Hey Guys,


I want to talk about using Mac's for small business.

The benefits, your systems, and workflow. Basically how people are getting things done.

Hopefully the information gathered will help me and others improve productivity.


Some things to note:

My company is Love Jungle. Love Jungle
We are a 2 person operation.
We currently use Cube Cart for our online store, and Excel to manage stock levels and orders/invoices.

We are running two Macbook Pro's with Leopard. Preferably I would like to stay all mac in software. Although If we absolutley have to I have VMware Fusion.

Points to consider:
- Would be handy to sync up folders, and remote access them.
- And remote screen sharing / video conferencing would be a bonus (so we don't have to be in the same room/place all the time)
- The Key is to : Integrate Cube Cart with our own systems be it; Excel or Quickbooks / MYOB / Accounts / any other program to graphically represent our stock and whats going on.



Some things I wanted to know :

1. What accounting software do you use?
- I was up for Quickbooks Pro 2007 but have since found it doesn't have an Australian version, which could complicate things when it comes to tax. But surely you could enter your own amount for tax ? If so, has anyone experienced other problems using this software?

I have also found MARCOMMS URI, Billable, and Accounts



2. Integrating CubeCart with offline systems
What are people doing with cubecart (or any other online payment system) and how are they integrating it into their systems. How could we keep our physical stock up to date with invoices orders, and see what is going where. Keeping good records for our accountant.


3. Handy Mac Software for Business Management
Those programs you find most helpful in the day to day running of your business.
This can be anything! I'm open to ideas!


I Think that is all for now, I will update this post if I think of anything more.

Thanks alot for your replies, Hopefully we can make this a worthwhile thread for other Mac Business Users

Cheers
Michael

The best Australian (actually from NZ) accounting software I know of is Moneyworks, from Cognito.

For integrating any kind of online cart, it depends what kind of data that cart outputs that you can import into other software.

What apps to use in a small business environ has come up on these forums numerous times, and i am still trying to refine what apps i use. I am often asked by friends for recommendations as well.

I had a very quick look at Moneyworks, and would also like to look at liquid ledger. I want something that syncs with iCal, Address Book and Mail. I do not have a full grasp of requirements for accounting software... I am hoping to hear others experiences

On a more management side i want to look into Bento, though an still using Tiger. I have had a limited play with Billings2 and will give this another look-in (I have looked at a few other apps as well, including iBiz, iBank, etc).

My ideal app for management would include automatic code (pref barcode) generation for each new invoice/document for monitoring all correspondence. Or some other means of integration of codes for jobs, appended for each subsequent correspondence, etc.

Bruji, who put together the 'pedia series of apps have made available their code for iSight barcode scanning which could provide the other side of this. I am not that familiar (yet) with barcode generation apps, though have found these: Apple - Downloads - Business & Finance - iWinSoft Barcode Maker, Barcode Producer - vector EPS, TIFF barcode generation for Mac OS X - Mac Barcode Software
Barcode Fonts by IDAutomation®

The barcode font idea sounds interesting and i will look into that some more. Need to have an autogenerating code for this though, with each new document—seems more effective than the export function of other apps??

[i will come back and add to this...]

Do not, under any circumstances, use MYOB. It will destroy your will to live.

This may or may not be of use to your business but its worth noting. Checkout: Quicktours

Thanks for the replies guys,

I checked out Moneyworks Gold. It looks similar in layout to MYOB ... I'm assuming there is a reason why it is better then MYOB (although that may not be hard..)

Why do you find it to be the best Currawong?
May I ask, what do you use it for specifically (so I can get an idea of what I would use it for


Also, CubeCart doesnt seem to export data without a plugin installed. The official cubecart website seems to be down, but I found this one that exports to Excel. Seems like it will export reasonable data.. CubeCart Unofficial Third-Party Services - Export Orders by Status to Excel - CubeCartForums.org Forum

Thanks for the link. Yeah, I don't think it will be of much use to our business, but it would be killer for anyone who runs a retail shop with a mac!
It looks so simple to use! (the videos are a nice way to sell it)


Anyone else had any experience ?

I use it.

It works fine as long as you keep up to date with the latest MYOB version and don't do the bleeding edge OS X version thing.

But It's certainly not the most user friendly program around.

Having said that it is the program which most accountants prefer so you'll find that even if the program costs more then accountants fees are less (which sort of balances out).

I was in PowerMedia today and had a chat with the guy about Accounting software on the mac..


It sounded as though MYOB AccountEdge might be the best for us, as we want to keep track of inventory aswell as regular accounting/book keeping.

Anyone else ?

Accountants love it but no one that I know of has ever pulled any sort of useful management figures out of it.

We run two separate book keeping systems, one on MYOB for the tax office/acountant and one through a series of linked Excel spreadsheets that we use every minute of the day to track stock levels, cash flow, profitability, sales performance by product etc...

The main problem with MYOB is that it is totally inflexible, once you have set it up you cannot easily change anything at all so as your needs change as a business manager you will find that your MYOB accounting system becomes more and more worthless as a management tool.

You need to make sure that the system that you use for your management figures will allow you
to change groupings of data, put in forecast figures for growth and allow you to know exactly what your cash flow is at any moment in time.
The biggest weak spots in small business are cash flow and change, keeping track of this in any useful way is impossible for most people to do with MYOB and I have yet to find anyone who can do it.

Just because it's the industry standard doesn't make it any good, Windows anyone?

The great dilemma in small business is the dividing up of time between working in a small business and working on a small business, anything that needlessly takes away your focus and time will damage your business.

hey all,

Does anyone know how to sync up two address books in leopard ?

I mainly use MYOB Retail Manager, but this only because my mum works with it everyday and she can do some leg work for me. I think it's simple to use, I can do everything I need to do.

Haven't used CubeCart so can't comment.

This is my swag:
- Sugar CRM
- Asterisk PBX
- Pentaho - Business Intelligence
But you will need some Linux skills to do it all right. But your customers will love you. As well as it will keep you on track.

Tanguero have a look at:
NetSuite. I think it more like something your after.

if you are going down the asterisk path, trixbox has the best support for a medium linux person to operate far better over other asterisk based platforms.
If you get stuck let me know with your asterisk config i've been using it since 2000 when it was in beta at datafast
trixbox Community Edition | Free Open Source Asterisk-Based Distribution | trixbox | The Open Platform for Business Telephony

just to throw another hat into the ring....!

LightSpeed is a POS (Point of Sale) system that also includes stock control and ordering, CRM, a web store, accounts receivable and quite a bit of reporting. Not sure what you budget is, but they offer a 30 day trial if you want to try it out for a look see.

Looks nice and friendly, much unlike some of the things I've worked on in the past!!

Wondering.... does anyone here know of accountants/bookkeepers in Brisbane area who are MAC competent - to assist in setting up accounting system for small business? Cheers, Donna