Did you know that you can create your
own small business form software library with Microsoft Word templates?
-- plus, as an added bonus, slash your offset printing bills?
Are you still paying outside companies to print small
quantities of envelopes, letterhead, memo pads, vacation request forms,
employment applications, employee annual evaluations and potentially
dozens of other office forms and stationery?
Eliminating Some Outside Printing Costs with the Hidden
Gem of Microsoft Word . . . Small Business Form Software
Although some unusual circumstances still may justify
these old-fashioned practices, most small businesses can save a bundle
by setting up various templates in Microsoft Word to eliminate some of
your outside printing costs. So Microsoft Word becomes your personal,
low budget small business form software. Now this small
business form software example takes you through the creation of
letterhead stationery, these same techniques can be just as readily
applied to a wide variety of small business form software needs.
To those of you in the offset printing industry,
please understand that I don't have any deep-seated resentment of how
you make a living. I'm only the messenger here. On the flip side,
however, you're probably in a fabulous position to leverage your loyal
customer list and graphic design skills to diversify your services and
build quite a formidable Web site design business.
Four-Step Plan of Attack for Small Business Form Software
(Letterhead example)
1) Get your company's logo digitized in a format that
can be inserted readily into Microsoft Word documents and templates
(your small business form software). If your logo is not already in an
accessible electronic format such as .TIF or .BMP, get your logo scanned
in and touched up for clarity. 2) Pull out your offset
printing bills for the past year or so and see where you're spending the
most. This will help you prioritize your cost-saving potential (your
return on investment with small business form software). Then determine
whether some of these outside printing jobs could be handled internally
if your company, for example, purchased a special grade of paper for
your laser printer or invested in a high-speed color laser printer. As a
fellow small business owner, I know I’m constantly evaluating these
cost-saving possibilities. 3) Assemble a team of
Microsoft Word savvy staff members to begin drafting some templates for
your virtual small business form software. For the sake of consistency
and branding, your staff should agree on a common set of formatting
styles (fonts, sizes and so forth). If your documents look bland,
vaguely resembling as much flair and pizzazz as something coming off an
electric typewriter, get familiar with some of the included Microsoft
Word templates and styles. Using your small business form software's
pre-fabricated design elements is not difficult, but is often the key
difference between an amateurish and professional document appearance. 4)
Don't format text by hand in Microsoft Word. Small business form
software templates always include a set of preformatted styles, which
you can easily modify or add to. You can find the Style drop-down list
on the left side of the Formatting toolbar. Be sure to use styles in
your Microsoft Word documents to ease your initial small business form
software formatting and document maintenance.
Professionally designed styles give your documents a
sense of flair and consistency, while easing maintenance burdens.
Keeping Employees on the Same Page with Small Business
Form Software To ensure consistency within your company,
place newly customized and created Microsoft Word templates (.dot files)
in a folder on your file server that all employees have access to. Then,
under the Tools menu, Options command, File Locations tab, select
Workgroup Templates. Then Modify and select the shared template folder
location.
Tip: To maintain greater centralized
control with your small business form software, you may want to give
read-write permissions to these files only to designated managers.
Everyone else could get read-only permissions.
By pointing all employees' Microsoft Word configurations
to the same Workgroup Templates folder on your server, you can ensure that
everyone has the same version of Microsoft Word templates available when
choosing the File, New command. This leads to a much higher
level of consistency when employees make use of small business form
software.
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