By Joel T. Patz
Ninety percent of new businesses fail within the first five years of operation. With a solid business plan, though, your new business can get a running start. Whether you're financing a new venture or assessing an existing business, Business Plan Pro can help put together an effective business plan.
Charts, text and tables are the backbone of Business Plan Pro. The program integrates charting, word processing and internal spreadsheet capabilities to merge your information into a presentable professional document. By providing a series of suggested topics and standardized tables and charts, Business Plan Pro walks you through all the steps required to develop a business plan.
On the initial Options screen you specify business basics. You can choose from four major types of businesses--Service, Retail, Distribution and Manufacture--or a Mixed category. You specify the starting month and year, whether or not the business is run from a home office, if it's a start-up or an ongoing project, and the type of receipts expected--cash or credit. Based on your responses, an expandable menu of topics then leads you through the steps for developing the plan's text.
The options chosen determine the menu topics. For example, if you have a start-up company, the History topic won't be available. If the enterprise is already established and you want to include some information not included in the menu choices, you can add it where it would be appropriate. Composing text for all topics--including Mission Statement, Market Analysis or Organization's Management Team--is done on the bottom half of the Topics screen; the top half provides instructions that clarify what should be included in the section. A click of the mouse will offer a helpful example. There's no need to follow any preset order when filling in information--you can develop the plan as the data related to your business becomes available.
For developing the financial side of the plan, Business Plan Pro provides 10 tables, including spreadsheets for break-even analysis, sales forecasts, personnel plans and cash flow. Depending on the business type you specified during setup, the available tables will vary. Financial information entered in any of the predesigned spreadsheets is linked to the others.
The visual representation of a written proposal is an important factor in making your point. While a picture won't always replace a thousand words, charts or graphs will clarify and emphasize points in your written analysis. The tables feature lets you see at a glance pie charts of market segmentation or bar charts of key business indicators by year, for example.
The real key to this program is in the sum of its parts. Business Plan Pro automatically assembles your text, tables and charts into an attractive and easy-to-read report that you'll be proud to submit to bankers or venture capitalists.
Unfortunately, the program suffers from version 1.0 blues. Contrary to the documentation, a change in a table is not automatically reflected in the corresponding chart when you click on the Chart icon. Entry of an invalid filename locks you out of the program and you'll have to reinstall or modify the .INI file. In text mode, if you change text and then exit, the program tells you it saved your text, but it won't. Also lacking is a spell checker, print preview and a checklist to indicate which topics have been completed.
Online help is woefully inadequate. It's best to have the manual nearby when you use the program. The 60-page appendix in the user guide is full of helpful information for the beginning entrepreneur.
Palo Alto Software has confirmed the glitches I found while testing Business Plan Pro and plans to correct them. If the bugs are fixed, this program will be an asset to anyone who needs to write a complete business plan with integrated tables and charts.
Info File
Business Plan Pro 1.0
Price: $149.95
In Brief: A step-by-step guide for creating professional business plans, Business Plan Pro would be effective if not for the bugs in the version reviewed.
Disk Space Required: 2MB
System Resources: 12% RAM: 4MB
Palo Alto Software 800-229-7526, 503-683-6162
By: Joel T. Patz
Setting goals, managing staff and tracking details is easier now. ManagePro is a well-organized, result-oriented program that offers managers the tools to establish goals, assign responsibilities, check progress, offer constructive feedback, and prepare for accurate and meaningful performance appraisals. I tested a late beta version.
How you use ManagePro depends on how you set up the program. You can choose from five usage styles: People Manager, People Manager/Developer, Goal Planner/Manager, Goal and People Manager, and Integrated Performance Manager. The style determines the level of managerial involvement and program functionality.
People Manager, for example, establishes the basic framework for setting goals, documenting performance and preparing performance reviews. The Integrated Performance Manager uses the entire range of people- and goal-management functions, including goal setting and development plans, task delegation, performance feedback and coaching, and tracking goal progress. If management responsibilities change, it's easy to step up from one usage level to another.
ManagePro's button bar provides access to its principal components: Goals, People, Action, the Assistant, Reports and the Advisor. The Goal Planner helps to establish objectives and timelines, assign responsibilities and track status. You can expand or collapse the outline format and easily adjust goals and subgoals. Use buttons to verify a given item's progress, add clarifying details and notes, and attach related documents. The Timeline button offers a graphical calendar display of schedules and events. The Goal Status window provides an org chart that shows goals and their interrelationships.
The People/Team Planner function provides a wide variety of personnel-management tools. Key operations include goal review, progress and feedback; setting performance review cycles; adding observations for a review; and management commitments for job development. From any screen, you can drill down to additional detail. You can view individual calendars and personal information. You can also modify or add to an employee's goals. The People Status button opens a table that uses program information to show your staff's progress.
You use the Action tool to get to a To Do list, a summary of action items and the calendar. Other buttons bring up notes, details and document functions, and let you make quick changes and additions. A global calendar provides an overview of planned activities.The Assistant can be summoned--or set to appear at startup--to give a bird's eye view of the day's important activities.You can modify a selection of predesigned reports or design your own forms. Print preview is available, and reports are stamped with the date and time.
ManagePro integrates with e-mail systems--cc: Mail 1.1, Lotus Notes Mail, Microsoft Mail 3.0 and others--so that you can forward information electronically. You can also synchronize data between your desktop PC and a portable computer.ManagePro's well-designed tutorials will help get you up and running. Templates for different business types provide configuration examples. You can use one of these templates for your company's setup.
ManagePro is an intuitive, well-developed tool for the serious manager. Ease of navigation through the clearly designed program is underscored by the pleasant appearance of the screens--many of which can be customized. ManagePro's attention to detail will surely please both managers and employees.
Info File
ManagePro 3.0
Price: $199 (Street): upgrade, $99.
In Brief: This Program's personnel-management tools will enhance a manager's organazational effectiveness.
Avantos Performance Systems
800-AVANTOS, 510-654-4600
by: Joel T. Patz
Performance evaluations are a necessary part of doing business. They take time to write and they're often hard to organize. But Performance Now 2.0 can take some of the sting from this difficult task.
Performance Now's five predesigned review forms--Universal, Management, Clerical, Production, and Sales and Service--help you get started. If none of these fills the bill, you can design your own review form.
Each review form includes a list of performance criteria with evaluative factors that you rate on a scale of 1 to 5. Based on the ratings, Performance Now produces clear and direct text, including both the employee's name and gender-specific pronouns. An overall rating is also calculated, which helps you select summary statements for the evaluation. A built-in word processor makes it easy to modify any of the program's text passages.
Performance Now also provides lists of element-specific suggestions for improving performance or developing an employee's abilities.
Online help is available every step of the way. Dialog box Help buttons provide context-sensitive help for most review elements, and the Advice tool provides help on human resources issues. When you give a low performance rating for an element, a message is displayed to remind you to add supporting details.
You can maintain a log with notes of activities that occurred prior to an employee's evaluation. This information can be used as a reference or you can paste it directly onto the evaluation form.
Performance Now's Language Checker reviews an evaluation's language for suitability. It helps identify words or phrases that may be considered poor choices, discriminatory or subjective. A basic spell checker and print preview are also available. You can also export files in .RTF and ASCII formats.
Performance Now 2.0 offers an intuitive, well-structured and informative solution for busy managers, and helps ensure that evaluations are done responsibly and accurately.
-- InfoFile --
Performance Now 2.0
Price: $129; upgrade, $49; multiple, from $39 to $69 per license
Disk Space: 8MB (10MB with tutorial)
System Resources: 15%RAM: 4MB
KnowledgePoint
800-727-1133, 707-762-0333
by Rich Castagna
The worst part of a business trip isn't the jet lag, themeals on the run or the endless workdays. The worst part isfilling out a travel expense report when you come home.Quicken ExpensAble can't turn back the clock, preventindigestion or give you the day off. But it can take thesting out of tallying up the expenses you incur on theroad.
ExpensAble's first clever conceit is the envelopemetaphor it uses as a repository for expense items. Thisisn't only an accurate imitation of life think aboutthose travel department envelopes that end up stuffed withyour receipts but it's a practical, effortless way toensure that nothing slips through the cracks. I tested a latebeta version of ExpensAble.
For each trip, you create a new ExpensAble envelope.Whenever you spend some of the company's money or yourown just jot the entry and drop it into the envelope. Ifyou take a cash advance before embarking, let ExpensAble knowand it'll figure it in and adjust your reimbursementaccordingly.
Entering expense items is quick, and it gets faster asyou enter more items. ExpensAble's main screen has aspreadsheet-like grid at the top and a work area below whereyou enter individual expense items. When you complete an itemon the bottom, it gets plugged into the grid on top.
You don't have to type dates or dollars. Pop-upcalendars and calculators let you point and click. Andwherever feasible, ExpensAble offers drop-down lists forquick entries. For example, a list for expense types includesairfare, meals, taxis and so forth. The neat thing is thatthe lists remember. Type in an airline that's not listed, andit becomes part of the roster. Update the lists on the fly orby selecting Lists from the main menu.
In some respects, ExpensAble goes beyond a typicalexpense report. For each expense item, you can indicate thepayment method credit card, check, cash, companypaid and categorize expenses as reimbursable,nonreimbursable or personal. And better yet, this program issmart enough to know that a company-paid expense isnonreimbursable.
Five buttons on the work area's right side let you enterand delete expenses, and clear the worksheet's decks for thenext entry. The Details button lets you define foreigncurrency and the applicable exchange, add notes and assignbilling responsibilities. Click on the Split button to divvyup a single expense item to charge it back to severalaccounts.
The Hotel Genie sounds like a supernatural being whoturns your blanket and leaves a mint on your pillow.Actually, it's ExpensAble's super and natural way to handlehotel expenses. Few people bother with hotel expenses on adaily basis. It's easier when the final bill is in hand, sothat's how the Hotel Genie works. Type the hotel'sname or pick it off the list and indicate the roomrate with applicable taxes and your payment method. The HotelGenie prompts for other likely hotel charges, such as mealsand phone calls.
ExpensAble comes with 20 predefined expense-reportformats. You can make only minor modifications to theseforms, such as replacing column and row labels and changingfonts. If your company doesn't have an officialexpense-report form, or replacing it is practical, thenExpensAble's choices should suffice. Otherwise, you'll haveto transpose the information, or export it to Quicken or anExcel spreadsheet, a feature that wasn't yet working in thebeta.
Analytical reports are also included. The Summary Reportgroups reimbursable and nonreimbursable expenses by type withtotals, advances and amount due to the employee. ATransaction Detail report shows each day's expenses with thedetails you provided. One report lists items by paymentmethod, while another shows who you paid for what. You can dosome basic filtering of these reports by date range and othercriteria.
Assuming you're not chained to a standard company expensereport, ExpensAble can unfetter you from the drudgery anddetails of expense reimbursement.
--Info File--
Quicken ExpensAble
Price: $49.95
In Brief: ExpensAble is a very easy-to-usebusiness expense reporting program that integrates with Intuit's Quicken.
Intuit
800-816-8025, 415-322-0573
by: David Gabel
When QuickXpense first appeared, I hailed it as my deliverance from the drudgery of travel expense reports (see First Impressions, December 1994).
The first edition of this handy program made tallying trip expenses as easy as typing in items and then lettting QuickXpense sort things out and run up the totals. I tested a beta of the newest version, which one-ups its predecessor with even more ease-of-use features while also adding Windows 95 compatibility.QuickXpense still offers a spreadsheet-like ledger where you enter your trip expenses in any order. Drop-down lists aid the process, with pick lists for commonly used credit cards, airlines, hotels, car rental agencies and so forth. It accommodates company-paid expenses and cash advances, and can differentiate among cash, check and credit-card transactions. And if you're a globetrotter, don't worry--the program also is capable of converting foreign currency entries based on the rate you indicate.
You don't have to tinker with QuickXpense's output. For a small fee, Portable Software will create a digital version of your company's expense report form, so as you determine the bottom line, you can toe the company line, too.QuickXpense conforms to Windows 95 standards with support for long filenames, OLE 2.0 and Microsoft Exchange. The new HotelXpert facilitates breaking down hotel bills into specific expense categories. The HotelXpert can help track items such as the room rate and tax, meals and phone calls. Just enter your total hotel bill and then click on Itemize. The HotelXpert will ask for the room rate and tax, check-in and -out dates, and the other charges you wish to itemize. QuickXpense will then sort out the expenses and put each in its proper slot.
If you have a GE Capital Corp. credit card, you can use a special version of the program to download expense data from that company's database for inclusion in your report.
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QuickXpense for Windows 95
Price: $99.95 (upgrade, $29.95)
Portable Software Corp.
800-478-7411, 206-637-8808
by Joel T. Patz
Human resources run human resource organizations. Visual HR 2.0 paves the way to optimal productivity for busy HR managers. This comprehensive application, with its well-designed interface, is a real timesaver. It scans resumes, enters new-hire information and analyzes benefits plans, among other things.
The System Manager module is the program's core. It brings together the operational aspects of the Configuration Manager, Employee Editor, Employee Manager and Activity Manager, and permits the integration of other optional modules.
With the System Manager, you can use the multilevel system security to establish access privileges for records, screens and reports. Systemwide choice lists and job codes are easily maintained with a few mouse clicks and entry of required information. Icon-driven functions in the Employee Editor provide speedy access to employee data, such as personal, employment, job, salary, benefits, awards, education and skills information. OSHA and health and wellness files are also just a click away. The program tracks attendance and reports potential abuses within three days on either side of a scheduled holiday. Visual HR 2.0 also lets you keep employee ID photos on file.
You can create customized screens for the Employee Editor module and track salary range information for compensation analysis using the Configuration Manager. Six wizards help speed system configuration: the Benefits Wizard for life, medical and disability insurance; the Eligibility Wizard for setting up eligibility formulas; the PTO (Paid Time Off) Wizard for dealing with vacation, sick and personal time; the Defined Contribution Wizard for defining contribution parameters; the FSA Wizard for flexible spending accounts; and the Credit Wizard for establishing credit formulas for benefit plans. You can set up 401(k) and 403 (b) contributions and employer matching funds in minutes.
With the Activity Manager, you schedule HR department activities for completion within specified parameters. Jobs can be assigned to individuals and time-consuming tasks, such as report printing, can be scheduled for delayed processing.
Visual HR 2.0's Recruiting Manager module streamlines the hiring process and supports an unlimited number of job requisitions. A Job Requisition Wizard simplifies the process for filling an open position, with user-defined information relevant to any step in the hiring process available with a mouse click. With built-in OCR capability and support for a variety of scanners, it takes only minutes to scan resumes into Visual HR 2.0 to make them available online. The resumes can be searched, and customized letters generated to send to selected and rejected candidates.
The Data Exchange module lets you import and export payroll data. In a point-and-click field mapping window, you identify the location and name of the fields in the import file and the corresponding fields in Visual HR. For exporting payroll, interfaces for major payroll vendors such as Great Plains, ADP and Macola are available.
Human resources professionals will be overjoyed with Visual HR 2.0's report writing capabilities. It offers over 230 reports that cover every aspect of available data across all modules. EEO 1 and 4 are two of its 10 EEO reports, and OSHA 101 and 200 can be produced in a wink. Letter templates and a mail-merge utility ease communications with present and future employees. You can create customized reports that use the same filtering options as any standard report. Specially designed reports can take advantage of Crystal Reports, the outstanding authoring tool included with the application.
Visual HR 2.0 offers a complete toolbox for any human resources department. Its details will please the demanding user, its speed will please the pressured professional and its output is bound to please everyone.
--Info File--
Visual HR 2.0
Price: Based on number of employees, from $1,000 to $18,000
In Brief: This is a complete, well-designed human resources application for small to midsized businesses.
Disk Space: System, 28MB; data, 4MB to 6MB per 100 employees
System Resources: 28%
RAM: 8MB (16MB recommended)
FLX Corp.
800-359-4747, 610-408-3900