Chances are you started your company because you love what you do. You opened your doors because you have a solid product that you believe in.  You probably did not start a business because your paperwork abilities were unmatched.  Paperwork is an essential and necessary evil for any business owner and accurate invoicing cannot be ignored. We all need cash flow to keep our businesses adrift, so utilizing a good invoicing system can help us keep cash in the bank and our clients happy!

Invoicing help online

Using an online invoicing service is a viable option for business owners who require a quicker, more reliable way, and often-automatic means to invoice their clients. There are a multitude of available online options to choose from that can take that tiresome task of paperwork off your plate. Below we’ll examine just 3 of the possibilities available:

A free but powerful invoicing service

Sometimes the word “free” is synonymous with “not very good.” Fortunately, that is not the case with the free system, BillingBoss. Appropriate for most small businesses that want to automatically invoice customers on a monthly basis and periodic once-off invoicing, BillingBoss packs a huge punch at no cost!

A power tool

Next let’s examine AcceptPay. Developed and run by American Express, AcceptPay is a very powerful service that connects with QuickBooks, enables online payments, and has a wider array of invoicing options. At the fairly low monthly price of $30, this is a great option for those companies that want a more robust service.

Invoicing for the tech-savvy

Lastly we’ll look at the most customizable option of the bunch, BambooInvoice. This open source program is hosted on your own servers and can be easily customized for your business’ needs. So if you require more control and are somewhat tech-savvy, BambooInvoice might be your best choice.

These are just a few of the available options online. Most services are free or exceptionally cost-effective. If you need to take the reigns on your invoicing process, consider using an online solution.

Becoming greener is on many people’s agendas these days.
Whether the intention is to save money or reduce the impact to the environment, this is true not just for individuals, but many high-tech companies as well. A necessity to understanding how to conserve energy is becoming aware of the aspects of your home or business that consume the most energy.

At the CEATEC conference this month in Japan, Toshiba and Intel announced a few of their upcoming plans to better allow companies to keep track of their energy usage. In this “Green Age,” it’s no surprise to see major players in the technology world coming forward with big developments that allow more regulation and monitoring of the amount of energy being used. Here are some of the ecologically-forward changes and additions these two companies announced they will be implementing in 2012.

Intel

PC users will be able to monitor the energy consumption of their PC with the application Intel has developed. With an easy to read dashboard where the data is organized and displayed in graphs, charts, and statistics, you will be able to much more easily see how your computer is using energy.

Toshiba

You may have read that Toshiba recently acquired Landish Gyr, a company that specializes in smart-meter tech, Toshiba is utilizing this as part of a “smart home” offering. This will allow individuals to more easily monitor the energy consumption throughout their homes. They are also developing cloud technology for a number of verticals, including city infrastructure and health companies.

Japanese technology companies are currently highly dedicated to monitoring energy consumption. That being said, it is interesting that many companies in the US are pulling away from this. Microsoft and Google are just two examples. Microsoft announced in June that they are discontinuing their energy-monitoring service called Hohm. While Google announced it is taking a break from the green game by shutting down Google
Powermeter.

Will the green technology world head in the direction of energy monitoring or something else entirely? If you have any speculation or ideas on the direction this may take; please share them with us.

Disasters can happen to any organization and they come in many forms and severities. They can be everything from a natural disaster, to a well-meaning employee accidently downloading a destructive virus, to something essential getting mistakenly deleted. These what-ifs can keep you up at night, so for your own reassurance develop a disaster recovery plan.

Decide What’s Important

First off, figure out what data is the most essential to get your company back up and running. What information needs to be backed up and saved and what can you afford to lose? This will help you determine what you need to back up. Choosing an online provider or storing your data in the cloud can be the best way to ensure you can access your data quickly.

Make a Plan

The second step is deciding the steps that must be taken to get your company back on its feet as quickly as possible. Think about the worst possible scenario and how to recover from that. Which systems must be recovered first and what technology will be required to do this?

Know Your Workflows

I’m sure you have the big picture of your company processes, but how about all the day-to-day processes that you don’t have memorized? Ask your employees to document their workflows and the actual tasks they preform. By doing this, if something does happen, anyone can pick up where they left off and nothing gets looked over.

Decide Who is in Charge

Depending on the kind of disaster you go through, your employees could panic.  Before this happens, select one levelheaded person in the organization to be “in charge” of the disaster recovery plan. They should know the plan as well as you do and possibly have helped you create it. This is the person you turn to for execution of the plan, so that you can be the strong leader your employees need at a time such as this.

People often think disasters can’t happen to them, but we never know what could happen in the future! So it’s important to have a plan in place just in case. This will help put you and your employees at ease.

The name Segway is synonymous with tech failure. After all, inventor Dean Kamen once thought that his two-wheeled scooters would become an alternative to cars. He pictured a future in which people buzzed to the supermarket, library, or work on their Segway PT scooters.

That vision hasn’t quite come to fruition and it’s pretty rare that you see someone utilizing a Segway. They are still around and have recently celebrated their 10th anniversary. So while they may be termed a tech failure, they’re still alive and kicking.

How do they work though? Below we’ll examine the tech powering the Segway.

Powering the Segway

Each Segway PT is powered by electric motors which are, in turn, fueled by phosphate-based lithium-ion batteries. Segway owners can charge these batteries by plugging their Segways into common household electrical sockets. The device doesn’t fall over thanks to its two computers loaded with proprietary software, pair of tilt sensors, and five gyroscopic sensors.

Making the Segway Move

The sensors register when the user shifts their body weight to switch the direction and speed of movement. Put simply, when you want to go forward at a quicker pace, you would pull the handlebars closer to the body and lean forward slightly. The Segway’s present top speed is 12.5 mph and is ideal for areas with plenty of wide, flat sidewalk space.

Lowered Expectations

The hype was pretty big around the Segway when it was first announced, but it never quite lived up to it all.  Some even predicted that the Segway would become more popular than the Internet overall!

In the 10 years since its release, the Segway has not completely failed, but its strange overall look and goofy riding style has made it nearly impossible to reach its expected level of success.

As a small business, there is a good chance you have to manage projects and people that are not always located in one area.  So how do you maintain these projects and off location employees while still having the capacity to share updates, documents, and assign tasks?

Project management solutions

Conveniently enough, many project management tools can be found that make managing all of these things easier.  Using these tools will assist your small business in organizing projects and keeping employees and clients informed. Here are a few available options:

Basecamp

Basecamp remains one of the most popular online project management tools for entrepreneurs. There’s a simple reason for this: It offers an easily understood interface that lets you quickly manage any of your small business projects. You can access the system to communicate with project managers, delegate new tasks, give your okay to submitted documents and marketing materials, or schedule meetings. You can even enable your clients to access Basecamp to allow them to offer feedback on the work that you and your team have already carried out.

Quickbase

Quickbase has a lot to recommend it, not least of all the fact that the maker of Intuit business software is behind this program. Quickbase performs the same general tasks as Basecamp. However, it offers a unique version of a simple interface and is equally useful for both large and modest small businesses.

Huddle

For the more creative projects, like marketing and advertising, Huddle is perfect. Certainly one of this tool’s perks is its live-conferencing tool. If you need to collect the team in a quick and easy fashion, this tool lets you, regardless of where your team members might be.

Deskaway

This is a good tool for updating team members on a projects progression. Easily generate blog posts, congratulatory messages, and quick updates.

Project management tools are consistently getting updates and new options are becoming available.  Each of these project management tools can give you ways to strengthen your business’ ability to maintain organization and create a great experience for your clients. Keep your eye out for the tool that will best suit your business’ needs.

The promise of a paperless office has existed for years. Unfortunately, most offices must still use paper regularly. Is the paperless office just a pipe dream that we will not attain?  In a nutshell, no. We’re constantly moving toward paperless offices, but it’s just taking us much longer than we had hoped.

The advantages of paper

As nice as it would be to have everything in digital format, paper remains useful. The main reason it’s still around is that paper is portable. You can easily scribble a note and slide it into your pocket. Even the most eco-friendly offices still find uses for paper. If you’re an editor, you probably know how hard it is to edit a digital copy. Many people would rather proofread important documents in hard-copy format. It is sometimes simpler to spot mistakes when the file is printed out.  

Less paper than ever

Paper has become less and less important.  Quite a few past paper processes are now able to be performed on a computer. Team communication is dealt with via email. Even instant messaging has taken the place of paper notes to coworkers. Smartphones and tablets have taken over the dependence on a physical calendar/schedule system. If you take a look back at how far business has come in the past decade, it’s pretty clear that paper, while not fully obsolete, is no longer king.

The future

It’s obvious that offices of the future will rely on less paper than even we do now, but will paper ever really go the way of the milkman? Maybe. Some people still prefer having their milk delivered from a local dairy but most are content to pick it up from the store when they need it.

Paper will most likely go the same route and it will be a personal preference as to how much paper is consumed in the office. As many of our business processes rely on digital solutions, there will always be a select few who prefer good old-fashioned pen and paper.

It feels like iPhones can do everything but take out the garbage. Besides the obvious phone calls, we can monitor the latest movies and TV shows, and update our social sites. They store our music and give us directions to navigate to the nearest shopping mall. You might think you already know all your iPhone can do but here are a few lesser-known tricks you with thankful to learn.

Saving Time

If you find it hard to type a Web address on the small on-screen keyboard, before clicking in the address bar on your browser, turn your iPhone to a horizontal position. The keyboard will now be larger, making it easier to type an “e” and not a “w”. Here is a timesaving tip for making phone calls. When browsing the Web, if you come across a telephone number you need to call, simply tap the telephone number on the screen and your phone will call it.

More Efficient Typing

This tip will help you type faster: When you tap the space bar twice at the end of a sentence, your phone will add a period and automatically capitalize the next word you type. If you’re a individual who uses a great deal of special characters, it’s easy to access the menu by touching and holding a letter on your screen until the special character options appear. Then simply select the character you want and insert it.

Quick Printing, Personalized Entertainment

This tip is for those of you that own an AirPrint-enabled printer. It is simple to print documents, emails, and Web pages from your iPhone with this device. To print a Web page merely touch the “Action” icon and choose “Print,” this will send the information to your printer. Printing an email is just as easy; tap “Reply” and select “Print.”

It’s simple, too, to build your own customized music playlist. From the iPod app, hit the “Playlists” icon and then tap the “Add Playlist” icon. Give this new list a name, and tap any video or song on your iPhone to add it to his new playlist.