Free software for small businesses - OpenOffice & LibreOffice

If you work with the Internet much you've probably already heard of open source software.  If not, you are in for a treat!  Open source software is usually free and is not owned by one company so there aren't proprietary issues involved.

I've used OpenOffice at work and home and other then not being compatible with Works for Windows (the home version of MS Office) it works great.  It includes a word processor (like Word), database (like Access), spreadsheet (like Excel), drawing, and presentation (like PowerPoint).  One of my favorite features of OpenOffice's Writer is that you can save documents into PDF format.  That is both a convenience and a money saver!  OpenOffice, while being open source, still has some oversight by Oracle.    For small businesses that expect to grow, OpenOffice has more capability for scaling up because Oracle offers a business version of the suite that includes commercial support for $49.95 per computer.

LibreOffice is newer and is strictly an open community open source project.   But it has more language options (as in foreign languages) than OpenOffice.  See this extensive review for specific details about both.

The upshot for me is that either one would be good enough for now.  Since my start-up is probably going to take at least a couple of years to get going, it's particularly important to keep my costs down.  I imagine that's true for many start-ups.  I can always switch to the commercial version of OpenOffice or MS Office when the business is running a significant profit.

Sources for free business forms

There are a few places that offer business forms for free which saves entrepreneurs time and money.

Entrepreneur's FormNet - Many of the forms are free, but any labeled as 'Premium' are provided from a secondary site, Docstoc, for a fee.

Free Business Forms from Suite101 (and sample letters) 

Top 10 Places for Free Business Forms Online from Home Business Wiz

IRS Small Business Forms and Publications - All tax related.  Forms for business structures.

Microsoft

Office Depot

Small Business Administration

The Small Business Development Center for your area will have free forms on site.  At least the one near me  here in Oregon does.  Since they are convenient to me I can pick up any forms I need (or even better a CD full of them) whenever I go over to the office.

State governments provide a number of forms for small business so it pays to check your state's official site and search for 'small business' or related topics such as incorporation, licenses, state taxes, trade names, etc.

Other possible sources:

• Check your city's web site or city hall for forms related to your business, especially for licenses and taxes.
• Check professional associations related to your business, they may offer free forms online related to your business. For example, the National Press Photographers Association offers forms related to photography.
• Local public libraries, especially large well funded ones where staff have time to create lists of links.  But many will also purchase books that may contain blank business forms.  When in doubt chat with your local reference librarian about what if available at your local library.  An example is the New York Public Library's site.

SCORE

While I've registered I haven't dealt much with the SCORE site yet.  This organization sounds pretty good because they offer mentors, local workshops and events (if you are lucky enough to live in the right location), lots of targeted articles, and some online tools.  Unfortunately they don't have a chapter in my town; in fact the nearest one is in Eugene, Oregon, which is a good 2 1/2 hour drive from my location.  But given you can use some of their resources online it still looks pretty useful.

What makes them attractive to me is that they are a non-profit whose purpose is to support and educate current and potential small business entrepreneurs including providing confidential business counseling, and at no charge.  The confidentiality and being free are the most important elements, although there are others.  Since I currently have a full time job it's going to be a while before I have my business up and running and making enough to cover my business expenses.  Plus I don't have prior business experience so I know I'm especially vulnerable to making costly mistakes.  Lastly, I have never been fond of needlessly reinventing the wheel in order to complete a goal.  Especially since I'm not going to have any spare time to waste!

Business Plan - outlining

I did write a draft of the first section of the SBA business plan template that I discussed yesterday.  Then I skipped through all the other sections.  At the end SBA's template generated a general outline with a cover sheet, table of contents, and what I had written so far.  For whatever reason their generated plan didn't have any paragraph breaks!  Fortunately I had already copied and pasted into MSWord (along with their section and review bullets) what I had written.

I've gone on to another section at the SBA site, the Essential Elements of a Good Business Plan, to get more information about business plans.  Looking under each of the sections listed there gives a lot more insight into what I should be writing.  There are also a couple more parts to the business plan under this page, with 9 sections to the template generator's 7.  The template generator is briefer and more general in scope.  This is probably fine if you are just trying to get started.  In fact, they offer an even briefer list of elements if that works better for you. 

I've found that just copying and pasting the whole mess, both the outline bullets from the template and the more extensive and verbose sections under the 'Essential Elements' page, into one document works for me.  I'm now going through and replacing their text with my proposed company information a bit at a time.  I just have to keep in mind this doesn't have to be perfect yet since I hope to find a mentor at my local SBDC (see prior posts) to go over this draft with me.