Back in the Habit

Tuesday, October 17, 2006 at 10:51am by Evan Prieskop in Start-Ups

I am too young to remember the first time a computer vendor promised the birth of a paperless office. I am however, not so young as to believe it is going to happen any time soon.

There is a vast flurry if paperwork involved in opening even the simplest of small businesses. Fortunately, there is always someone out there who is more organized than me, therefore fully willing to collect and organize that paperwork in an accessible, convenient manner.

Check out The Business Owner’s Toolkit. Though the “Small Business Guide” and the “Ask Alice!” sections are nice enough, the real gem lies in the “Business Tools” section.

Collected in this one place you will find nearly 200 forms, files, templates and boilerplates. Virtually every standardized piece of “paper” your small business needs has been collected on a single page along with descriptions and explanations of the function and use for each one.

I am a big believer in building your own accounting spreadsheets and daily cash sheets, but you can find some decent, generalized examples at the top of the business tools page. Mid-list you will see all your old favorites; IRS filing forms and state specific registration forms. Further down the list, however, are such rarely thought of necessities as profit sharing boilerplates, employee feedback scripts, and sample independent contractor agreements.

A small business needs many, many resources for filing, tracking, and up-keeping its paper habit, and no one source will ever really fulfill all of your small business’s needs. That said, the toolkit does come awfully close.

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