system has a track record of helping them do just that.  Adopting NeonCRM in 2004, the Kidney Cancer Association even increased their operating budget by 4-fold and continues to streamline their operations year to year.

The platform offers integrated online forms and mobile-ready forms that match the exact look-and-feel of a nonprofit’s website.  They even offer organizations the ability to track and monitor activity on their NeonCRM online forms using their own Google Analytics account.  At the core of any good CRM database, NeonCRM offers many ways to track and analyze donations, membership join/renewal, event revenue, and any type of incoming revenue. It handles events, ticketing, sessions for workshops and calendars.

NeonCRM also offers a constituent login portal, that allows constituents to manage their profile, addresses and transactions.  It even allows organizations to offer exclusive access to members by creating restricted member content, membership directories, event discounts, and log-ins for volunteers, members and donors.

NeonCRM offers your staff and administrators one-click reports on just about any aspect of the nonprofit, plus organizations can pull any type of custom report with a user-friendly querying interface that allows for in-depth data extraction across the system. Organizations can communicate to their people with a built-in email system, track it in a number of ways and use mail merge and merge queue as well. Accounting will appreciate the fact that it integrates with QuickBooks and the custom reporting allows financial data to be exported to work with any accounting platform’s import methods. Organizations can even open an online store and control tax, shipping, handling, downloads and discounts. Staff can keep track of volunteers with applications, mileage and other expense forms and time tracking.

The Basics: What Does It Look Like?

Here is an example of an overview Dashboard showing information about a client’s account activity.  Here you can see charts and clickable tables to see exactly what type of records make up an organization’s constituency.

Here is a quick view of the Constituent Login Portal where your donors, members and volunteers can manage their own personal account, transactions and more.  Every page behind this login will also copy over the organization’s look and feel of the website.

Now to the website integration.

Here is an example of a donation page that is fully integrated into the Health in Harmony website and is connected to  the NeonCRM platform.  All of the information entered on the form will automatically feed into the NeonCRM and the transaction will occur in real-time, even allowing for scheduled recurring donations if the donor prefers.  The client’s website look and feel is maintained from entry to exit after payment

Here is a view of the Pennsylvania Parks & Forests membership application. Though it is a natural part of that group’s website, the NeonCRM system is managing the database and all of the start dates, renewal dates, auto email reminders and more.  Tasks that used to take much IT department coordination and many staff members to achieve are now being automatically performed by the NeonCRM.

Standard forms are included with the system plus you can use the custom form builder for surveys, membership voting and other special needs.

NeonCRM Is Easy To Use And Customize

NeonCRM makes tracking your donors, members, and volunteers easy, allowing staff to see them as individuals. They in turn feel a sense of personal connection and have a stake in the organization. Since the platform is cloud-based, it is easy to access from any device connected to the internet. The interface is simple to learn and has a variety of modules to fit your organization’s specific needs.

Videos for training and basic online support are part of all packages. Premium live chat and phone support are extra.

What About Integrations ?

NeonCRM has direct integrations with MailChimp, an email platform, in case your organization wants to choose from many wonderful newsletter templates.  It is also integrated with QuickBooks for pushing transactions to their accounting software automatically or in batch.  Plus, NeonCRM is integrated with 5 payment processing vendors, allowing the client to choose their credit card processor and save on transaction processing.

Lastly, they will be releasing an API in early 2013 that will allow nonprofits to further integrate with any system in order to pull important data back to the “central database” which is NeonCRM.

Will It Fit Your Budget?

Fees are monthly and based on the number of constituent records (ie, how many members, donors, attendees, volunteers, etc you are tracking). There is a fee structure for choosing modules a la carte and another for all-in-one. There are also some additional one-time fee options available for other premium services to further expand the integration and functionality of the system.  Most organizations will find the price to be affordable considering everything that the system offers in one place.

Is It For You?

If your nonprofit or association wants an easy way to track and communicate with each other and with your all-important donors and volunteers, NeonCRM is a good place to look.  It can easily become a natural part of your existing website and the deep database functionality allows your staff to work much more efficiently on a day-to-day basis. NeonCRM makes it simple to connect personally with your constituents, building a family of donors for your nonprofit or to grow your member-base without creating a ton of manual entry and tasks for your staff.

If you like this article, follow us on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and grab our GetApp.com blogfeed

Today’s technology has given us a number of ways to keep communications open between employee and employer, it can be quite confusing.

Using Hello Scheduling keeps everything in one place so there are no misunderstandings. When everyone is up-to-date with what is going on and organized, things get done much more efficiently.

No More Schedule Mix-ups

Unless your business runs on a 9 to 5, Monday through Friday schedule, keeping everyone informed of when they are supposed to be at work can be a nightmare. With Hello Scheduling, the schedule is kept online for everyone to see. There is no need to call the office to check when you work next or who is supposed to be working. The program can repeat a schedule for the next pay period if you want it to with ease.

Hello Scheduling Is Perfect For Any Business With Employees

It does not matter if you have two employees or 100; Hello Scheduling can help you keep track of the schedule. It not only keeps track of the work schedule, but will set up breaks and create payroll reports so you can track your labor costs.

Notify Employees Of Work Schedules Instantly

As a schedule is made or adjusted, it is sent to the people on it by email and text message. It stays online and accessible by all employees for the duration of the schedule. No one can say they did not know when they were supposed to work. The system keeps track of breaks and hors worked so doing payroll is easy.

The Basics: What Does It Look Like?

It is quite easy to see what is going on with a glance. The system uses color coding on a typical agenda page. Simple mouse clicks will have you adding to or changing the schedule as needed. It is easy to change the way the reports look too. Decide which fits your needs best and set them to be delivered that way.

Time Sheet View

Text Message View

Employee Break Calendar

Auto Schedule View

Communication Integration And Payroll Reports

Instead of having to go to a separate email system, Hello Scheduling allows you to send emails to any or all your employees or send them a text message without using your phone. All your communication needs can be handled from within the program. It also handles all your scheduling and payroll reporting. When an employee asks for time off, you can program it right away so you do not forget. Employees can request it in the system, giving you a chance to see what is going on at the time and approve or deny it. It is also possible for them to request a swap with another employee. Any time there is a change to the schedule you can receive a text message alerting you. If you are a small business, with less than 60 employees, you do not receive the payroll and time sheet sections.

Will It Fit Your Budget?

Hello Scheduling is billed according to how many employees you are scheduling. You do not have time sheets and payroll capabilities unless you have 60 employees or pay for that service. At 100 employees you have added phone support instead of only email support. The fees are monthly and are discounted if you pay for a whole year.

Is It For You?

Big corporations have a payroll department to handle payroll and managers and assistants to take care of scheduling. In most cases they also have a number of part-time employees ready to fill in when someone calls out or takes vacation so there is not overtime being paid. Hello Scheduling takes care of all the drone work involved with making sure you have enough people working and are not paying too much for payroll. It would be very helpful to any small business. Check out the free trial and see how much time and trouble it saves you.

If you like this article, follow us on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and grab our GetApp.com blogfeed

In a survey about user experience, conducted by Compuware, results show that a bad web experience will drive 46 percent of tablet users to competitive web sites and 33 percent are less likely to purchase from that company. That means for businesses that run a website that the work of a usability expert can be critical for the success of the enterprise. When a user experience professional is testing a new software product or a new website, handy apps for usability experts can make the job go faster, let him dig deeper and remember the details. Here’s a quick overview of a few that may help you.

• Moqups is a terrific free app for designing prototypes, wireframes, user interfaces and, well, mock-ups. Using easy drag and drop, the interface looks like graphing paper. It has more than sixty scalable vector graphic stencils, smart-guides, auto-save and the ability to upload images. You can export as a PDF, PNG or simply email it.

• Pivotal Tracker uses an agile environment for software development. It’s dynamic, everyone on the team can view the bigger picture to get a look at how the project is going in real time. Team members provide their stories for the backlog and Tracker predicts the completion date and the milestones leading up to it. It simplifies prioritizing tasks and gives you realistic time estimates.

• Using boards and cards, Trello lets you and your collaborators see where you are on a project. It’s a simple and powerful visual system for a list of tasks, a project, or a process. Just a glance at the board or the card lets you know how the project is coming along and who is working on what.

• Basecamp keeps you organized simply and intuitively. You don’t need to know any special web skills. It handles email, calendar entries, comments, all your tasks and scheduling. Invite who you want. Everyone can see what needs to be done and when. The dashboard makes it easy to monitor each part of the process so nothing gets missed.

• Olark is a live chat application that lets you interact with visitors to your website using instant messengers from third parties. Installation is easy enough for non-techies. It blends in naturally with the site.

• Evernote’s tagline is “Capture anything, access anywhere, find things fast.” Well, it’s true! Making notes is a breeze. Take a screen-shot with one-click, it’s easy to sync with other devices. Each project can have its own notebook. Saving is automatic and tags make it simple to find notes.

• With Skype, you can have chats and video conferencing as well as phone calls. You can even share your desktop with a collaborator on another continent. Any sort of remote sharing is possible with Skype. Members of your group can drop in and out of your chat room. With an easy-to-use interface, it connects co-workers with each other and lets support stay in touch with customers.

• A great way to manage the vacation time of your company’s employees is with TribeHR online software. It lets members of your group check who is working when, giving them a sense of participation in the decision making. It also automates a lot of the mundane tasks of employee tracking.

• Hojoki lets you monitor all of your cloud based apps in one spot. As an example, you can establish a business workplace in Hojoki that handles Dropbox for file sharing, Trello for task lists, Google Calendar for scheduling and Google Drive for documents. Integrate whatever you are using in one easy-to-find spot, a single hub instead of a dashboard for each application. You can also use a cloud based system such as CloudWork that will integrate many programs and apps to make them work even harder for you.

• Dropbox is perfect for people in different locations to work with the same set of files. Since it’s cloud-based, you can use any type of computer or mobile device. Any file in Dropbox is synchronized. It’s easy to use and a snap to install. Google Drive is similar to Dropbox and also simple to install and use. It has the advantage that all your Google Docs files will appear as soon as you sign in. It lets you check recently edited or opened files under the Recent tab. The search feature is very good.

• Google Analytics is free and the industry standard for analyzing web traffic. It gives reports on every aspect of your site’s visitors. Using it regularly will let you make decisions to make your it more popular.

• Kissmetrics (as in Keep It Simple Stupid) is a paid alternative. It lets you analyze visitors on the individual level, which can help figure out how to convert visitors to buyers.

As you can see, there are numerous usability tools out there for the busy expert, some fee-based and many with free versions. The best approach is to try them out and find which one help the most your project, product or website. Check with co-workers often because new tools are coming out all the time. Never forget to check at GetApp for cloud-based apps to use in every aspect of your business. It’s simple to do a search on our site, or to send us an email if you’re not sure what you need. We’re here to help!

If you like this article, follow us on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and grab our GetApp.com blogfeed

Workers in the cubicle culture tend to agree that face-to-face get-togethers are the single best way to share knowledge in a company. Some like the idea of weekly lunch meetings centered around a single idea as long as they are informal. One way is having a facilitator keep the topic gently in view by introducing the idea under consideration for the first five or ten minutes.

Others feel that just getting together for a brown bag lunch with no agenda works better because the topic always returns to the job and current issues affecting the group automatically. The important thing is to keep it casual, friendly, a time for socializing. Co-workers get to know each other at the same time they are throwing out nuggets of inspiration about the problem under discussion.

But, today with our ever increasing telecommuting culture, what do you do if the group is spread out over the country or even on different continents? Email seems to get a thumbs down in many companies. It is good for individual communication but off-putting for many. It’s very easy for emails to  get lost in translation. The big blocks of type usually needed to explain ideas tends to prompt people to hit the delete key. It works well one on one, but poorly for a group.

“To be effective, the method of exchanging information needs to reflect that.”

Basic intranets also don’t cut it either. What users want most in a site is an easy way to create content and a quick, simple and effective search tool that covers the entire community. They also have trouble feeling comfortable with the top-down and structured approach of most of these platforms. On their own information and ideas pop up all over and are seldom organized. Instead they feed off each new round of interplay. To be effective, the method of exchanging information needs to reflect that.

Online social knowledge sharing sites have stepped in to help spread information, conversations and problem solving. Bloomfire is one of the most popular. It was originally developed to help salespeople know the product they were expected to pitch. It can handle content in any form, whether documents, video or audio. They’ve put a lot of emphasis on the search capabilities.

This site is made to be searched, with the use of keywords, tags and categories. It has a question and answer capability for sharing intelligence. The dashboard makes it easy to find out who is active online and what people are interested in. You can set up sub-communities for hot topics.

Knoodle is a knowledge-sharing site that is centered on presentations. You upload a slide-show and add audio and any other multimedia that you like. Members can comment, like and edit. By adding surveys, ratings and discussion forums, you can get a real feel for what a group, which you define and invite, thinks about the information.

You can make sure salespeople or others have grasped the idea you’re trying to put across by adding a test. The ability to add methods of interacting makes learning and training friendly and inviting. The emphasis is on ease of use.

The developers made it simple for any worker in an organization to make a presentation because they feel that everyone is both learner and teacher. Compartmentalizing information inhibits sharing so they aimed to make it easy and quick.

Bloomfire and Knoodle are specifically designed for knowledge sharing. On the other hand, if it’s a specific project that you want to collaborate on, Podio is oriented toward accomplishing a particular task, whether project management, recruiting, or a special event. It offers a huge range of apps to customize the platform in line with your team’s needs. It’s easy to collaborate on tasks, share ideas and keep track of time-lines. It’s not a knowledge sharing platform as such, but uses those capabilities within the framework of project management.

If you like this article, follow us on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and grab our GetApp.com blogfeed

Setting up a learning course for your employees or customers is a lot of work.

TalentLMS feels it offers a simple way for you to develop a program of study and an attractive platform for your students to take it.

I’ve encountered some pretty ragged looking training sites when I’ve taken classes online. I’m looking forward to checking this out.

Setting Up A Course And Administering It Is Complex.

Coming up with the content of a course is hard enough. In addition you need to make it available on computers and mobile devices in a usable, appealing set-up. Figuring out which individuals are taking the training and if they are absorbing the content makes it a complicated job requiring several different talents.

Make Online Learning Easy To Set Up And Easy To Use.

If you offer online training to your employees, customers or other group members, you want a platform that makes it easy for you to set it up and easy for your students to access. You want to know who is taking the classes and how they are doing with learning it. The goal of the TalentLMS site is to bring simplicity and ease-of-use to the whole process.

Import The Information, Customize It, Track Your Students Easily.

TalentLMS (Learning Management System) lets you import from YouTube, Slideshare, Wikipedia and other sites. This simplifies getting the material for your course, letting you use what is already available. From the dashboard you set up the information in libraries of files. It’s easy to change the appearance of any element of the course from the theme label on the dashboard.

TalentLMS is cloud-based and the courses function naturally on mobile devices as well as on computers. It lets you check how your students are doing with tests that you can set up and re-use in a variety of ways. You can ask for input from your learners via surveys. On completion you can offer certification.

It’s easy to get one click statistics and reports from the dashboard. You can create any number of categories of students and control the content each has access to. The platform lets you create branches of the main course, each under your control but with its own URL, theme and users.

The dashboard lets you keep track of progress for each user individually. Reports are available on each user, groups, courses, tests and more.

The Basics: What Does It Look Like?

This screen shot shows how easy it is to choose and import a YouTube video.

Building the course is easy using files in a library that you create.

You can check your users and what they are doing easily from the dashboard.

You can make each course look just the way your want from the theme label in the dashboard.

TalentLMS knows many students use mobile devices.

Reports in several forms are easy to check from the dashboard.

Easy To Set Up, Easy To Administer, Easy To Take The Course

TalentLMS saw how complex it can be to prepare and administer an online course. They are targeting users looking for ease of use for them and for their students. One happy customer summed it up as “no distraction, full concentration. Good balance in beauty, simplicity and efficiency.”

Importing files of all types is trouble-free. It is simple to change the appearance of a course, to interact with students and check stats. The learner has a good experience from any device. If you want ease of use, TalentLMS is worth a look.

Support is available from video tutorials, FAQs, a Knowledge Base plus online help.

Will It Fit Your Budget?

TalentLMS offers a free plan good for five users and ten courses requiring no credit card for sign up. They offer monthly paid subscriptions for larger groups depending on the number of users and courses. You can upgrade or downgrade easily.

Is It For You?

If you are looking for a service that makes it easy to create and administer courses that are attractive and convenient for students using computers or mobile devices, TalentLMS is worth investigating. Since they give you the chance to create up to ten courses, no strings attached, you have a chance to thoroughly test its features to see how it would work for your group.

If you like this article, follow us on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and grab our GetApp.com blogfeed

Lawyers have access to incredible technology today. Today, many lawyers file paperwork electronically via court websites, rather than take them physically over to the court house, and even they schedule court time via the Internet today. With the advent of the iPad and cloud computing technology, there are even more things that a lawyer can do from a distance, and now, he or she doesn’t even have to be in the office around a personal computer.

If you’re unaware of this technology, I want to talk to you today about the various apps available for lawyers that use cloud technology. That means they only need a device with access to the Internet in order to do their job. This enables lawyers and legal assistants to get more work done faster, from many different locations. No longer are attorneys and their employees stuck to a computer and a desk, or forced to run back and forth to the court house to file papers on time.

• Dropbox – This is a file sharing system that makes it super simple to share files with everyone, and back up a system in a secure environment. All files are automatically shared with those who are members of a folder, and it’s simple to share large files in this manner, no more clogged email. It’s also available on the iPad! 
• Schedulicity –  This is an awesome appointment scheduling cloud based software for small businesses. Your customers, secretary, and you can book appointments with you online via the Internet. Subscriptions come with unlimited use of email, SMS texts and more. It includes a client database and marketing functions that can’t be beat. 
• Invoicera–  Lawyers must track their time since they get paid hourly, so every phone call, ever action for each client should be tracked. Invoicera lets you do this with a few clicks. You’ll be able to track time and expenses easily, and then automatically send invoices that look professional with your logo. Plus, you can use the information and reporting functions to keep track of income and costs. 
• LawRD– Specially created for law firms, LawRD provides law firms with reports on everything that they do. Time sheets, Matters, Contacts, Billing sheets, and reports can be made easily with LawRD. Since it’s created especially for law firms it’s already set up for use out of the box other than personalization for your law firm. 
• Spideroak–  As a lawyer, your data is everything. It’s important to protect it with a system that truly works. Spideroak  for business is secure, easily integrated and configured to back up an retrieve files and share files from anywhere, instantly. Data loss prevention is at the top of the minds of savvy business professionals who have a lot of data, don’t make the mistake of not backing up and securing the data. 
• 7Notes HD Premium —  This tool enables you to take handwritten notes with your iPad that you can convert to digital text.  You can also export documents by email, Dropbox, or direct upload and integrates with Evernote. 
• AudioMemos — Turn your iPhone or iPad into an audio recorder. Most lawyers need to record interviews, and even their own notes rather than writing them, and this app does exactly what it says it will.

Adding these apps to your law firm business will increase productivity, bring you into the 21st century, and make your job that much easier. Time is money, and finding ways to make all these tasks easier to do will give you a fabulous return on your investment.

If you like this article, follow us on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and grab our GetApp.com blogfeed

Working with a group in which some are freelance, some are telecommuting, some working out of another office, can be confusing and frustrating.

As a freelancer, I am always on the lookout for an easy-to-use and accessible tool that helps a group connect.

Threads says it makes online collaboration simple. Let’s take a look.

If It’s Hard To Learn A Tool That’s Supposed To Make My Life Easy. . .

Some collaboration platforms are oriented to geeks. They say they do everything, and maybe they do, but they’re so hard to figure out, it’s tempting to revert to pen, paper and snail mail. But, Threads is based on a discussion forum structure, hence the name “Threads”. Even  the most geek challenged person never had a problem figuring that out! Getting your ideas down is as straightforward as using an online notepad. In addition, group members get just the data that pertains to their tasks so they aren’t overwhelmed with notifications that have nothing to do with their current work.

By the way a “thread”  is a “uniformly formatted information container”, and can be anything: task, document, discussion etc, depending on additional properties (i.e. task will have a deadline, assigned person etc).

Help For Groups With Members That Work In Different Locations

If your team has members who work at home, are freelancing, situated in an office across town or across the world, or work on the go, you can benefit from the online collaboration that Threads  offers. You can use any computer or mobile device that has access to the Internet. This is your communication hub for project management, tasks, issues and information.

Collaborate With The Correct People Easily

Since most of us understand the discussion forum model, there is minimal learning curve when you use Threads. Jotting down your notes and ideas is a snap with the notepad. Convert these to discussions with one-click.

You can include precisely the people involved in each particular segment of a project, on a task-by-task and even notification-by-notification basis. This means you are saved from starting one project for the group and another for the customer in order to be sure only certain people see just specific information.

You can start discussions to brainstorm and gather together ideas. Turn these into documents with one click on the dashboard. It’s easy to then organize all this information into FAQs, wikis and case studies. Threads makes it easy to capture ideas and the knowledge of the group for sharing and as resources in future projects. Members have access to the information in a knowledge database using the Document tab. You can also attach documents to threads.

On the dashboard you can track the status of tasks and projects easily. The search feature uses powerful filters for users, tags, authors and other criteria.

It’s easy for group members to comment on projects and tasks. Assigning them and creating deadlines is easy from the dashboard. Members use the MyTask and the Activity tabs to see precisely what they have been assigned and check progress.

The Basics: What Does It Look Like?

Here is a look at the dashboard overview of a current discussion. It’s easy to see who is participating and the tasks involved.

It is easy to search for the information you want using several filters.

In this case, the threads have been sorted according to priority.

Members can collaborate using  mobile devices.

Easy To Learn, Easy To Communicate, Easy To Share Knowledge

Threads makes it easy for a group that is working in multiple locations to share knowledge, keep on top of tasks, manage projects, brainstorm and document processes easily and efficiently. The platform is accessible to anyone who can connect to the Internet.

Information goes just to the people who need it. Group members aren’t inundated with unnecessary notifications and customers get just the communications that you want.

There’s basically no learning curve to figure out how to use it. You can jot down notes as you think of them, then later distribute them quickly to team members.

Help is provided in the forum, FAQs, video tutorials, plus online support.

Will It Fit Your Budget?

Pricing is based on the number of open threads  (tasks, documents, discussion…). Up to 1000 are free, with monthly subscriptions for more.

The free version is a generous offer and there is no restrictions on users/projects, other functions, or data. In fact for a small team a free version will suffice in most cases.

Is It For You?

Treads still need some input in terms of configuration and  housekeeping, but the upside is simplicity and clean interface (no additional buttons, menu items etc)

For example there are no milestones or task lists… but they can be easily set-up by applying the same tag to a number of threads, then searching by that tag and saving search – this will be your list of threads that you can access from top menu (saved search)

All in all, Threads is perfect for any group that wants to get up and running quickly with their collaboration platform. You can target your communication precisely; gather, share and store information; manage your projects and assign tasks. It’s easy to learn, easy to use and accessible from any Internet-enabled device.

If you like this article, follow us on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and grab our GetApp.com blogfeed

As a small business owner, I really need forms to find out what my website visitors are thinking.

But designing the form and installing it can literally take me days. So I am totally excited to review 123ContactForm. They say form building and publishing is as easy as 1-2-3.

Let’s see!

How to Get a Form up and Running When You Are a Non-Programmer

123ContactForm was started in 2008 by two partner developers with the goal of making form building easy for the small business person. Most of us aren’t designers or coders. We know what we want a form to accomplish but not how to construct it from the ground up and insert it into a website or blog. And order forms that take payments—help!

Easy to Use For Freelancers, Small Businesses, Web Designers, Large Corporations

123ContactForm lets anyone put together forms for any occasion: Event registrations, order forms, lead generation, surveys, workshop sign-ups or employment applications. Anyone who wants to concentrate on other things than form design and coding can benefit from 123ContactForm.

Web designers love it. Designer Donna Powell said, “Your service allows me to provide flawless forms and most importantly change or update them in seconds. You have taken the work and the errors out of form creation and forms management.”

Design a Form, Insert it In Your Website, Blog or Facebook Page

The form generator is geared toward ease of use. It’s WYSIWYG and drag and drop, making it simple to fiddle with it until you get it right. It’s perfect for lead generation forms, email forms and other methods of staying in touch with your visitors. Use it for an event registration or workshop sign up. Find out what your readers are thinking with surveys and questionnaires.

It’s simple to publish the form on your website, Facebook, WordPress, Joomla or Blogger. It integrates seamlessly with GoogleDocs, Yahoo Groups, MailChimp, SalesForce and other third party platforms.

Your forms look good. You can choose colors, add your logo and pick a template and theme from their collection. By the time you’re through, it looks like a natural part of your website or blog. Their extensive library of templates gives you a starting point for many types of forms.

If you sell a product, you can create secure order forms that work with Paypal, Google Checkout and Authorize.net. It lets you get money safely when your customers buy your product and collect important information about them at the same time.

The Basics: What Does it Look Like?

It’s easy to build a survey form using 123ContactForm.

They offer a library of templates. This one here is a good starting point for any order form.

You can choose from a number of themes. You can insert your logo and preview the form before publishing it.

From the dashboard you can check response to your form.

You can integrate your forms with third part applications like GoogleDocs, SalesForce, TopProducer,  Aweber, Icontact, ConstantContact, GoogleGroups and YahooGroups.

Sell products using Paypal, Authorize.net and Google Checkout.

Make an Attractive, Efficient Form Without Design or Coding Skills

123ContactForm makes attractive forms of all types fast and easy for anyone, with or without design and coding experience. Your form looks like a basic part of your website. You can use their templates and themes to get started, then add your logo. It offers one-click integration with major third party apps like GoogleDocs, Aweber and SalesForce. You can publish simply from the dashboard to your website, WordPress or Blogger blog or Facebook. You can take orders and collect payment via Paypal, Authorize.net or Google Checkout.

Support is via live chat 24/7, their Facebook page and email.

Will it Fit Your Budget?

123ContactForm offers a free plan good for one user, five forms and 100 submissions a month. Paid monthly fees with the Gold and Platinum plans allow for more users, forms and submissions. If these don’t suit, they will design a custom plan to suit your business. A generous 35% discount is offered to educational and nonprofit groups.

Is it For You?

If you dread making forms for your online endeavors, 123ContactForm can help you. It will cut your time and help you come up with one that handles the job. Forms of all types are easy to design and upload to any type of site and integrate with a number of third-party applications with one-click.

If you like this article, follow us on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and grab our GetApp.com blogfeed

As a business owner, you understand the importance of making sure that each and every one of your employees are working the way you need them to be working.

You know how things should be done and want everyone doing things the same way. Training can be a big issue when things are changing all the time to keep up with technology and the times.

Virtual, online training enables you to make sure everyone is on the same page and keeps things going the way you want them to go. Whether you do training as a product, or training for your employees Inquisiq, an award winning learning management system (LMS) has an answer. Today we review Inquisiq r3 LMS.

The Hallmarks of Inquisiq

According to the creators of Inquisiq, their LMS includes features not often found in smaller systems, but without the unneeded bloated features that make LMS so expensive.

The highlights of Inquisiq are:

• Smart feature set that combines sophisticated capabilities with ease-of-use
• A well-designed, intuitive user interface
• Powerful automation and reporting features
• Low pricing that, combined with powerful capabilities, makes it a very high value.
• Multiple pricing models to accommodate a variety of different customers’ needs (Installed Solution, SaaS User-based, & SaaS Enrollment-based)
•  Special feature set designed for external training

Let’s have a look and see if this is true.

Have Everyone Trained On New Equipment and Procedures

Whether you are getting new cash registers, upgraded software or need to change the way something is being done, having everyone trained can take a lot of time. You will probably have to do the training at least 4 times to make sure everyone has a chance to attend. If you can prepare the lessons and have everyone your employees access them online, everyone can receive the training in just a few days but you did not have to do it more than once. You can give everyone the access data and tell them they have two or three days to complete the lesson. You will receive reports on who has registered and taken the lesson so you know who has not.

The Ideal Way for Small to Mid-Sized Businesses to Train New Employees

Imagine how much time and trouble you would save yourself or your managers if all new employees received their training online. You could even have a room set up where they can come and do the training. This would give them access to a supervisor if they needed help. Everyone would be trained the same way regardless of who was doing the training and nothing would be left out accidentally. You have time to go over the modules to make sure it is complete and accurate before making it live for employees.

In addition, if you simply want to offer courses as part of your business model, whether you’re a coach, or an organization, this LMS makes it simple to do. They created Inquisiq out of the growing need of their customers. They saw that their customers were using expensive, bloated, and hard to use systems. They wanted to build a friendlier LMS that didn’t need as many features. Yet, they included the most important features for small to medium sized businesses or content resellers to use.

When Everyone Does Things The Same, Business Increases

No matter what kind of business you run, doing things the same way every time is the best way to ensure repeat business. You may have a service business or you may have a product related business, either way, it is important that the customers receive the same quality of service from your employees. Everyone should be able to answer a question with the same response so the customers are not confused. Good, solid training is the key to making sure everyone is working the same way.

Additionally, if you’re a training organization, or a company that sells training, this system will make it simple for you to get your training in the hands of others right from your website. With over 1,000,000 users, they listen to feedback and try to make their software better.

The Basics: What Does it Look Like?

When it comes to the training lessons, how they look will be up to you. You can choose to have a PowerPoint slide-show, embedded videos, or anything else you want. The interface is easy to use and you will be creating your lessons in no time. The log-in page ensures that each employee has their own user data.

Administrator View — Familiar view for most web savvy people and easy to figure out what to do next.

Course Catalog View — If you have multiple courses it’s easy for your students or employees to see what you have available.

Create Training for Your Business or Sell Training Modules

Create training for your employees or create training modules to sell to other companies. You are given reports to be aware of who has seen the training, and how much time they spent on it. You decide who gets access to each module. If you are selling your training, the system has built-in e Commerce capabilities. The built-in e Commerce capabilities is exciting. If you sell coaching, or any type of lesson at all, even if you have no employees this is a valuable component to add to your offerings.

Will it Fit Your Budget?

You have the option of purchasing the Inquisiq ^r3 software in two ways.  First is the all-inclusive Cloud hosted software as a service (SaaS) solution which starts at $99/month.  In this typical SaaS model, you pay each month based on your total user count, and you can cancel at any time.

If you have a larger user population, you can also purchase the unlimited user perpetual license, and either install it on a dedicated Web server, or lease a virtual dedicated server in their Cloud.  As we found out, the cost of Inquisiq ^r3 is a lot less than other more bloated offerings in the LMS market.

Is it For You?

If you are in need of corporate training for your employees or would like to find a platform to create and sell your training, try a free demo of Inquisiq ^r3.  You would be hard put to find another system that offers you as much flexibility and all the options and reporting as this program. As a company that lives and breaths eLearning, you cannot do better than Inquisiq.

If you like this article, follow us on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and grab our GetApp.com blogfeed

Keeping track of time spent for billing is a necessary, but often irritating and complicated task.

As a freelancer, I have some projects that are billed at an hourly basis. To do this I must keep track of my time in a way that works for me, as well as my client.

time cockpit says it has made the process easy to use and painless. Let’s take a look.

Complicated Time Tracking Software Means Spending Time Trying to Track Work Instead of Working

One exciting feature is that time cockpit helps put an end to missing entries and overlapping jobs in the same time-frame. You get valid entries that help you and your organization figure out where your time is spent. Instead of lists, you have a simple Outlook-like graphical calendar view. You don’t have to guess how you spend time to fill a missing gap because it has an activity tracker that keeps track of your computer activities.

Easy to Input, Easy to Analyze Time Tracking

Small or large organizations can benefit from this easy to use time tracking tool. Employees like the activity tracker, Windows based, that keeps a record of their computer work so they don’t have to guess. Managers like the graphical interface makes it simple to check where time is spent. time cockpit lets you integrate information with Outlook and Excel quickly.

Simple but Sophisticated Time Tracking for your Company

time cockpit is easy for the user. The activity manager records your work on the computer. And, no worries, it’s not Big Brother, you can turn it off and on. If you are working off-line, it will hold the information and automatically synchronize it next time you are online. If you need to shift to a different computer, you can access the platform online with your name and password.

For administrators, the graphical interface and color formatting make it simple to get an overview of  where time is spent and planned vs. actual hours. All information is customizable and templates are easy to create. It’s easy to add team members and to export information to Microsoft Excel. The data grid lets you create reports of all types and create invoices.

The Basics: What Does it Look Like?

The graphical interface makes it easy to see where you are spending your time.

Use drag and drop to change the time and duration of tasks.

It works seamlessly with Microsoft Outlook.

The activity tracker keeps a record of your computer work automatically.

Use color formatting to get an at-a-glance idea of how your work week is going.

Easy to Use by Workers and Managers

time cockpit provides a clean, easy-to-use graphical interface for workers and administrators to manage time tracking from beginning, task entry, to end, invoicing the client. It seamlessly integrates with Outlook and Excel. Work online and it keeps track of time automatically. Offline it will record information and update data when you are next online. On a different computer you can access the platform easily. Time tracking is simplified so you get accurate information about where time is spent in your business.

While PCs are fully supported,  it is not a natural platform for the Mac since it uses Microsoft Windows Azure Platform. While this is an excellent platform, today with teams working on the go using a variety of platforms it might be limiting to some companies.

Help is provided via chat and online contact form.

Will it Fit your Budget?

time cockpit offers a free 30-day trial requiring no credit card. If you continue, you are charged  monthly, calculated per user per day.

Is It For You?

If you use PCs and want simple, multi-function time tracking software that makes it easy to enter  data and figure out where your time is spent, time cockpit is a good choice.

If you like this article, follow us on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and grab our GetApp.com blogfeed

Surveys for your blog or surveys sent out to readers via email are limited in most free online survey tools.

The number of questions and how they can be asked are capped. It can also be difficult to know how to organize and design them. Survey Expression calls itself the best free online tool you can use.

Let’s take a look.

Most Survey Tools Offer Too Few Questions or are Too Complicated, Not This One

Surveys are great tools to increase blog readership and find out what employees or clients are thinking. They are an effective communication device for everyone. But they can be complicated to design and publish. It’s just so easy to end up with questions that don’t match the requirements of the free survey website you stumbled on. Some let you ask only 10 questions, seldom enough. They delete information quickly and don’t let you export it.

A Survey Tool That Works For The Blogger, Small Businessperson and / or Market Researcher

Survey Expression has targeted the free survey market with very generous features. They have templates to help you design the survey, allow you to ask as many questions as you want, in as many surveys a month as you choose. You can ask simple or sophisticated questions in any form. The information can be exported easily and is never deleted from their servers.

Simple Surveys That Get All Your Questions Answered

Survey Expression lets you set up a free account and keep it active as long as you like. The only limit is 200 responses a survey. You can ask questions in up to 18 different forms, using radio buttons in multiple choice, essay boxes, check boxes, continuous sums, and ranking. Even market researchers who use advanced, sophisticated survey logic will feel at home with Survey Expression.

Their templates cover consumer, education, employee and event surveys. If you need to do a health assessment, they have a template for that. Their web forms and IT surveys are easy to customize for your needs. The Survey Editor is simple to use.

You can collect responses via email or with a link on your website or blog. The reports are easy to create from the dashboard. They give you real-time results to the survey as answers come in.

The Basics: What Does It Look Like?

Choose your survey options with one click from the dashboard.

Easily choose the response options that you want.

It’s simple to manage your surveys from the dashboard.

 Produce real-time reports quickly.

Export your data for analysis and sharing.

Free, Easy-To-Use, Versatile

Survey Expression is an easy-to-use survey tool that is free for up to 200 responses a survey. It has templates that make the design easy. You can ask as many questions you want in whatever form you like. A blogger can embed a simple readership survey. A market researcher can ask advanced logic question aimed at highly targeted audiences. Reports and exporting is simple to do.

Support for free users comes from extensive tutorials on the website and email. Paid subscribers get priority email and phone support. The highest level gets a dedicated account manager.

Will It Fit Your Budget? 

Survey Expression is free for as many surveys as you like as long as you only need up to 200 responses. Paid subscriptions are on two levels based on the number of email invitations a month. The first is at 50,000 email invitations, the second at 100,000.

An Excellent Free Survey Tool

If you want a free online survey tool, check out Survey Expression. They offer the most open-handed options of any survey tool online. Tutorials and templates make it easy to design and publish your surveys and then analyze the responses. Both casual and advanced users have access to all the survey tools they could need. On a side note, outside of business, as a former graduate student, if I had known about this tool I would have used it instead of the one I ultimately used.

If you like this article, follow us on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and grab our GetApp.com blogfeed

Google has started charging new users for the Google Apps for Business, its online suite of software applications, for companies with under 10 users who had it for free before last week’s announcement.  Their reason is that “with focus we’ll be able to do even more for our business customers.”

Let´s see what that means for small businesses and how it compares with other offers from Microsoft and Zoho.

Which solution will win the  battle over who will control the move by small businesses to the Cloud?

The New Google Apps for Businesses

The price for Google Apps is still low, just $5 a month for each user or save a little by paying $50 a year. They include Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets and Slides. The inbox has 25 GB of storage. The paid edition lets a business use the all-in-one business service on their own domain.

As a selling point, Google is emphasizing its commitment to a high level of support. Users get 24/7 phone help. The company guarantees 99.9% uptime and no scheduled downtime.

More than five million businesses are currently using the Google online suite. Those with a current free business account are grandfathered in and don’t have to pay. However they don’t get the improvements like more storage that paying customers are offered.

Google makes most of its money from advertising but is slowly working its way into being a general business service provider. In July, a senior vice president said enterprise business was a “future growth engine” for the company.

The Office 365 Experience

Do you have years of data from Microsoft Office desktop software? If the thought of moving all that to an online suite is giving you heartburn, then Office 365 might be your best choice. It integrates seamlessly  with the desktop version of the software, which is in use with over 90% of all small businesses. Removing this problem alone is getting any number of businesses to sign up. Microsoft Office integration isn’t considered a strong point for Google Apps.

Microsoft Office 365 team starts at $6 a user and offers a free 90-day trial for small businesses with up to 10 users. Google is only marginally cheaper at $5.

Zoho Suite is a Strong Contender

With over seven million users Zoho is a strong contender in the online suite market. If your big concern is getting your apps to communicate with each other and integrating data from other software into your new Cloud suite, Zoho is definitely worth a look.

They seem to want to set up an environment so all-enveloping that you never have to leave or want to! It offers an incredibly full line of apps for small businesses, covering CRM, productivity, office suite and collaboration. With almost 30 different services, it is probably the most comprehensive suite of web-based programmers for small businesses.

They’ve worked hard to appeal to a broad base. Most of its apps are fully integrated with Google apps, letting a user manage contacts, attach files and schedule events with Google Mail, Docs, Calendar and other apps, directly from within Zoho. In addition, the office suite works seamlessly with Microsoft Office. Another big selling point is that all its apps communicate with each other so users don’t have to enter data more than once.

If you are one of the many small businesses that have come to rely on customer relationship management (CRM) to keep contacts, service requests and email contacts at hand and organized, you should know that Zoho gets high marks for its Zoho CRM and project management software, all cloud-based.

What they offer is extensive. With Zoho Creator, you can even create new apps for your business using one of their apps! For online presence, you can set up a website, a mobile site, check how they are doing, identify bugs and fix problems remotely. They have tools for employees, from the first step of tracking and hiring applicants on through handling all the human resources work. For customers, beside CRM, they offer an app to run marketing campaigns, handle support and later invoice. Their collaboration and productivity apps are also extensive.

A minor downside, Zoho has a complicated price structure. It might be tempting to go with Google or Microsoft  just because it’s so easy to know the price! But, no worries, with Zoho you start with a free account and upgrade and downgrade as needed.

One thing that is nice is having choices and thankfully there are plenty of choices when it comes to cloud business apps for your small business needs.

The Bottom Line

Microsoft has a head start with its legacy installed base of Microsoft Office where they clearly have a conversion advantage and Google is strong with startups and “All in cloud” businesses. Zoho is a strong option for comers to cloud apps.

Small businesses are massively moving to cloud apps but once they have chosen a solution, despite price cuts and free trials  small businesses will probably not  jump from one cloud business app vendor to to another as transferring data and training employees to new tools is far from easy.

We can expect very stiff competition from these three players to capture as nmuch market share as possible in the coming years. As usual, if you are new to cloud business apps and you are looking at one of these three suites, we strongly recommend that you try at least two of them with the free trial before making your final choice.

Side by Side Comparison of Google Apps, Office 365 and Zoho Suite

If you like this article, follow us on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and grab our GetApp.com blogfeed

It costs money to buy cash registers, software, hardware. My friend who runs two small espresso spots gets frustrated because he wants to know how sales are going when he’s out and about. Training his clerks to use the cash register software takes time.

ShopKeep says it can help a retailer like him out, calling itself “a simple, smarter point of sale (POS) system.” Let’s give it a look.

Expensive Equipment, Hardware and Software That is Difficult to Learn

Cash register systems, have kept up with computers but have been slow to adopt the cloud. Small retailers still invest in computers, servers and hardware to take money and separate tools to handle inventory and reports.

ShopKeep uses the cloud-based iPad as POS for reporting and inventory. The emphasis is on ease of use for sales people and managers. You don’t even have to be in the shop to check on sales.

All-in-One POS for Small Retailers and Quick Serve Restaurants

Small businesses like ShopKeep because it’s easy to learn for both the salesperson and the owner. It’s a two-part system, the Register and the Back Office  The Register handles the sales and time clock. Back Office generates reports and handles inventory. You can also access data about how sales are going from any smart phone. If you have more than one store, you can check reports for all of them from one dashboard, a benefit of a cloud-based system.

Set up Your Business on the iPad

The POS tools let you easily add items, create discounts and keep track of taxes. You can take credit, debit, cash or checks and use your own bank. With its intuitive interface, users report that there is almost no learning curve for employees. You decide who has access to which parts of the information. It even lets you email receipts to customers. It uses a hybrid technology so users aren’t slowed down if their Internet connection has problems. The Register app is installed locally on each iPad so it isn’t subject to interruptions from server crashes or slowdowns from bandwidth size. It acts like a regular register, printing receipts and opening the cash drawer.

All management functions reside in the cloud-based Back Office. You don’t have to be in the individual store to use it. If you have more than one location, you can get real-time reports on all of them from anywhere. Use it to track sales as they occur, even out of the shop on your smart phone. It has a robust inventory management. Graphed reports show you how your business is doing. You’ll never have to worry about another back-up since it’s cloud-based.

The Basics: What Does it Look Like?

ShopKeep uses the iPad for everything. Check out customers easily with either cash or credit cards.

It’s simple to see how sales are going. Check charts for to figure out how individual items are doing, or check overall sales by the hour or date.

Your smart phone keeps you up-to-date from anywhere.

Inventory is simplified: add items, get a notice to reorder, receive orders.

Generate reports on every aspect of business from best sellers to returns.

Perfect for the Small Retailer

Ease of use is it’s huge selling point. It can be set up in minutes and figured out just as fast. The register does all POS actions effectively and it is a cloud-based hybrid that is not dependent on your Internet connection. The Back Office gives you up-to-the-minute information from anywhere.

The drawbacks are minor. It has trouble reading gift cards. It doesn’t do accounts receivable/payable though you can export easily to QuickBooks. It is limited in how it can check out items that need to be weighed. However, don’t let these limitations deter you from considering ShopKeep as these features are slated to be added in the very near future.

ShopKeep gets raves for its support. You receive free email, web chat and phone help with a subscription. It also offers a knowledge base, blog and regular webinars.

Best of all, the software is regularly updated with additional features based on feedback from their over 3,000 merchants.

Will it Fit Your Budget?

Monthly subscriptions are based on the number of registers. You can sign up for a free 30-day trial that requires no credit card.

Is it For You?

If you are a small retailer or quick serve restaurant owner who wants an easy-to-use, affordable POS and tracking system for your business, ShopKeep is definitely worth a look.

If you like this article, follow us on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and grab our GetApp.com blogfeed