Free small business expense tracking tool
By Karen Post, on September 14, 2010
moneytrackin’ is a free online webapp that allows you to track all your expenses and income easily and without effort, thus allowing you to have a clear view of your financial situation. It intends to be a simple yet powerful online budget management tool.
Main features
- Control as many accounts/projects as you want
- Log all your transactions (expenses/income) and tag them to organize them better
- Keep informed of your financial situation at a glance, viewing at any time where your money goes
- Share tips with other users and take advantage of the community knowledge to save money
- Anonymity, we respect your privacy
- Sharing budgets and collaborative working of many people together on the same account
- Public API to allow the integration with third party applications
No cost accounting, timetracking tool for small biz
By Karen Post, on September 14, 2010
www.cashboard.com
Time tracking, expenses, invoicing, estimates, and online payments done your way. Cashboard does it all, and does it for free.
- Send PDF invoices, estimates, and receipts.
- Accept payments online – no more waiting for checks.
- Track expenses and re-bill them to your clients.
- Track billable and non-billable hours for yourself, your employees, and contractors.
- Kee p your clients in the loop and let them know where their money is being spent.
- Fully customize Cashboard’s appearance to look like your own project management and billing solution.
- Integrate smoothly with 37signals’ Basecamp
- No software to install, no money down,
- no long-term contracts to sign – ever.
- Free version
- $0 for life
- 1 Active Employee
- 1 Active Client per month
- 2 Active Projects
- Unlimited Estimates
- Brandable interface
- Bank-grade 128 bit SSL encryption
Simple and free bookkeeping tool
By Karen Post, on September 14, 2010
FreshBooks provides fast and simple invoicing and time tracking services that help you manage your business.
Secure, web based tool branded with your business name.
- Invite contractors to join your team and track time on projects. Receive their invoices all in one place. Logins for contractors and staff.
- Share documents with your staff and clients, set access levels to restrict who can see what.
- Create support tickets to help manage additional time spent with customers.
- Send invoices by the mail prepared by the FreshBooks team, just purchase stamp credits. Invoices are sent via first class business mail within one business day.
- Keep track of your expenses, for both projects and yourself. Easily re-bill clients on project expenses.
- iPhone app for remote use
Fresh Books has tons of add ons in the following categories: mobile, time tracking, project management, accounting, expenses, CRM, forms and appointments, marketing, eCommerce and POS, Google document sharing, WebHooks, payment gateway, electronic signatures and customer support
FreshBooks has 5 different paid plan options and 1 free plan. The free plan has many bells and whistles, but you are limited to 3 clients but you can invoice them as much as you need. Also, emails sent from the system will have an added signature at the very bottom that reads: “Save time invoicing with FreshBooks (www.freshbooks.com)“.
Anxiously awaiting the Square: One free biz find we want in a hurry
By Karen Post, on June 29, 2010
In December 2009, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey announced his new company, Square, will allow merchants and individuals to accept secure payment from credit (and other) cards using a mobile phone. The idea is to accept payment through your cell phone in 10 seconds. Basically, it’s a little square dongle that plugs into your smartphone and allows you to swipe credit cards. Square may be exactly what you need for your growing business. Not only is it convenient and portable, but the startup costs are much lower than traditional setups.
So if you’ve got an iPhone or Android OS smartphone, you can get Square, and swipe a client’s credit card anywhere, any time. Sad thing is, for all the good, there is a caveat: it’s not available yet. Square was originally scheduled to be released “early 2010,” but that obviously hasn’t happened. As of last week, CEO Jack Dorsey says “square is in the home stretch,” and we say “hurry it up Jack.” Keep an eye out, this could be your best free biz find of the year.
Free tax forms and filing
By Karen Post, on March 6, 2010
http://www.irs.gov/efile/article/0,,id=118986,00.html
The Free File program provides free federal income tax preparation and electronic filing for eligible taxpayers through a partnership between the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Free File Alliance LLC, a group of private sector tax software companies.
FREE time tracking and invoice software
By Karen Post, on February 5, 2010
Sloppy finance practices can kill a business. Smart finance tools can find new profits.
What’s it going to be for you?
I love creativity. Record keeping and finances to me are in the same category as rats and roaches. Yuck. But I’ve also set a standard of living that requires more than just love and creativity to keep it all going, especially my current world. I run two companies and must maximize my time and resources. The only way I can do it is with efficient, easy help and resources.
I’ve used a lot of time tracking methods in my life including ink scribbles on my hand and some very complex computer programs. This software is the easiest, most flexible I’ve ever used. And you can try it for FREE for 30 days, no software to download and no credit card required. Beyond that they enhanced package options for different degrees of needs and team sizes.
FREE distance communication and collaboration software
And they have another cool software called Co-op, that allows work groups to coordinate projects and communicate at a distance completely free. I’ll be featuring this in a future FREE Biz Findz dedicated to collaboration resources.
Cost: FREE
Oddpodz review:
I am not a left-brained person and setting up my companies on Harvest was fast and intuitive. You can track by person or by task, monitor time, manage projects and then create easy invoices. This product is ideal for professional service providers. Even if you don’t run a business, they let you track time for one in the forever free program, you could track time sent on volunteer work or some hobby passion too.
As a bonus, the folks behind Harvest (Iridesco) sponsor the Harvest New Founders program, where they supply promising new businesses with free software, advice and an interview on our site to help spread the word, all in the spirit of supporting entrepreneurship.
FREE business expense tracking tool
By Karen Post, on January 15, 2010
Xpenser is a free business expense tracking tool that allows you to record expenses from any device – Email, SMS, Voice (call and say your expense), IM, Twitter, iPhone, or blackberry your expenses and have them automatically recorded and managed on Xpenser.com . Xpenser supports mileage tracking, automated currency conversion, budgets and balances, automated file-to-report, and a variety of other features. The base Xpenser offering is and will remain free, and we will be offering Premium (paid) accounts with extra features in 2009. Users who sign up before Premium accounts go live receive a discount.
Cost: FREE
Oddpodz review:
This is almost magical. I called a number from my phone, said “expenser,” and then said “taxi $34.50 from airport to Boston office” and within a few minutes was in my expense report. Same thing with shooting an email, within minutes it was there and ready to move to a report. And for those of you who like texting, tweeting or IMing, you can do it manage your expenses in your favorite communication way. Again the basic offering will always be free, so if nothing else you can keep track of your black shoe purchases by month.
What's your business worth? Here’s the tool to find out.
By Karen Post, on December 5, 2009
According to a recent survey, almost 66% of all business owners do not know how to quantify or calculate the value of their own businesses. BizEquity makes this knowledge readily accessible, drawing on our database of more than 11 million businesses to create an estimated business valuation for your own venture during the key phases of its life cycle: from raising capital to succession planning. The result is a better understanding of your business and how it stacks up to competitors down the street or across the country.
Business owners can also use BizEquity to create a free, customized business valuation that allows comparison against industry benchmarks in an easy-to-understand format. A custom valuation also helps keep relevant information handy when communicating with industry experts and peers via their BizEquity blog.
Cost: FREE
Oddpodz review:
This is certainly a handy tool, but if you are a pre-revenue company you won’t find it valuable because it won’t work. It’s great for traditional businesses, assets, revenues etc. Hopefully, all of us social media companies will be in that league soon.
Track your finances
By Karen Post, on November 10, 2009
Enjoy a free website enabling you to stay on track with your business and personal finances.
A FREE copy of Understanding Your Financials
By Karen Post, on October 11, 2009
Get this FREE e-booklet called “Keeping Score” on the bottom line your small business financial reports and more. Just shoot fellow businesswomen and entrepreneur Ruth King and it’s yours. rking[at]ontheribbon[dot]com
Cost: FREE
Oddpodz review:
I like this e-booklet because it is written by a small business owner. It also simplifies the basics of finance and is an important must read for anyone thinking about jumping into entrepreneurial land.
