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Simple Software Can Help Your Business Starting a new small business is one of the riskiest things you can do. According to the Small Business Administration, fully half of all new small businesses shut their doors within two years. The reasons aren't mysterious. One is that many new business owners overestimate the market for their services or products or don't understand what's required to start and run a business profitably. Another killer is they simply don't have the right tools to keep things running like clockwork. Of course, there are many reasons why businesses cease to exist, just as there are many reasons people start them. A new study conducted by the Gallup Organization for Wells Fargo Bank and the National Federation of Independent Business found that of the approximately 1.7 million businesses that stopped functioning under their current form in 1995, 27.5% were sold or transferred, 55.7% simply became inactive, 16.4% closed and 0.4% shut down for some other reason. In the month prior to ceasing operation, more than three-quarters of those that were sold or transferred reported a positive cash flow, vs. about a third of those that became inactive and about half of those that simply closed. All told, 51.1% of all the businesses in the study had positive cash flow the month before they stopped. The demographic profile of the person most likely to stop a business in 1995 was a white male between the ages of 40 and 49, with that group accounting for about 30% of all business stops. All told, males accounted for 64.8% of business stops, females for 34.8%. Breaking it down by age, those in the 25029 age group accounted for 12.2% of business stops in 1995, 30-34 for 14%, 35-39 for 12.8%, 40-44 for 15.6%, 45-49 for 15.6%, 50-54 for 9.2%, 55-59 for 6.2%, 60-64 for 2.9%, and 65-plus for 5.8%. Among the businesses stopped that year, almost 75% were single-owner operations, 14.6% had two owners, 4.7% had three owners and 5.8% had four or more owners. It's a safe bet that most readers of this publication are less interested in why businesses stop than in making sure their business continues to run--successfully. I've run across far too many entrepreneurs who think all they need is a PC and a copy of Microsoft Office to make that happen. (Come to think of it, some Microsoft ads give that impression, too!) But an office suite merely provides the raw material to modify these tools to fit your needs by creating invoices, business plans, employee databases, time cards, fax sheets and so on.HANDY ADD-ON Now, thanks to the Microsoft Small Business Pack, you don't have to. This handy add-on for Microsoft Office for Windows 95 is packed with prefab templates, documents, databases, and other tools that turn Office into an electronic office manager, so you can concentrate on other things--like staying in business. The Microsoft Small Business Pack installs easily and is accessible from the Microsoft Office toolbar. Click an icon and you can access a comprehensive, interactive help system; hundreds of Word templates and forms; Excel worksheets; PowerPoint presentations; and Access databases arranged by category. Categories include financial, management, marketing, operations, planning and sales. Click one and Explorer window displays the tools, ready for loading. Microsoft's Small Business Pack is loaded with prefab business tools like an Excel balance sheet, which is ready to be filled in. Best of all, the Pack's help system has a wealth of information about starting and running a small business. Along with general information, you get advice on business development (business planning, raising money and goals), marketing and sales, operations, administration and financial issues.
Within each topic you can "drill down" for more detailed information such as legal problems, insurance, obtaining capital, promotion tips, accounting, budgeting tips and more. However, treatment is often superficial. This problem plagues any package that tries to have all things to all small business people. Still, it's a handy compendium, and because the Pack takes advantage of Windows 95's interactive help system, you can fill out checklists on the spot, branch to another topic and launch a form or database tied to the topic. But the core of the Pack is its huge collection of forms and templates and its prefab business databases for Microsoft Access. You don't need to be a Microsoft Office expert to use them. If you don't need to do much customization, you can just follow the on-screen instructions and start running your business. The forms are generally limited to a single Office application, but good use is made of OLE. For example, the planning section offers an Excel worksheet with a typical business plan. It has charts (five-year forecast, assumptions, break-even analysis, start-up costs and sales and income forecasts) and a Word template that embeds the various worksheets within it. But the template is also set up with a sample outline and text for completing a business plan. It's not BusinessPlan Pro, but it's cheaper. EASY TO USE The forms are also easy to use, thanks to a custom toolbar that guides you through the pages. Unfortunately, they don't explain the data you'r expected to enter. You can find this information in the Help system, but yo have to dig for it. Another quirk: You can save a customized worksheet as a document, but you can't save a Word template as a document. The most useful parts of the Pack are the business databases designed for Access. Are you clueless about how to design and build a relational database? The business database is set up to track almost every part of your business, with relevant fields linked appropriately. Thus, before you assign that saleswoman to a client account, the program first tells you to enter her in the employee section of the database. The business transactions section of the database is already set up to handle invoices, accounts, payments, purchase orders, receiving, requests for quotations, shipping orders and vendors. For example, in the sales section, you can set up customer profiles and products, process sales orders, generate supporting charts and reports and spit out shipping orders to record items sent out. The time billing section handles service providers and lets you record clients and projects, generate status reports and track employees assigned to those projects. You can also monitor billing rates, expense statements and invoices. There's a lot of automation. With a single click, you can turn a job applicant into an employee. If you open a form that requires information, Access tells you which forms to use. The forms are confusing in a few places, but the field descriptions really help.
So who should buy the Microsoft Small Business Pack? If you're running a sophisticated business look elsewhere. The Pack doesn't try to do a complete job of accounting, nor does it offer industry-specific tools like construction estimating. But for the small business owner with a modest budget and a copy of Microsoft Office, the Microsoft Small Business Pack is a remarkable value. Even if you know quite a bit about the Office applications and have the time to build your own forms, the Pack's forms are a great place to start. Heck, I've started using them myself, and I've been running my own business for 12 years. It's important to remember that the right software can be a very useful tool in running your business. But it's also important to remember that it's only a tool. When it comes to insuring the success of your own business, there are no substitutes for hard work and dedication. David Plotkin, author of "Using Lotus Approach for Windows" is a data administrator in Walnut Creek, CA.
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