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I'm starting up a lawn mowing service, and I want to know if there is any free software, where I can track sales, customers, expenses ect. It doesn't need to be feature-crazy as my business will be very small, does anyone know of such a software? And I would prefer if it wasn't a free trial or something like that. |
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There aren't many free options beyond doing it yourself (ie Excel/Paper) but some to consider:
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If this is a small lawn mowing service with a few transactions a week, you might get by with paper and pencil, or a suitable financial template for the free OpenOffice spreadsheet program. You can do a lot with simple tools like that, and learning all the accounting principles behind fancier packages would be time-consuming. If your business gets too big and complicated for that, see if GnuCash will do what you need. There's a review that's worth reading here. |
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If you are handy with Excel you can not only use free templates for invoices and similar forms but also find some pretty decent calculators for sales, expenses, etc. This is sometimes better than downloading software, even if it is free, because you can make your own edits to fit your particular needs. I often use Excel to test ideas such as, "What would happen if I increase sales 5% a month for a year?". It is extremely powerful, flexible and easy to use. |
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I find these quite useful:
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Try wave accounting (http://waveaccounting.com/), it's free. |
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@Ratz, well as the software developer I would have to ask what is my reason for writing the software? This isn't to shoot you down it is to open the discussion ... Either you are paying me or advertisers are paying me to get in contact with you, or its a problem I have and need solved myself ... either way my guys and I have to eat ... so your not likely to find a GOOD freeware option available you for non-techie items. A few other people have put up "free for the first X users" which is your best choice early on, but be careful. Longer term, in 3 months to 2 years you will be hesitant to move off them but will be "stuck" with what they offer. My advice is look at these offering BUT imagine yourself in 10 years with X staff under you ... is the software going to scale to this point? If it is then go for it, pay them when you grow big enough, everybody wins. If not keep looking for a while longer before settling on the "best of what is available" Or if you can afford it, look at the next level up, products you have to a little bit for on day one but that will allow you to scale to 50 / 100 people effortlessly. BTW ... when you do decide on one, I would love to hear about it here ... |
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