Dead-Simple Software for Small Business

Among all the widgets available on your Email Center Pro dashboard, there’s one that’s very near and dear to my heart. It’s the ECP Updates widget, which will let you know every time I write another scintillating blog post. If you were looking at it right now, you’d be seeing this whole paragraph in the preview! It would look like this:

Since I haven’t actually been taking advantage of the connection between this blog and the ECP dashboard until now, I thought it might be a good time to link back to some recent posts you might have missed.

First, let’s talk about managing contacts. Most email programs have some version of contact management, but they don’t usually cross over to functions outside of email. Check out 3,2,1 Contact… How Do You Keep Track to find out how much more Email Center Pro has to offer.

Learning how to control your email is a common thread on this blog. The recent Who’s the Boss post addressed some outdated ways to gain the upper hand, and suggests alternatives to the same-old same-old approach.

Finally, we see the frequent articles and blog posts about the demise of email at the hands  social media and we just don’t agree. Don’t Believe the Hype offers a counter argument to the currently popular “email is dead” chorus.

Tags: ecp update, news
Posted under Business Plan Pro on November 10th, 2009 | No Comments »

Sometimes, all you need to get started is a simple example. If you’re working in a business or marketing plan, we give you a quick and easy feature that shows you how another business plan writer handled the same topic you’re trying to address.

To see an example for the current topic, click the Examples tab in the Instructions and Examples window:

Click Next Example to see more.

Click Paste Into Topic to paste the current example into your topic as a starting point for your own text.

Tags: Business Plan Pro tips, Marketing Plan Pro tips, Tips and Tricks
Posted under Business Plan Pro, Marketing Plan Pro on October 28th, 2009 | 1 Comment »

Sometimes, you just want to play around with different ideas. What if I switched suppliers, and could arrange payment terms for net 45 instead of net 30? Or what would happen if we finished off the attic space so we could store more inventory up there?

The Premier Edition of Business Plan Pro has a neat little feature called the Cash Pilot for testing out these scenarios with all of your plan financials taken into account:

• On the plan toolbar, click Cash Pilot.
• The bottom section is your Control Panel: click in the boxes and type (or adjust numbers up and down with the arrow keys) to change your assumptions for:
  • Months of Inventory On-hand
  • Minimum Inventory Purchase
  • Collection Period
  • Sales on Credit %
  • Payment Delay

The left side shows your Planned Cash (your plan’s current numbers). The right side shows Adjusted Cash (what happens to your Cash Balance and Net Cash Flow with the new assumptions):

Go ahead, test out your ideas, and see what happens to your plan. If you like what you see, just close the Cash Pilot to apply the new numbers to your plan. If your tests show these changes would put you in the red, click Reset All (in the lower right corner) to go back to your original projections.

Posted under Business Plan Pro on September 11th, 2009 | 2 Comments »

Have you noticed that your Email Center Pro account is running faster and more smoothly? Our developers have.

Meet Alex and Evan, two of the dedicated ECP programmers who used to get woken up at 2:00 in the morning with alerts that the servers were struggling to handle all of your mail. These days, they’re a lot more rested.

The most recent improvements to Email Center Pro are largely behind-the-scenes upgrades that help you serve your customers faster and more reliably.

More helpful Search results

One change you can actually see is in the Search function. We noticed that a lot of our users were using search for “names@domain”, rather than opening the Contacts tab to look specifically for people.

You’ll see that the Search box on the top right of your Email Center Pro screen now contains an arrow. Click the arrow next time you’re using the search, and use the drop-down menu to focus your search results on emails, contacts, templates, or tagged conversations.

Tags: collaborative email, ecp update, Email Center Pro, team, Tips and Tricks
Posted under Email Center Pro on August 21st, 2009 | 2 Comments »

Are you a magazine or newspaper publisher? A SaaS (software as a service) provider? A nonprofit asking people to pledge periodic donations?

Then you might want to consider forecasting your sales (or part of your sales) with a subscription, or churn-rate, model. This kind of sales forecast allows you to make projections that take into account ongoing revenue, new customers, and cancellations.

Both Business Plan Pro and Marketing Plan Pro have a special add-in sales forecast for handling subscription sales. To access this feature:

First, download it from our website

1. Make sure you have a working Internet connection open
2. Open your business or marketing plan in your Palo Alto software program
3. On the Tools menu, click Add-ins
4. (Note: your serial number should automatically load in the web page. If it doesn’t, you can find it by clicking About in the Help menu)
5. Scroll down the list until you find Sales Forecast-Subscription (Churn Rate) Model
6. Click Download Component
7. If prompted to Find a program or Save the file, click Save. Then browse to a location where you want to save it, such as your Desktop.

Then, import it into your plan

1. Return to your plan software
2. On the File menu, click Import
3. Choose Import an Add-In, and click Next
4. Browse to the location where you saved the downloaded file
5. Highlight the downloaded file name and click Open, then click Next
6. Click Finish

The new subscription model sales forecast will open for you to see and work with. Instructions above the spreadsheet get you started. You can also click Search on the Help menu, and search for “subscription” to find more information.

Finally, link it to your tables
The Subscription forecast currently exists in your plan as a stand-alone table. It doesn’t replace your regular Sales Forecast table, and doesn’t feed into your plan’s financial data. To make your subscription forecast part of your financial plan, you can build a link in the main Sales Forecast table to the “Total Sales” row of the Subscription Model sales forecast.

Click here for detailed instructions on linking your Subscription Model to your main Sales Forecast.

Tags: Business Plan Pro tips, Marketing Plan Pro tips, Tips and Tricks
Posted under Business Plan Pro, Marketing Plan Pro on August 7th, 2009 | 5 Comments »

Our software offers two ways to get data into your tables – table Wizards, which walk you through the data entry and questions about expected sales, costs, expenses, and so on, and table Spreadsheets, where you can enter the data directly in a format similar to Microsoft Excel.

While the wizards are designed for users who aren’t used to doing their own financial projections, the spreadsheets still offer a great deal of help in understanding what kind of data belongs where.

Row Help
In addition to the general Instructions above each table, spreadsheets contain definitions for every row, which depend on your Table Settings. To see Row-by-row help in your Spreadsheet, simply click on a cell in the row you wish to learn more about, and read the definition which displays along the bottom of your program window.

Can’t See Row-by-Row Help?
If you do not see the Row definition window below your spreadsheet, make sure there is a checkmark next to Row by Row Help on the View menu.

Example
The top line of your Row-by Row help lists the row number and label, to make sure you are reading the right definition. In the example below, all three row names have been filled in; note how the new row labels appear as part of the row definitions (”University Students“).

Tags: Business Plan Pro tips, Marketing Plan Pro tips, news, Tips and Tricks
Posted under Business Plan Pro, Marketing Plan Pro on July 24th, 2009 | 1 Comment »

I have a confession: I hate to read help files.

How could this be? I WRITE help files for a living!

Well, first, they often have so much information it takes forever to wade through it to find what I want, and I’m terribly impatient. Secondly, help authors seem to phrase everything in unexpected ways – if I want to know about ADDING, they talk about SUMS. Harrumph. I’d much rather turn around and ask the expert user sitting next to me a question, in plain English, that cuts right to what I want to do.

Did you know that we’ve tried to give you that quick, expert user answer on every screen of Business Plan Pro?

At the top right of every screen, just below the buttons to close and minimize the program, is a little “How Do I?” button, offering shortcuts to the most common questions our users have. Go ahead and click it; I bet your question is in there.

And since planning involves different tasks, like writing text, projecting financials, printing your plan, etc., the How Do I? button will give you additional task-specific tips when you click it from within a topic, table, or chart.

So there you go. A little digital expert to consult for your quick questions, with quick, easy to follow, simple answers.

Of course, when you’re ready for more complex questions, like the difference between expenses and assets, or whether labor costs for production belong in your Sales Forecast or your Profit and Loss tables, we’ve got that covered in the full Help file.

With features like full-text searching, an Index, and lots of ‘Related Topics’ links, we hope using the Help is easier in our programs than in some software we’ve had to use. But, if you end up using only the built-in Instructions, Wizards, and the occasional How Do I? tip, we won’t blame you.

In fact, we designed it that way.

Tags: Business Plan Pro tips, news, Tips and Tricks
Posted under Business Plan Pro on July 17th, 2009 | 1 Comment »

From time to time, Email Center Pro users will ask us if it is possible to set Email Center Pro as the default handler for mailto links in the browser, so that clicking on the link prompts for a new message in Email Center Pro instead of a traditional desktop client such as Outlook.  Luckily, if you’re using Firefox 3, the answer is YES!  Follow the step by step guide below to configure your browser to use ECP to handle mailto links. Read more »

Tags: ecp update, integration, technical
Posted under Email Center Pro on July 7th, 2009 | 1 Comment »

Want to quickly jump to a specific topic, table, or chart in your plan, but can’t remember where it is in the Outline or Tasks list? The software has quick shortcut for finding exactly what you want:

1. On the View menu, point to Tables, Topics, or Charts (depending on what you’re looking for)
2. An alphabetical list of all the tables, topics, or charts in your plan will display
3. Click on the name of the item you wish to open

It’s that simple!

And you can see the same list by clicking the All Items area below the Outline, then using the drop-down box to filter the list by Tables, Topics, or Charts.

Tags: Business Plan Pro tips, Tips and Tricks
Posted under Business Plan Pro on July 2nd, 2009 | No Comments »

You can easily customize the look of your marketing charts by changing the colors. Here’s how:

To change the colors in all your charts:

• On the Tools menu, point to Options and click Charts.
• Click on the Colors tab.
• Click the pull-down arrow and scroll through the list to see different palette options.
• Highlight the new color palette name and click OK.

To change the colors in a single chart:

• On the Chart formatting toolbar, click Custom Format.
  • Use the Palette button to change the entire chart.
  • OR, right-click on the data series (line, bar, or area) you would like to change and select one of the options that appears.
• For more detailed changes to background, gridline, or chart box colors, click the custom format Properties button, and change the settings on the General and Y Axis tabs.

Tags: Tips and Tricks
Posted under Marketing Plan Pro on June 23rd, 2009 | 1 Comment »