Small and medium enterprises face most of their difficulties when they start to manage their cash flows and financing decisions. The characteristics of SMEs around the globe, is a single operator of the business. And this individual in most cases specializes on the core skills and masters the value programs for the SMEs operating at specialized niche level. But he/she lacks proper financial knowledge. To aid and help these people now-a-days several organizations have started to distribute free business finance software over the internet. This software allows them to structure their cash flows in proper accounting or financial reporting format after analysis. Reports thus generated with the use of this software help the business to flourish.
The need of using free business finance software on a SME context is immense. Financing is among the core functions of any business activity. These software programs provide a structure and govern all the financing activities in light of an equilibrium situation where optimizations of resources are main objective and help to identify the breakeven point. This software helps in the following areas of a business and following are the advantages of using it:
I. managing cash flows
II. analyzing business growth
III. budgeting
IV. investment analysis
V. report generation
VI. record keeping
VII. providing right information
VIII. expediting decision making process
IX. managing inventory
X. cost analysis
To derive the complete advantage of the free software, the user needs to have preliminary idea of several financing terms and analytic skills of financial reports. It is a tool to conduct better business irrespective of the industry. The most amazing aspect is that this software is at present available for specified industry. The embedded information is the stored data and terms used in specific industry.
As nothing comes in free in this world there are also some limitations to this free finance software as below:
I. most of this software is developed in the context of different economies
II. most of the analysis programmed are from various finance school of thought and the analysis are done on various methods rather than widely used ones
III. this finance software are for free distribution over the internet only, you can not get a copy from a software seller
IV. corrupted or mal ware are often downloaded along with these free business software
V. advertisements are programmed with such business finance software that suddenly covers the computer screen and affects smooth functioning of the operations
VI. users are asked to go through the ‘read me’ files for instructions on how to use the software, but these instructions or user manuals rarely include graphical images for clear understanding
VII. requires regular update on some cases
VIII. have limited access in terms of time and mostly the demo version of this software are distributed over the internet as free software.
The software has certain demerits along with risk of information security. It is not wise for a businessman to totally rely on his finance software. In fact it will be no wonder if users of such business package start to see their secret information, credit card details, and important password are used and thus his online incomes starts to vanish in the air or pirated online. Security has to be the main concern before using free business finance package and checking whether it is from a certified developer.
With growing need for a true and perfect helpful business package, we believe soon world reputed developers will bring only such software for free distribution, which will overcome all the disputes and debates.