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    <title>The nGen Works Blog: Tools to run your small business in 2010</title>
    <link>http://www.ngenworks.com/blog/detail/tools_to_run_your_small_business_in_2010/</link>
    <description>nGen Works discusses the tools they&apos;ll be using to run the business in 2010.</description>
    <dc:language>en-us</dc:language>
    <dc:creator>carl@ngenworks.com</dc:creator>
    <dc:rights>Copyright 2010</dc:rights>
    <dc:date>2010-01-08T19:59:01-05:00</dc:date>
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      <title>Comment by software development in Surrey</title>
      <link>http://www.geeks.ltd.uk/Services/software&#45;product&#45;development.html</link>
      <description><![CDATA[	<p>{body}</p>]]></description>
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[Quite inspiring,
Some great business tools...
Thanks for bringing this up]]></content:encoded>
     <dc:date>2010-01-22T09:02:47-05:00</dc:date>
    </item>

    <item>
      <title>Comment by carl Smith</title>
      <link>http://www.ngenworks.com/team/carl</link>
      <description><![CDATA[	<p>{body}</p>]]></description>
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[@Brad - Glad you liked the post, and I'll definitely be giving DoneDone a look.We're big fans of hosted solutions as well. Keep us informed of how your mashup evolves.

To see time tracking with great reporting features checkout "Tempo":http://www.keeptempo.com (OK, so they're a client but it's still a great app!)]]></content:encoded>
     <dc:date>2010-01-11T15:25:41-05:00</dc:date>
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    <item>
      <title>Comment by Brad Pollard</title>
      <link>http://fatpublisher.com.au</link>
      <description><![CDATA[	<p>{body}</p>]]></description>
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the tools that you use within your business. In the absence of good advice, business tool selection can quickly become a minefield. 

We project manage a web design team consisting of designers and developers. On advice of others our main prerequisite has been to find tools that are easy to use.

Unlike @chris, we are a big believer in hosted solutions.

For invoicing we use Harvest. For to-do lists and time tracking we use Basecamp. For contact management/CRM/sales we use Highrise, however as you have found, there isn't much too it... we'll be checking out Pipeline Deals. Thanks for the recommendation.

For issue tracking we use DoneDone - our clients have really taken to this online issue tracker. DoneDone almost makes issue tracking fun ;-)

We have also based our business tool selection on whether the tool has a good API or not. Often, systems that are easy to use have had their functionality paired back to appeal to a wider market. Reporting appears to have been one of those areas to have been placed on the back-burner. So where then will we obtain important business performance reports? This is likely to come either from the tool authors themselves OR from third parties making good use of their APIs - mashing up time, invoicing and customer data to produce meaningful reports. We're looking forward to seeing this evolution take place.]]></content:encoded>
     <dc:date>2010-01-08T22:10:06-05:00</dc:date>
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    <item>
      <title>Comment by Carl Smith</title>
      <link>http://www.ngenworks.com/team/carl</link>
      <description><![CDATA[	<p>{body}</p>]]></description>
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[@Chad, glad you liked the post. Payroll is handled by our accounting firm. I just shoot them an email approving it and magically the money ends up in our bank accounts. Heaven I tell you, heaven. Pipeline is really good if you are the type of person who will keep up with it. "Pipejump":http://pipejump.com/ looked interesting too if you're testing a few options out.

@Max, You are most welcome. Pulse really helps me in my decision making. Wether it's going to a conference that's 4 months away or if we take on a project I'm not sure about. I hear great things about Pivotal Tracker, and the "Pivotal Labs":http://www.pivotallabs.com guys have been super great to us. Our types of projects and the way we work just isn't really suited for it. That may change, you never know.

@Chris, Thanks. I'd love to hear more about your decision to move away from hosted solutions. Buck that trend! 

@Jeff, Quickbooks works really well for some people, just not for me. Having a great accounting firm fixed all of those problems for us. "Tick":http://www.tickspot.com is a great tool. When we used them we used "Blinksale":http://www.blinksale.com for invoicing which also worked really well. The decision to move to Harvest was based on wanting time tracking and invoicing in the same app. It's really been a great decision for us.]]></content:encoded>
     <dc:date>2010-01-08T21:48:20-05:00</dc:date>
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    <item>
      <title>Comment by Jeff Harrrington</title>
      <link>http://www.eharrington.com</link>
      <description><![CDATA[	<p>{body}</p>]]></description>
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[I like Quickbooks online for billing/bookeeping. And by me I mean my bookkeeper. It works with Safari now and my accountant likes it too.

We tracktime in Tickspot. I think you used them at one point.

For new biz, I use a dolled up Numbers speadsheet.  print them on 11x17. It's not to interact with, markup.

Dittos on Basecamp.]]></content:encoded>
     <dc:date>2010-01-08T19:50:03-05:00</dc:date>
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    <item>
      <title>Comment by Chris Olberding</title>
      <link>http://www.stationfour.com</link>
      <description><![CDATA[	<p>{body}</p>]]></description>
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[Good post Carl. Might inspire me to do the same - we recently conducted a review of all business software that we use and are in the process of making some big changes - getting away from Basecamp finally.

I agree with your comment on Highrise, we used it for maybe a month. We use a customized version of vTiger (flavor of SugarCRM) now, better than Highrise but not ideal.

I'm over hosted solutions, if you have the development and IT expertise it makes a whole lot more sense to run software on your own servers that can tie directly in to your workflow and file servers.]]></content:encoded>
     <dc:date>2010-01-08T16:42:11-05:00</dc:date>
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    <item>
      <title>Comment by Max Cameron</title>
      <link>http://bigbangtechnology.com</link>
      <description><![CDATA[	<p>{body}</p>]]></description>
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[Hi Carl, 

Thanks for the list. I'm going to check out Pulse because we're struggling to keep our financials really up to date. Right now we're getting monthly snap shots from our book keeper, but the info is always a month old and that's not doing it for us. 

I'm surprised you didn't mention Pivotal Tracker in this post. Do you do all of your PM work in basecamp?]]></content:encoded>
     <dc:date>2010-01-08T16:05:01-05:00</dc:date>
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    <item>
      <title>Comment by Chad Crowell</title>
      <link>http://www.encaffeinated.com</link>
      <description><![CDATA[	<p>{body}</p>]]></description>
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[Great post Carl - I love this stuff from like-minded professionals.  Having just incorporated, rebranded and in the process of re-inventing how we present our company, we also are in the process of evaluating tools we use.

Wondering what you use for payroll?  We do use quickbooks and my wife, who is also VP and our biz manager is a whiz at it - so I don't bug her about trying other things.  We use the integrated QB payroll, which is painless, but if we ever jumped off QB I wouldn't know what to do with payroll.

I haven't been able to get into really using Highrise, so thanks for the Pipeline rec- looks like a good option.  I am also trying to find a way to work basic CRM flow into Basecamp.

I think I'll be ditching our Backpack subscription - it just doesn't get used.  I think Dropbox is about all we need to handle the aspects of Backpack that we do use.  With milestones in Basecamp and google calendar we are pretty set there.

I also decided to use google apps for email rather than our own server, mainly for the spam filtering and letting them worry about space and bandwidth.]]></content:encoded>
     <dc:date>2010-01-08T15:55:01-05:00</dc:date>
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