Best Free, Legal Software for Business

By now you have probably heard of Open Office (Win/Mac). It is the open source answer to expensive commercial office software and while it does not have all the same bells and whistles, it does the job nicely and in some cases, even better.

Create documents and spreadsheets, graphs, presentations, databases and much more with this innovative software. Insert video, graphics and sound. Files can be saved in many common document formats or exported as a PDF. That's impressive. No other office program allows you to directly export all documents, spreadsheets and presentations to PDF with one click. Get it here:http://www.openoffice.org/

It does not have a clip art gallery but don't let that stop you. You can create your own very easily by using the Open Clip Art Library. Just download the file, and add it to the gallery in Open Office. Full instructions on how to do this are right here!

What's missing? It does not have an integrated email program. However, Mozilla Thunderbird is an excellent open source email program and Mozilla Lightning, a calendar and task program, is the perfect extension for Thunderbird. Upgrading from other email clients like Outlook or Outlook Express is easy.

Accounting

Gnucash (Win/Mac) is an actively updated open source accounting software that works on all operating systems. It's easy to use for personal accounting but powerful enough for a small business. You can track your bank accounts, stocks and monitor your income and expenses on an intuitive interface.

There are features for customer and vendor tracking, invoicing and bill payment as well as tax and billing terms. Need to find a transaction quickly? Gnucash can do it! Gnucash also handles several currencies.

It comes with a manual that takes you through every step of monitoring your home accounts or business transactions. Get it here: http://www.gnucash.org/

Hint: Don't install all the extras that come with the package if you don't need them.  The basic install will work well for most people. READ THE MANUAL.

Gnucash Interface

PDF Split and Merge

OS Independent. That means we can all use it! It does just what it says. It allows you to edit your PDFs so if something didn't print properly, you can print only the missing portion and not the whole document. Move things around all you like. The interface is intuitive and that cuts the learning curve way down. Have a look at the screenshot below and if you like the idea of having control over your PDFs, get the program here.

Point of Sale Software

If you have a small retail business or restaurant and need Point of Sale software that will serve multiple computers on a single database, look no further. Lemon POS is the way to go. It is designed for Linux and Unix systems and has many of the features built into the expensive software. It uses MySQL and because it's Unix based, you don't have the worry of viruses attacking your data. Want to get it now? Download here.

Be aware that support is minimal at this point and can only be obtained by contacting the developer. You may have to fend for yourself and search out information on forums but this is likely to change as more people start using the software.

It's amazing what is out there for free. You just have to look around. Happy hunting!

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