Archive for March, 2009:
Freight Broker Entrepreneur Business Start up Guide No 1328
Getting business to come to you
Getting business to come to you
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars The only book you’ll ever need!
As an M.B.A with a Marketing specialization, and having read tons of books on Selling and Marketing, I would recommend this book hands down for any one wanting to learn the basics, as well as to brush up their skills and become adept at selling their product or service. I am starting out on my own and this one book has proved very handy. The Edwards truly understand the nuances and difficulties of selling, especially for those on their own and and have analyzed some of the problems that typically inhibit people from succeeding even with the right plan.
If you work from home, definitely get the Working from Home book by the same authors, and read them both. I have recommended this book to many friends.
Particular points of interest for me was the repeated emphasis to specialize, to choose a niche, and avoid the trap of being a Jack of all trades…….too many options make most of us decide we could do several different things – b’cos we are good at many things or b’cos we want more options for revenue. The authors spell out how this would be very much like shooting ourselves in the foot, and help you shape your strategy and reason things out for yourself.
To summarize, this books not only helps you get business, it also helps you choose your strategies, from a clever business name to finding a niche. Get this book now!
1 Star Rubbish
Lots of talk about impractical business ideas and promotion methods. Hundreds of pages of empty talk.
5 Stars A wealth of information
This has got to be one of the best marketing books out there for small businesses. The authors really have a good understanding of what it’s like to be starting out, and the mistakes that can be made — and how to do it RIGHT instead!
My only complaint is it is a bit wordy at times. One good example serves the purpose, and we are given 5. So skim on once you get the point. There is a ton of meat here. Great great stuff. Well worth the money spent.
Edit: March 2008 – I have to add something that is really getting to be a problem for this book: it was published in 1998. The resources it lists are often 15 years old or more. I hope the authors will consider a third edition soon. I really would no longer recommend this book, as it is just too out of date. A good used copy might be worthwhile, but skip the resources. “Modem a photo”? Wow.
5 Stars Marketing essentials for your small business.
Another great book for a small business looking to establish themselves and learn the essentials of marketing. Getting Business to Come to You focuses your attention on the most effective, low-cost methods of marketing and also gives very useful technical details on the process of creating your own marketing materials.
The four most effective, low-cost marketing methods are
1. Word of mouth. To have a business thrive and grow with only word of mouth marketing should be the goal of every entrepreneur. Not that you can’t give it a kick with some other methods when you want, but what sweet bliss it is to have your customers and new ones beating a path to your door with no effort on your part except your great reputation and service. The key is to get yourself into the mind of the people that matter…your customers. Focus your efforts on those people that will buy from you and get them to give you referrals. Everything else you do is in order to reach this goal.
2. Public relations. PR is your ticket to being established as a leader in your industry. Create a publicity kit and get the media’s attention. Use your publicity to get others to recognize your name and know that you are the expert in your field.
3. Direct marketing. Use it to control how often your business enters into the mind of your customer. A monthly newsletter or a quarterly sale or discount, that they are alerted to via direct mail or email, will keep you in their minds and keep them telling their friends about you.
4. Inventive advertising. New customers will be attracted to your business if you are effective at advertising. Being inventive is the key. Your copy has to stand out from the rest and you have to be creative. Experiment with different media such as bulletin boards, radio and TV shows, yellow pages, trade directories, etc.
This book has helpful lists of when a particular marketing technique is right for your business and when you’re just wasting money. It helps you tailor your marketing campaign to your needs. I especially enjoyed the technical details on such topics as building a publicity kit and writing and designing advertising copy that sells. Other topics were detailed as well, but these stood out as the most important for my business at this time. Read the book and see which ones stand out for you!
While reading Getting Business to Come to You I often found myself putting the book down to implement some of the things I had learned before moving on.
–
Cat Cromar
www.astartuplife.com/category/book-reviews
5 Stars Excellent reference
I ordered this book to expand my writing business. In the first 20 pages of it I’ve already found practical things to implement…and a couple places I was headed in possibly the wrong direction. In skimming the rest of the book it’s more of the same – totally applicable not only for expanding a business but equally valuable if you’re STARTING a business. The other thing is while many books cover just one kind of business – the tips here could be used equally by pet services, accounting, writing and other businesses. Work smarter. This is also not just for sales jobs. With promotion ideas you can weave it you can promote without several thousand dollars in revenue to do so.
Tags: Best Marketing, Book Hands, Business Ideas, Business Name, Different Things, Edwards, Friends, Good Understanding, Jack Of All Trades, Many Things, Marketing Books, Niche, Nuances, Points Of Interest, Promotion Methods, Rubbish, Small Businesses, Specialization, Working From Home, Would Recommend This Book
The Bootstrap Entrepreneur Everything You Really Need to Know About Starting Your Own Business
The Bootstrap Entrepreneur Everything You Really Need to Know About Starting Your Own Business
Microsoft Office Accounting Professional 2008
Microsoft Office Accounting Professional 2008

Microsoft Office Accounting Professional 2008 is a complete accounting solution designed for business owners, bookkeepers, and office managers in any company with up to 25 employees. It requires no accounting experience to use and works smoothly with the Microsoft Office programs you use every day. By organizing financial information in one place, you will get a complete view of your business and obtain valuable information for your interaction with customers. Office Accounting Professional 2008 includes comprehensive tools for managing your business finances more effectively so you can spend more time managing your business.
| Microsoft Office Accounting Professional 2008 top 10 benefits Office Accounting Professional 2008 is a complete accounting solution that helps small businesses more efficiently and effectively manage their business finances. Office Accounting Professional 2008 helps you save time on everyday tasks, work the way you want, and organize all your financial information in one place to get a complete view of your business, all with the familiar look and feel of the Microsoft Office system. Here are the top 10 ways Office Accounting Professional 2008 can help you be more productive. |
| Office Accounting Professional 2008 is easy to set up and use, just like other Microsoft Office programs. The Startup Wizard helps you get started quickly so that you can create your first invoice and are able to receive payments. The wizard imports your existing data from other programs such as Microsoft Office Excel, Microsoft Money, and Intuit QuickBooks so that you don’t have to start from scratch. The Resource Center offers a single location to access helpful information such as an accountant finder, product demonstrations, community tools, and other product resources |
| Office Accounting Professional 2008 simplifies everyday tasks: you enter data once and then reuse it across commonly used Microsoft Office programs, avoiding tedious reentry and errors. You can create quotes and later convert them into invoices with just one click. Now you can convert sales orders to purchase orders and automatically generate purchase orders based on inventory levels. Office Accounting Professional 2008 helps you conveniently manage payroll and track transactions as you enter information, significantly reducing the time spent on these tasks. You can also use online banking to receive payments, pay bills, and automatically reconcile bank accounts. |
| Because Office Accounting Professional 2008 works smoothly with Office Word, you can easily export quotes, sales orders, packing slips, invoices, and other information to Word with a click. You can also customize templates that come with Office Accounting Professional 2008 to create professional-looking materials and documents. Choose from dozens of industry templates and Office Accounting automatically configures itself to how you run your business. |
| Personalize your company home page to get a snapshot of information such as bank account balances, important reminders, and accounts receivable and payable on one screen. Use the Cash Flow Analyzer to track and forecast future cash flows to make better-informed business decisions. Create budgets and then run reports to compare forecasts to actuals. More than 70 predefined reports help you get critical financial information on aspects of your business such as sales, profit and loss, cash flow, item profitability, customer transactions, and much more. You can even customize these reports by setting filters, and get deeper insights into your business by using PivotTable dynamic views in Office Excel. |
| Using Office Accounting Professional 2008, you can easily create quotes, sales orders, invoices, purchase orders, reports, and more. You can customize forms to include relevant information fields and export these forms to Microsoft Office Word templates to sharpen the professional appearance of marketing materials and financial documents. You have the flexibility to create custom security roles and add or remove permissions to control employee access to sensitive information. |
| Payroll services for Office Accounting Professional 2008 enable you to process payroll and to calculate and file local, federal, and state taxes.1 Payroll for Office Accounting offers multiple payroll options to meet your specific needs, and you can even print your paychecks through Office Accounting Professional 2008. You can also import employee timesheets and post the payroll and tax information to your books. Get more information on the attractively priced Payroll services. |
| Office Accounting Professional 2008 helps you achieve more accurate and timely employee billing. Working with Office Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager, employees can mark appointments in their Outlook calendars as billable time and, with a single click, transfer that information to Office Accounting Professional 2008 to create invoices. Office Accounting Professional 2008 also enables you track revenues and expenses to monitor total job profitability, create multiple budgets, compare actual revenue to projected revenue, and compare invoices versus quotes for better business planning. |
| Using the Accountant Transfer Export Wizard, you can send your financial information to your accountant while you continue using Office Accounting Professional 2008 to run your day-to-day business. When your accountant is done updating the books, the changes get synchronized automatically. Microsoft Office Live can help you share information with security features with your accountant and others. The accountant also has the option of remotely accessing your financial information. |
| With Office Accounting Professional 2008, you can reach out to millions of potential customers on eBay. You can conveniently list items, check listing status, download orders, and receive payments in real time. After an item sells, all transaction records, including commissions and fees, are downloaded directly into Office Accounting Professional 2008, making both accounting and order processing more efficient. Support for multiple currencies enables you to buy or sell items from other countries. |
| Using Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, you can generate an invoice that includes an integrated PayPal option to help you get paid faster. Customers simply click the PayPal link in the invoice to pay. Office Accounting Professional 2008 also provides a credit card processing option that does not require expensive terminals or a dedicated phone line. And Office Accounting Professional 2008 provides easy access to Equifax credit report services to obtain a one-time credit report or ongoing credit monitoring to help you evaluate business risks and make better decisions. Learn more about Equifax services for Office Accounting Professional 2008. |
Office Accounting Professional 2008 includes new features to help you get started quickly, save time, sell online, and work more effectively with the Microsoft Office system. Key enhancements include:
- New–Spanish language edition. Manage your business in either Spanish or English. Switch between languages in just a few clicks, so you can manage your accounting, create invoices and print reports in the language of your choice.
- New–Office Accounting Resource Center. Get the most out of Office Accounting with demos, step-by-step guides, training videos and community forums, all conveniently available with one click in Office Accounting.
- New–Universal Import of Transactions. Import your existing financial data including transaction history from virtually any accounting package into Office Accounting via Microsoft Office Excel or CSV files.
- New–Budgeting tools. Easily create a budget in Office Accounting and track how your budget compares with your actual results.
- New–Bulk e-mail of documents. Mail merge Office Accounting data so you can email PDF or Word statements, invoices and other documents to multiple customers in one transaction.
- New–Scheduled Documents. Memorize your recurring transactions such as invoices or purchase orders to ensure nothing falls through the cracks. Recurring transactions appear as reminders on your company dashboard on the date you set.
- New–Convert sales orders into purchase orders. Save time and eliminate additional data entry by automatically generating a purchase order from a sales order.
- New–Re-order Inventory Automatically create purchase orders to replenish inventory that has fallen below a minimum level you set.
- Improved–Streamlined Microsoft Office Excel data import. No need to map fields from your spreadsheet to Office Accounting. Simply paste your accounting data into our preformatted Excel spreadsheet for easy import into Office Accounting.
- Improved–Business templates Choose from dozens of industry templates and Office Accounting automatically configures itself to how you run your business.
- Improved–Bulk processing of transactions. Process multiple transactions such as customer invoices, vendor payments or purchase orders all at once to save time.
- Improved–Enhanced reporting and analysis tool pack. Create your own Microsoft Office Excel and Microsoft Office Access reports and add them to the list of standard reports for easier access. Powerful analysis tools are now incorporated directly into Office Accounting for easier access.
- Improved–Expanded online banking features. Office Accounting supports more financial institutions than ever and sports a streamlined online banking sign-up process. And you can now synchronize vendors in Office Accounting 2008 with online payees you’ve set up with your bank.
- Improved–Preferred vendors. Designate preferred vendors for certain documents to reduce data entry and save time.
- Improved–Status watermarks. Print professional looking watermarks such as Paid or Not Paid on documents you send to customers.
Get started quickly with the familiar Microsoft Office interface. |
Easily convert information in one type of document into another (for example, convert quotes to invoices) without retyping. |
Send e-mail invoices with the integrated PayPal option. |
Special Features for Accountants
- New–Accountant Business Template Export CPAs can set up clients with a custom chart of accounts based on a template they create.
- New–Show/Hide voided documents. Instantly see voided transactions so you can more easily spot mistakes or unusual transactions.
Save Time and Work More Efficiently
During a typical day, small business owners and employees rely on a variety of documents to get their jobs done. Essential financial and customer information can be stored in diverse places such as paper files, Excel spreadsheets, Word forms, and other documents. In such a situation, accomplishing simple accounting tasks such as creating customer quotes, invoices, and sales reports can be time-consuming. Yet, for many small business owners and employees, the prospect of switching to a new accounting solution, even if that solution would save them time and resources, may be intimidating.
If your business is currently using any other accounting solution, Office Accounting Professional 2008 provides an easy and fast way to switch to a solution that will help you save time with everyday financial tasks. Office Accounting Professional 2008 tools are easy to use and have the familiar look and feel of the Microsoft Office system.
Get Started Quickly and Easily
Most small businesses do not have the time or IT staff to install and configure complicated business software. Office Accounting Professional 2008 is easy to set up and learn, so you can get started in just a few minutes. Because Office Accounting Professional 2008 looks and feels like familiar Microsoft Office programs, you can be productive right away with minimal effort or training.
Get Up and Running in Minutes
The Startup Wizard imports your existing accounting data from sources such as Microsoft Office Excel, Intuit QuickBooks 2006 or earlier, and Microsoft Money. The Startup Wizard gets your company’s financial processes set up, connected, and working right away so that you can be writing your first invoice within minutes. Office Accounting Professional 2008 is intuitive and easy to use, and it doesn’t require extensive training to become proficient. Best of all, Office Accounting Professional 2008 looks and works just like other familiar Microsoft Office system programs.
If you are starting a new business, the Startup Wizard makes it easy to select a list of your accounts and enter information about customers, vendors, and items. Your accountant or CPA can also use the Startup Wizard to set up accounts, taxes, and other accounting information.
The new Resource Center provides a single location to access helpful information to get you started. Get the most out of Office Accounting with demos, step-by-step guides, training videos and community forums, all conveniently available with one click in the Office Accounting Resource Center.
Import Data from QuickBooks and Other Sources
Office Accounting Professional 2008 is designed to import data from many sources. You can easily use existing financial information including transaction history and not be concerned about starting from scratch or losing valuable data. Import data from Microsoft Office system programs such as Excel and other accounting software such as Intuit QuickBooks 2006 and Microsoft Money.
QuickBooks 2006 users can easily import their data by using the Convert from QuickBooks Wizard. You can import all your QuickBooks data including master records such as chart of accounts, customers, vendors, items, employees, and supporting tables as well as beginning balances and transactions. If you are using a previous version of Office Accounting Professional, such as Office Accounting 2007, it is very easy to upgrade to Office Accounting Professional 2008.
Work in a Familiar Interface
Most small businesses rely on Microsoft Office programs to get work done. The familiar Microsoft Office interface and functionality help people communicate more effectively and be more productive right from the start. Office Accounting Professional 2008 helps extend that ease of use and productivity to managing your company’s finances.
A Navigation Pane provides centralized navigation and easy access to home pages to start commonly performed tasks. Office Accounting Professional 2008 is so easy to use that you can be productive right away, whether you are new to accounting software or an advanced user. Furthermore, Office Accounting Professional 2008 works smoothly with Office Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager to provide customer information in one place.
Save Time Managing Everyday Tasks
Time is money, and routine but necessary accounting tasks such as tracking expenses and managing payroll can take up hours that could otherwise be spent growing your business. Even simple tasks such as paying bills and invoicing customers may require that information be written down or entered multiple times, which not only is time-consuming but can lead to errors. Office Accounting Professional 2008 streamlines those financial processes to help you manage everyday accounting tasks more efficiently.
Enter Information Once
Office Accounting Professional 2008 simplifies everyday tasks because you can share and re-use common data across different forms rather than re-typing the information. To make entering recurring transactions easier and faster, Office Accounting Professional 2008 tracks your transactions and stores the information for future use. You can easily share accounting data across other Microsoft Office programs you use. For example, within Office Accounting Professional 2008 you can easily export a quote to Office Word to create a professional-looking proposal customized for your business.
Easily Create Quotes, Invoices, and More
With Office Accounting Professional 2008, you can easily create common documents such as quotes, invoices, purchase orders, and more. For example, quickly convert information such as a customer quote into an invoice without tedious data reentry. You can also now convert sales orders into purchase orders automatically. With Office Accounting 2008, you can also easily customize each form to suit your business’s specific needs. Office Accounting Professional 2008 works smoothly with Office Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager to put customer information and financial data in one place. From within Office Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager, employees can view financial information about customers and create quotes, orders, and invoices in Office Accounting Professional 2008–without having to transfer data from one program to another.
The Resource Center helps you quickly find helpful information in Office Accounting Professional 2008. |
Easily track expenses and other transactions. |
Easily track billable time by job in Office Accounting Professional 2008. |
Track Expenses and Transactions Automatically
The process of paying bills and recording expenses is often inefficient. Writing down information to be entered later can be time-consuming and is prone to errors. Office Accounting Professional 2008 automatically tracks all transactions, including expenses, as you enter information. You can easily categorize income and expenses for tracking and reporting.
You can see detailed views of each transaction and audit transactions to understand changes made to records. To save time, advanced users can enter multiple transactions by creating numerous journal entries posting on different dates and relating to different accounts in one journal form.
Create, Modify, and Export Documents in Office Word
Because Office Accounting Professional 2008 works smoothly with Office Word, you can easily export quotes, sales orders, packing slips, invoices, and other information to Word with a click. If your business has already created personalized Word documents, you can reuse existing templates and documents. You can also customize templates that come with Office Accounting Professional 2008 to create professional-looking materials and documents. Choose from dozens of industry templates and Office Accounting automatically configures itself to how you run your business. The Write Letters Wizard is an easy way to create and modify letters from Word templates for your customers, vendors, and employees.
Automate Bank Accounts
Businesses must track banking activities to keep tight control on the flow of funds into and out of the company. If your business has an online banking account, you can download your records from the bank or other financial institution directly into Office Accounting Professional 2008. The Online Banking Wizard helps you easily set up and use the online banking feature.
Office Accounting Professional 2008 helps you manage multiple company bank accounts and maintain a consolidated view of the various accounts. The Banking home page summarizes your company’s banking activities. From the Banking home page, you can easily write and print checks, make deposits, reconcile your bank accounts, and perform other banking tasks.
Office Accounting Professional 2008 supports more financial institutions than ever before and includes a streamlined online banking sign-up process. You can now synchronize vendors in Office Accounting 2008 with online payees you have set up with your bank.
Automate Customer Payments
You can customize and organize customer payments with Office Accounting Professional 2008. With the credit card processing option, accept credit and debit card payments to better serve your customers and reduce transaction costs. For credit card purchases, you can print receipts and create customer credit memo templates for future transactions.
Track Employee Time and Costs
Billable time is the livelihood of service businesses. You can track and manage employees’ billable time directly in Office Accounting Professional 2008 through the Time Entry form. Office Accounting Professional 2008 can then use the billable hours to create customer invoices.
Many companies, such as consulting firms and contractors, organize their businesses around specific customer jobs. Office Accounting Professional 2008 helps you track revenues and expenses by job, and monitor and compare total job profitability. You can also track estimated versus actual job costs and compare invoices versus quotes. This data becomes useful for business planning such as increasing the accuracy of future job estimates.
Working with Office Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager helps you achieve more accurate and timely billing. Employees can mark appointments in their Outlook calendars as billable time, and then transfer that information to Office Accounting Professional 2008 with a single click.
Manage Payroll and Taxes
Managing payroll and calculating government taxes can be one of the most difficult financial tasks for any business. With Office Accounting Professional 2008, you can subscribe to online-based payroll. Payroll for Office Accounting provides a full-featured, easy-to-use payroll and tax processing program for calculating federal, state, and local taxes. With the integration between Office Accounting Professional 2008 and Payroll for Office Accounting, you can import timesheet data directly into the payroll application, and export payroll and tax information to the general ledger.
Track and Forecast Inventory
For small businesses that sell products, effective inventory management is key to minimizing costs and maximizing profits. Office Accounting Professional 2008 provides an inventory system that automatically updates quantities when you create invoices or take returns. You can track and adjust overall inventory quantities in the system in real time, and you can use the physical inventory worksheet to perform a physical count. Now, you can save time by using Office Accounting Professional 2008 to automatically create purchase orders to replenish inventory that has a fallen below a minimum level you set.
Sell and Buy in Multiple Currencies
For businesses that work with customers or vendors outside the United States, Office Accounting Professional 2008 handles the complexity of currency conversion and reconciliation, helping you do business with international vendors and customers in their own currencies.
Manage your business in Multiple Languages
With Office Accounting 2008, you can manage your business in Spanish or English. Switch between languages in just a few clicks, so you can manage your accounting, create invoices, and print reports in the language of your choice.
Get a Complete View of Your Business
In many small businesses, customer and financial information resides in different places–file folders, e-mail messages, spreadsheets, documents, and even sticky notes. Many small business owners do not have adequate time to truly understand and make use of their financial data, and often no easy way to share or organize the information exists to enable faster decision-making and provide better service to customers. Comprehensive business information is difficult to compile and understand, so getting the big picture of the business’s financial health is challenging.
The company home page provides a centralized view of critical business information. |
Use Office Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager to work smoothly with Office Accounting Professional 2008. |
Customize forms to suit your business needs. |
Office Accounting Professional 2008 gives you a single, always up-to-date view of your business by helping you manage financial information in one place. You can get organized and work the way you want by customizing the information you would like to see at a glance. Furthermore, you can track customer and financial information together by sharing customer account information using Office Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager.
View Your Financial Information in One Place
Office Accounting Professional 2008 puts financial data and business information in one place, giving you a comprehensive look at your business to enable better-informed decisions. By sharing and synchronizing customer account information using Office Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager, you can provide your employees with better financial information to serve customers, improve productivity, and reduce errors.
Store and Organize Data Centrally
Office Accounting Professional 2008 gives businesses a central place to collect, organize, and manage financial information so they don’t have to use multiple methods and tools. Easily work with information about your customers, employees, and vendors in one place.
Because Office Accounting Professional 2008 and Office Outlook 2007 for Business Contact Manager share a single database, information related to customers, vendors, prospects, and employees can be easily shared in real time between the two programs. The ability to bill, track transactions, and query financial history can be used by salespeople as well as office managers and business owners.
Work with Microsoft Point of Sale
If you are a single-store retailer, Microsoft Point of Sale provides an easy-to-use program that helps track sales, inventory, and customer information. Combining Microsoft Point of Sale with Office Accounting Professional 2008 creates an integrated retail solution that connects the point of sale to accounting. You can send all the sales details of the day from Microsoft Point of Sale to Office Accounting Professional 2008 without retyping data, thus saving time and reducing errors. You can then use Office Accounting Professional 2008 to run financial reports that help you manage cash flow and improve profitability.
Get a Snapshot of Important Information
When accounting data is available in one place, you can quickly get a look at the fiscal health of the company. The company home page provides a snapshot of important information, critical tasks, and reminders on one screen. By capturing this information in one location, you can stay on top of your business and quickly get an overall sense of its performance.
Share Account Information with Office Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager
When you combine Office Accounting Professional 2008 with Office Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager, you get a complete business and financial picture of your customers in one place. From within Office Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager, employees can turn opportunities into quotes, orders, and invoices in Office Accounting Professional 2008–without having to reenter information in another program. Employees can mark their Outlook calendar appointments, projects, tasks, and phone logs as billable and automatically send that information to Office Accounting Professional 2008 to create customer invoices.
An integration wizard helps you link your Office Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager accounts and contacts with your customers in Office Accounting Professional 2008. Because the programs share a database, data entered in either program automatically flows to the other so information is always synchronized. This keeps you informed of account and customer changes and provides a central location for critical information, which can also be shared with employees selectively, based on their roles.
Work the Way You Want
Every business is different. That’s why tailoring your accounting solution to suit your business’s needs and style is so important. Office Accounting Professional 2008 makes it easy to customize and personalize the information you need.
Create a Personalized Company Home Page
The company home page provides a snapshot of your business’s overall financial condition as well as your day-to-day accounts payable and accounts receivable information. You can personalize this information by easily adding and removing dashboard content such as reminders, recent cash flow forecasts, bank account information, vendors, customers, and more.
Customize Forms
Using Office Accounting Professional 2008, you can easily customize quotes, sales orders, invoices, purchase orders, reports, and more. You can fully customize the data elements used in most forms by moving fields, creating custom fields, renaming fields, and hiding unneeded fields. These customized forms and letters can be exported to Word templates to sharpen the professional appearance of marketing materials and financial documents.
Provide Employee Access and Customize Security Roles
Having better insight into financial and customer information can help employees be more effective workers. Yet, because some employees may not need access to all the company’s accounting data, providing even basic information to the right employees can be challenging.
With Office Accounting Professional 2008, owners and managers can control access to sensitive information based on an employee’s role. You can add and remove permissions from different roles such as Owner, Office Manager, Accountant, and Salesperson, as well as add new customized roles. That gives you ultimate flexibility over who has access to your business’s accounting data.
Multiple users can also work with Office Accounting Professional 2008 from different computers at the same time.
Find and Organize Information Quickly
Even when a business is small, finding financial and customer information is sometimes more work than it needs to be. It is essential to make financial and customer data accessible and usable to everyone in the company who needs it. Office Accounting Professional 2008 includes features to help you quickly find mission-critical data, whether it is related to customers, vendors, jobs, or other information.
To improve database performance, the Compress Data feature compresses historical data in a separate company database, making the active database faster than ever. Data for all years remains available if needed for year-by-year comparisons.
Gain Insight into Your Business Finances
Business owners are often caught up in the day-to-day tasks of running the business. It can be challenging to gather financial information to gain insights for making short-term and long-term decisions about the direction of the business. Office Accounting Professional 2008 provides the features and reports to give you the information you need, at a glance, to make more informed business decisions. You can further analyze the data by exporting accounting data to other Microsoft Office system programs such as Office Excel or Office Access.`
Understand Your Business with Comprehensive Reports
Office Accounting Professional 2008 offers more than 60 pre-defined reports that help you get insights into all aspects of your business. Easy-to-use reporting empowers you with many kinds of financial information across the company, such as the sales pipeline, cash flow, item profitability, and customer transactions. In addition, you can easily customize the reports by setting filters, changing fonts and formatting, and more. With Office Accounting 2008, you can create your own Office Excel or Office Access reports and add them to the list of standard reports for easier access. Powerful analysis tools are now incorporated directly into Office Accounting for easier access
Understand Your Customers
Using the customers home page in Office Accounting Professional 2008, you can perform all the tasks related to customers and receivables and get a quick view of the state of each account. You can stay up-to-date on the latest customer needs through a financial summary that includes outstanding payments and balance information.
If more information is required to manage sales and predict sales activity, you can run detailed reports. For example, you can run reports that show sales status, order information, and probability of closing. Salespeople can filter data to view the status of accounts they are working on or to display customers they have not contacted recently.
Create budgets and track progress toward your goals.
Easily create a budget in Office Accounting and track how your budget compares with your actual results. Use new features in Accounting 2008 to create budgets where you can make profitability projections for a fiscal period. You can also run reports that compare your projections to actual results. You can adjust your budget at any time to reflect actual results in a fiscal period; changing market conditions; and new accounts or classes.
Monitor and Forecast Cash Flow
Analyzing cash flow–the difference between income and expenses–is an essential task for business owners. Office Accounting Professional 2008 includes cash flow tools that help you conduct a complete and accurate analysis of history and trend data for cash coming in and going out of the business. The Cash Flow Forecast tool keeps track of sales, purchases, and payments to help you manage and predict cash flow easily. You can model different scenarios to help forecast future cash flows and make decisions about which customers to contact or which bills to pay. For further cash flow analysis, Office Accounting Professional 2008 reports such as the Cash Flow Statement can show cash inflows and outflows of the business over a period of time.
Share Data with Your Accounting Professional
Many small businesses regularly work with an accountant or bookkeeper, whether for payroll, tax preparation, or other tasks. Office Accounting Professional 2008 includes unique features to make it easier to share your business’s financial data with an accounting professional.
Using the Accountant Transfer Export Wizard, you can send your business’s accounting data to your accountant and continue using Office Accounting Professional 2008. When the accountant is done updating the books, he or she can send the data back to you to synchronize the changes. Alternatively, your accountant can remotely connect to your copy of Office Accounting Professional 2008 and update it.
Manage and Grow Your Business More Effectively
In a competitive world, small business owners are looking for better ways to manage and develop their businesses. More small businesses are selling online because the Internet gives them the ability to reach millions of potential customers. Office Accounting Professional 2008works smoothly with online marketplaces to help you sell more effectively and receive customer orders and payments with confidence.
Sell Online More Effectively
With the Microsoft Small Business Online Sales option, you can easily and cost-effectively sell on Internet marketplaces such as eBay. Whether you’re selling online for the first time or already have an eBay business, working through Office Accounting Professional 2008 can save you time and help you sell more.
Sell on eBay
Office Small Business Accounting 2008 helps you reach out to millions of potential customers with its full-featured eBay integration. From the online sales home page, you can easily list inventory items, check the status of your listing, download and process orders, and track activity in real time from within Office Accounting Professional 2008. A single listing screen helps you manage all inventory items in real time, including quantity, reserve prices, and images. You can easily upload multiple listings simultaneously. After an item sells, the order information including commissions and fees is downloaded directly into Office Accounting Professional 2008. The online orders can be processed in Office Accounting Professional 2008, and payments can be received by using the integrated credit card services or PayPal.
Do Business with Confidence
Managing customer transactions can be a constant challenge for small businesses. Office Accounting Professional 2008 provides integration with services to help you check the financial health of your customers and provide them with more payment options so that you can receive payment more quickly.
Get Paid Faster Through PayPal
Smart businesses offer customers a variety of payment methods. Office Accounting Professional 2008 gives you the ability to offer customers a PayPal payment option to help you get paid faster. Using Microsoft Office Outlook, you can easily generate an e-mail message with an invoice that includes an integrated PayPal option. Customers click an automatically generated link and use the PayPal service to enter payment. All transactions are tracked in Office Accounting Professional 2008, dramatically simplifying the payment process.
Credit Profile with Equifax
Office Accounting Professional 2008 provides easy access to Equifax credit report services. Obtain one-time credit reports or ongoing credit monitoring of customers and prospects to help you evaluate business risk and make decisions about customer sales with more confidence. You can also order a credit report for your business to keep track of your own credit history.
User Ratings and Reviews
3 Stars It tested my patience…
I was excited to try this accounting system since I occasionally sell various items on eBay and amazon. However, this system had way too many options for my needs, and the installation processes took FOREVER…
The graphics are nice, and it is quite user-friendly for a beginner like me. All in all though, it was too much for my needs.
4 Stars Good
Microsoft Office Accounting Pro 2008 would be a great tool for small business. It’s easy to use and hasn’t caused any burbs on my system like most products I install. I’m just now starting my business so I don’t get a lot of use out of it but it would be great for businesses that have actual employees
3 Stars Easy to use and intuitive
As an Excel devotee, I can say that Microsoft Accounting Professional 2008 is an easy convert for someone who’s never used accounting software. It has a variety of templates that allow you to set up ways to monitor and track expenses. It has features like how to create purchase orders, track inventory, and run payroll, etc. As a small business owner (very small, employees = 1), I didn’t really need all the extra features, but the ones that I did use were pretty intuitive. It does, however, allow me to bill clients an invoice using Microsoft Outlook, and with a nice, professional looking template to boot. It provides easy integration with Excel, allowing me to transfer business reports between the two seamlessly. As a whole, I wish I’d gone with the Express, which is the free version, because supposedly it’s got less junk that I don’t need to bog down my time, but for the features, I’d recommend Accounting 2008 to a small business owner.
5 Stars Good for my needs
This is an excellent small business accounting package that has been useful for my needs.
5 Stars Not for everyone, but just right for me
I’ve read the other reviews of this product here, and there are clearly a lot of negatives. Some people find this program too big, some find it too small.
I found it just right.
When I contemplated self-employment, I had several concerns, including whether or not I could actually keep the wolf from the door that way, but my largest was the thought that I would have to keep records of some kind. I don’t have a talent for that. When my sixth client sent me a contract, I searched diligently for a book called, say, “The Smallest Amount of Accounting Knowledge You Need to Avoid Getting Thrown in Jail,” but didn’t find such a thing. All the books I could find seemed to imagine that I was — well, an accountant.
Office Accounting Professional 2008 doesn’t assume this. It is bossy software.
You know what I mean about bossy software. It reminds you to apply payments to invoices and nags you about putting in people’s names correctly and won’t let you charge people for “June.”
In general, I don’t like bossy software. Bossy word processing programs often just don’t understand complex syntax and don’t have as large a vocabulary as I do, and I really don’t need my computer to warn me that I haven’t been properly introduced to websites.
But the bossiness of this software means that someone like me can put her data in correctly enough to send it off to the accountant — and there is a system for doing that, too.
I scoffed at the set-up poster, by the way, but it was nice to have some large paper showing all the steps in order. I had no trouble getting the software installed, everything was done by wizards, and overall I found the whole package reassuring.
Now, I have no employees, and I have no interest in eBay, so I sympathize with those who felt that there were more parts to this than they needed. However, I found that this package has just the amount of power I need for keeping track of hours, jobs, clients, income, and expenditure. If I have employees some day, I won’t have to learn new software. I can foresee needing to use the banking features, so I’m glad they’re there. The extra features don’t hamper my use of what I currently need, and I’ve had the experience before of spending more on trading up than I would have if I’d bought something more powerful to begin with.
I would strongly recommend this package for small businesses.
Tags: Accountant, Accounting Solution, Bookkeepers, Business Owners, Community Tools, Comprehensive Tools, Everyday Tasks, Excel Microsoft, Financial Information, Intuit, Managing Your Business, Managing Your Business Finances, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Money, Microsoft Office Programs, Office Excel, Office Managers, Product Demonstrations, Product Resources, Quickbooks
Web site stats speak volumes as to e business Brief Article An article from Westchester County Business Journal
This digital document is an article from Westchester County Business Journal, published by Westfair Communications, Inc. on February 5, 2001. The length of the article is 534 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Web site stats speak volumes as to e-business.(Brief Article)
Author: Sean Cover
Publication: Westchester County Business Journal (Magazine/Journal)
Date: February 5, 2001
Publisher: Westfair Communications, Inc.
Volume: 40 Issue: 6 Page: T8
Article Type: Brief Article
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Big Think Strategy How to Leverage Bold Ideas and Leave Small Thinking Behind
Big Think Strategy How to Leverage Bold Ideas and Leave Small Thinking Behind

Business leaders need bold strategies to stay relevant and win. In Big Think Strategy, Schmitt shows how to bring bold thinking into your business by sourcing big ideas and executing them creatively. With the tools in this book, any leader can overcome institutionalized small think the inertia, the narrow-mindedness, and the aversion to risk that block true innovation. Your reward? Big, bold, and decidedly doable strategies that excite your employees and leave your rivals scrambling.
Drawing on years of advising corporate leaders on creativity and strategy development, Schmitt explains how to infuse fresh thinking into the planning process. Through his commentary on the Trojan War, the film Fitzcarraldo, and the composer Gustav Mahler, Schmitt uncovers the essence of bold leadership and the levers of revolutionary change. Abundant examples from Apple, Whole Foods, MySpace, IBM, General Electric, the Metropolitan Opera, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to name a few, show big think strategy in action.
Tested by daring executives in a diverse range of industries, the practical ideas and tools in this book will help you leverage bold ideas in your strategic planning and position your firm uniquely for lasting market relevance and success.
User Ratings and Reviews
3 Stars Homage to ‘Thinking Big’ for business
The author’s ambitious goal is, as the title says, Big Think strategy is to leverage bold ideas and leave small thinking behind. There are some good insights in particular why large companies incentive systems are not set up for big and bold straegies. SWOT analysis vs. Big Think; there is more to strategy than just analysis and the difficulty developing Big Think strategies with generic strategy types (like Porter’s cost leadership, differentiation & focus).
I strongly believe that the concept of thinking big cannot be stressed enough. Where the weakness of the book starts is in its titel and goal; big think is great, but why bold? Big thinking can or cannot be bold. Big thinking is a strategic tool. To me, boldness is as important as thinking big, but in acting, not thinking. And now the fine nuances show; boldness should never be the strategy behind all of our actions. It is a tactical instrument, used at the right moment.
All in all, a good ‘refresher’ on thinking big for business while far from a must read book.
5 Stars Big Think Strategy—-Bernd Schmitt
Bernd Schmitt does it again with his Big Think Strategy: How to Leverage Bold Ideas and Leave Small Thinking Behind book.
I read Schmitt’s book on a plane ride from New York to Beijing and was captivated by it. Throughout the entire read, I was applying Schmitt’s frameworks to my own industry and line of business and was frantically writing down all the ideas that emerged.
Big Think Strategy is also not written like a traditional textbook which is quite refreshing in that regard.
Overall, I see many types of professionals really getting alot out of Schmitt’s new work (not just traditional executives). Schmitt’s Big Think Strategy makes you think differently in whatever line of business you are in and I plan incorporating his frameworks within my unit and team immediately.
Schmitt does it again with his Big Think Strategy book. BRAVO SCHMITT!!! BRAVO!!!
4 Stars Breezy guide to developing revolutionary ideas
This is a fun book. Bernd H. Schmitt clearly enjoys not just working with ideas, but playing with them. To explain his concept, he draws on sources from Greek mythology to cyberspace. His examples range from IBM to the opera, and he explores creative analogies (“A strategy is like a great steak!”) that show his lively mind and openness to learning from all kinds of sources. This book is not just entertaining, it is also useful. Schmitt shares a host of tips for producing new ideas and provides a big jolt of energy to help you get started. Reading this might make you want to roll up your sleeves and change everything about your business. However, Schmitt is breezy about potential challenges – talking about revolutionizing your industry won’t do much good if you can’t pay your rent. Thoughts about innovation fall along a spectrum. On one end are people who believe that many small changes or experiments can add up to marked change and market superiority; on the other end are those who think you have to make radical innovation in a sudden leap. Schmitt is very much on that end of the innovation spectrum. getAbstract recommends this book to those looking to jump-start their creative engines, to eager innovators and, since Schmitt focuses mostly on conceptual thinking, to those who can supply their own details.
5 Stars A Must Read!
A must have for any business manager! This book is a perfect read for anyone looking for simple and creative ways to bring innovative changes to their company. Schmitt has a great skill of combining business strategies with interesting anecdotes and humor, which makes the book an easy and fun read.
5 Stars Excellent way to jump over your competition and the industry…
While it’s possible to run a successful business by incrementally improving your product and service, you’ll forever be trying to defend your turf from others doing the same thing. The way to break free and win big is to “think big”. Bernd H. Schmitt takes a look at that strategy in his book Big Think Strategy: How to Leverage Bold Ideas and Leave Small Thinking Behind. It’s an unconventional style business book to create unconventional products and services.
Contents:
Big Think and the Trojan Horse
Sourcing Ideas – Steaks and Sacred Cows
Evaluating Ideas – How to Dig for the Gems
Turning Ideas into Strategy – What Would Mahler Do?
Executing Big Think – How to Pull the Ship over the Mountain
Leading Big Think – Guts, Passion – or Just a Robot?
Sustaining Big Think – From Sisyphus to Odysseus
Epilogue
Notes
Index
About Schmitt
The first thing you notice about this book is that it’s not the typical scholarly look at some management theory that sounds good on paper but probably wouldn’t translate to real life. Schmitt digs right in and relates his ideas and actions that have been developed from many years of working with companies. Many of the applications of these ideas weren’t part of some strategy session or formal “brainstorming” gathering, but rather the result of conversations on the train or over steaks with the leaders of companies that were struggling with these very issues. As such, the whole presentation of the concepts has a “real” feel to them. I liked that…
The book centers around three leadership qualities and four strategy types you can use to move your company from small think to Big Think. The styles involve guts, passion, and perseverance. You have to stick with your ideas even though others might be against you. Your passion over the idea needs to translate into persuading others to buy into it. And most of all, you can’t be the type to throw in the towel at the first sign of resistance. The strategy types are opposition, integration, essence, and transcendence. Opposition involves looking at the market and trying something that is in direct contrast to where others are blindly following. Integration is the art of bringing together ideas that on the surface may not seem to be complementary, but that once combined causes a whole new market paradigm. Essence means taking the core of an idea and taking it further than anyone else has. And finally, transcendence seeks to destroy the boundaries that current define the industry or market that you’re in. But Schmitt doesn’t just throw out ideas without examples. He brings together companies that embody these ideas. Look at companies and brands like Dove, Apple, Whole Foods, etc. It’s really good stuff…
Most anyone in business can easily read and benefit from this book. You owe it to your business and yourself to really think about what you’re doing and where you’re going. It may be that by changing your mindset, you may well become the next company that defines your industry.
Tags: Abundant Examples, Ambitious Goal, Bill And Melinda Gates, Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation, Bold Ideas, Bold Leadership, Composer Gustav, Cost Leadership, Fitzcarraldo, Generic Strategy, Gustav Mahler, Incentive Systems, Market Relevance, Melinda Gates Foundation, Metropolitan Opera, Revolutionary Change, Small Thinking, Strategy In Action, Trojan War, True Innovation
Make A Wish Study Reveals Correlation Between Exposure To Online Ads And Brand Impact study by Diameter An article from Fund Raising Management
This digital document is an article from Fund Raising Management, published by Hoke Communications, Inc. on June 1, 2001. The length of the article is 351 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Make-A-Wish Study Reveals Correlation Between Exposure To Online Ads And Brand Impact.(study by Diameter)
Publication: Fund Raising Management (Magazine/Journal)
Date: June 1, 2001
Publisher: Hoke Communications, Inc.
Volume: 32 Issue: 4 Page: 9
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Opening and Operating a Bed and Breakfast in the 21st Century Your Step By Step Guide to Inn Keeping Success with Professional Online Marketing Strategies

Expanded and Revised Second Edition of a must have guidebook to success in the Bed and Breakfast Industry in the 21st Century. Great for aspiring, new or experienced innkeepers. This book covers innkeeping basics, but addresses the Internet topics in detail and helps the reader understand the steps necessary to successfully market a B&B on the Internet.
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars A great guide for anyone thinking of owning a Bed & Breakfast
I am thirlled with this new book. Competing titles do cover the basic steps to opening a B&B, but this book takes you way beyond the basic business details and then gives the information you need to understand how to market an inn on the Internet. This is HUGE! This new book is a comprehensive guide for anyone wanting to get “heads-in-the-beds” at a new inn or an exisiting one. I love the secton on increasing Web site traffic and how optimize your Web site from a marketing perspective — something lacking in the other titles on this hospitality subject.
PROS:
*All the business basics are there in the first few chapters.
*Experienced innkeepers have added tips and hints for success.
*The Internet is explained in great detail, as it relates to innkeeping.
*The marketing on the Internet guidelines are well explained.
CON:
*The author just begins to explain blogging, I’d like to see more on this topic.
5 Stars Gets better and better the more you read
The first third of Ms. Painter’s book is a reality check for aspiring innkeepers. The middle third is for any innkeeper that needs ideas on how to increase business. The last third, which gets the five star rating, is a well organized overview for the web/internet neophyte like myself. I have already inplemented some of her suggestions and am eagerly awaiting results. Kathy@gracehillbandb
4 Stars Very informative and helpful.
I am considering operating a cabin for winter rentals in Big Bear, California. This book had useful tips and a great overview for how to get started. I especially appreciated the online marketing tips. Looking forward to a future edition to get into more detail about operating a B&B, or in my case, a cabin rental.
Thanks.
5 Stars Essential for B&B Owners
This book has all you need to know about the B&B business. All current and prospective owners should have this book.
Tags: 21st Century, Bed And Breakfast, Bed Breakfast, Beds, Business Basics, Business Details, Comprehensive Guide, Five Star Rating, Hospitality, Innkeeper, Internet Guidelines, Internet User, Marketing Internet, Marketing On The Internet, Online Marketing Strategies, Perspective, Reality Check, Web Internet, Web Marketing, Web Site Traffic
The Practice of Business Statistics Companion Chapter 18 Bootstrap Methods and Permutation Tests
The Practice of Business Statistics Companion Chapter 18 Bootstrap Methods and Permutation Tests
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Related information
I’m the lead author. This document is useful for independent study, even without “The Practice of Business Statistics”.
I believe that resampling (bootstrap and permutation tests) have a big future in statistics education, as a way to help students visualize and understand variability, standard errors, confidence intervals, and P-values, and as an alternative to the usual cookbook of formulas. This book is very strong on visualizing and light on formulas.
(…)
5 Stars great companion to any book on statistics
Tim Hesterberg has written a very nice chapter on resampling that is designed to be on the introductory level of the latest edition of the book “The Practice of Business Statistics”. I think this a very well written chapter that covers even some of the more advanced topics such as the bootstrap tilted and the BCa confidence intervals. There are many very interesting examples that illustrate the range of applications of the methods and it is beautifully illustrated with some nice use of color graphics. I plan to use it as a companion to my text in some tutorials and web based courses that I am teaching on this topic.
The Fundraising Habits of Supremely Successful Boards A 59 minute Guide to Ensuring Your Organizations Future

“A large part of virtue consists in good habits,” said William Paley.
In his new book, The Fundraising Habits of Supremely Successful Boards, Jerold Panas would rephrase that a tad: A large part of an organization’s success depends on its board’s willingness to cultivate certain behaviors.
Over the course of a storied career, Panas has worked with literally thousands of boards, from those governing the toniest of prep schools to those spearheading the local Y. He has counseled floundering groups; he has been the wind beneath the wings of boards whose organizations have soared.
In fact, it’s a safe bet that Panas has observed more boards at work than perhaps anyone in America, all the while helping them to surpass their campaign goals of $100,000 to $100 million.
Funnel every ounce of that experience and wisdom into a single book and what you have is The Fundraising Habits of Supremely Successful Boards, the brilliant culmination of what Panas has learned firsthand about boards who excel at the task of resource development.
Anyone who has read Asking or any of Panas’ other books knows his style – a breezy and irresistible mix of storytelling, exhortation, and inspiration.
Habits follows the same engaging mold, offering a panoply of habits any board would be wise to cultivate. Some are specific, with measurable outcomes. Others are more intangible, with Panas seeking to impart an attitude of success.
Here’s just a sampling:
• You don’t allow a mission deficit. • You never lose sight that your organization is in the business of changing lives or saving lives. • You’re willing to leave the comfort zone. • You understand that not all gifts are worth accepting.
In all, there are 25 habits and each is explored in two- and three-page chapters … and all of them animated by real-life stories only this grandmaster of philanthropy can tell.
In a mere 117 pages, about an hour’s read, Jerold Panas has accomplished two feats. He has produced a book that boards will find simultaneously ennobling and instructive. And he has relegated to the recycling bin dozens upon dozens of ponderous and inauthentic treatises on the subject of nonprofit boards and fundraising.
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars GREAT read, easily digestible
Jerold Panas has done it again, with a deeply insightful, yet infinitely practical little volume. Just about every page contains an applicable nugget of wisdom in the exciting quest to develop a dynamic volunteer board. Get this book — it’s a quick read, but one that is likely to change your outlook and energize your organization.
5 Stars Great Book!
Jerry Panas has written a book all of us in philanthropy will want to give to every member of our boards. How often during my twenty-five years of fundraising I have said: “Oh, what I wouldn’t give for a stronger board!” What I was really saying was “I wish my board members would give our organization more financial support.” And, time and again, I have made the excuse for our board members that they were not chosen because of their philanthropic generosity, but because of their area of expertise. Panas will never let us get away with this excuse again! He raises the bar both for philanthropy staff and for board members with “24 Fundraising Habits” that will change, for the better, our ability to develop effective board members and raise financial support for our organization’s mission.
5 Stars Habits Worth Cultivating
Previously, when we were planning our major gifts campaign, I used Panas’ book, ASKING, to motivate my board. It did the trick. Figuring lightning might strike twice, I recently gave them a copy of FUNDRAISING HABITS. They liked it just as much. And they’re in the early stages of modeling some of the behaviors Panas outlines. Definitely if you have a board that needs a fundraising “pump up”, this book may help.
5 Stars Required reading for anybody who is involved in fundraising!
I serve on one non-profit Board, so naturally when I was browsing and
came across THE FUNDRAISING HABITS OF SUPREMELY
SUCCESSFUL BOARDS by Jerold Panas,
I just had to get it.
The fact that its subtitle promised me that I could read it in
59 minutes made it even more appealing . . . what’s best of
all: the ideas contained in the book made sense . . . and
they work!
For example, there was this one:
Not only is it good manners to thank donors, it’s fiscally prudent.
It costs a whopping 4 1/2 times the resources, staff and energy to
acquire a new donor as it is to keep a current one.
Nothing profound, yet something that we forget all too often–regardless
of our field of endeavor.
Then there was the following:
Givers give. Which explains why at the end of your campaign, if you’re
short of goal, you cal on those who have already given. You don’t go to
those who earlier said, “call on me later.” Chances are they’ll put
you off again.
Lastly, this tidbit really struck home:
From my 40 years of experience, I can say without question the first
and foremost reason people give is because your organization
changes lives or saves lives.
Although it took me less than an hour to read, I must admit to
going back to reread it because there were so many fine ideas
contained therein . . . in fact, I’m going to recommend THE
FUNDRAISING HABITS to my non-profit Board and, also,
to my friends who belong to other Boards.
5 Stars Fundraising
This is an excellent book to help a board member clearly understand his responsibility to fund raising. This is an easy read and can be done quickly. Excellent book!

