Small business software

Just wondering if anybody can point me towards some useful, free software for a small business? There's heaps of stuff out there, but that's exactly the problem, too many choices and too little time to play with everything to figure what's good or what I can get my head around.

I need a CRM (had a bit of a play with one called Tiger, seems simple enough but I am keen to know what else decent is out there), some kind of accounting software, an invoice generator (picked up a basic excel template that I've adjusted for now, but it's not ideal), and anything else anybody knows of that might be helpful.

Any web based stuff (that I can ideally access via a subdomain of my own website) that you can recommend is great too.

Cheers

myob would work for accounting and invoicing - or excel and a word template

outlook with business contact manager would work for crm - hell an excel spread sheet would work for crm

It really depends on how much work you are thinking of and how many people to do it. If its just you then MS office would do it all and most of the other software wouldnt really give any benefit just look pretty.

Make sure you get a *decent* TAX accountant but try and do as much of the work that you can for yourself - its your business.

Make sure any process you have works on paper first or accounting software will just hide the problems and the number it gives you will be meaningless.

"Free" and "accounting software" is....no, just no.

Find out what your accountant can work with, use that. Accounting software needs to take into account local tax laws, be regularly updated, have support, and be secure.

Seriously seriously try and justify spending money on xero.com for accounting. It's about 1000 times better than anything comparable and totally worth the spend if you're doing enough business. And handily, they operate in .au as well, along with being able to tie in to your ANZ, Commonwealth or NAB bank account.

LOTS of features that make it incredibly easy to use and understand.

Do it once, do it properly.