Question by Katie 444: Small Business Software HELP!!?
I am trying to research small business software for my company to use. We are looking for a complete software which will allow us to keep a database of our customers, dealers, product serial numbers, inventory, production testing, etc. Does anyone know of a good/reliable software which is flexible to meet our needs? Most of the stuff I seem to be finding are not complete soft wares, but individual ones. (e.g, software just for accounting, software just for inventory, software just for clients, etc.)
Any help is much appreciated!
Best answer:
Answer by Ravyn
Try Quicken, it will also help if you have Excel in your main software.
What do you think? Answer below!
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#1 written by Heavy Pen June 7th, 2012 at 04:28
You will be lucky if you get half of what you pay for. They all have issues. You are doing the right thing by asking. The issues with software is that they are designed and developed in one environment. Moved to Alpha testing on different systems. For the most part those systems are not identical, different stuff on each system. Next comes the Beta testing, same thing, bugs are worked out in those environments. Then it gets released to the Market. Each Can (canned software is the old term) is installed at the Users sites that all have different stuff running on their systems. What might work on someone Else’s system might be just fine. Put it in a different environment, do they know? Make sure you can take it back for a full refund #1. Number 2, is the support of the product any good, do the phone people know their job?
With that said:
Answer these questions:
What is your budget?
How many users?
How long do you intend that resource to fit your needs? (Life Cycle)
What is your expected growth over the period of that Lifecycle?
How much is in your budget to
1. System Integration/Installing
2. In-house testing and issue resolution.
3. Developing a SOP or defining your Business Process Management in relation to resource utilization.
4. Do you have 10-20 percent of your budget for Murphy?
For picking a Can off the shelf, I’ve been out of the market for 10 years or so and do not know what is there now. Maybe Ralph Nader can help you there.
Windows Office Suite is a good product, yet, development of a well designed application that is multi-functional, more than you want to spend. I’ve done a couple applications, it takes time and you know what they say about time in Business.
Figure out the size and future/expected growth of your operations. Then let your fingers do the walking for shopping. Look at it as window shopping from home.
Think about what I’ve mentioned above, and you should do all right.
Last thing:
If the vendor does not offer a complete money back guarantee, then that means that they do not have confidence in their product. Then again, how much should they pay you to find out that their stuff doesn’t cut the mustard? Wow, it only took 4 weeks to set it up and test only to find out? What budget?
Good luck, I’m retired at 53.
#2 written by richard June 7th, 2012 at 05:09
Hi,
I think for your work all you really need is Microsoft Access Database.
You can use this software to track basically any thing you want. The only thing you have to do with this software is design your own tables, and then use the form builder to add/edit/delete records.
And for better analysis you can generate graphs, and much more.