When it comes to running an office, the SOHO entrepreneur has enough on his or her plate as it is. So if you find yourself in the unenviable position of regularly having to set aside your core competencies to handle tedious, repetitive administrative duties such as creating your business documents from scratch, then you need to consider the potential benefits offered by document templates.

Templates enable you to create professional documents that are unified in appearance. With a template, you’ll be able to access readymade documents that you’ll be able to manipulate via a step-by-step process to fit your specific needs. If you are new to the world of business, you can use templates to quickly, easily and efficiently create the professional quality documents you require. If you are familiar with creating business documents, you can use templates to save time.

You no doubt grasp the importance of standard documents such as contracts, business correspondence and agreements. But having to write, edit and print them up each and every single time they are needed is not only costly—in terms of taking away from mission-critical job duties—but also frustrating—in terms of forcing you to complete the same tasks over and over.

Document templates, however, greatly simplify the task by providing you with the framework for the documents you need. By using document templates, you’ll be able to easily personalize a standardized document. For instance, you’ll be able to input the names of the parties involved, addresses, specific terms of the agreement and other relevant data. The great thing is that document templates actually simplify the process of generating business documents.

When you use document templates, you’ll receive several benefits. You won’t need to spend countless hours creating business documents from scratch. You’ll increase worker productivity, because you and your staff will not have to manually create documents from the ground up. Furthermore, templates lets even non-designers create impressive looking business documents that project a professional image.

You may even be surprised to know that some of the word processing software currently sitting on your hard drive have templates you can use to streamline the process of creating documents. For instance, MS Office contains plenty of features you can leverage to produce professional-looking documents. Using the templates included, you’ll be able to generate various types of business documents. WordPerfect is another word processing application you can use when it comes to accessing templates. And if you don’t have either MS Office or WordPerfect, you can use just about any desktop publishing project to produce templates for business documents.

With document templates, you’ll be able to generate the business documents you need when you need them. By creating your own business documents, then having your lawyer look them over, can save you money. Since you don’t have to pay him to create them from scratch for you. In this day and age when companies are proactively considering cost-containment measures, you should consider the

If you’re looking for document templates, you should first check to see if your existing software programs already have them. But while many word processing and desktop publishing programs do provide document templates, most do not provide document templates for specialized business forms that you may require from time to time. So you may need to buy a third-party program that gives you access to these necessary templates.

Fortunately, there are a number of options when it comes to document templates. One of the better known document template programs is Business-in-a-Box (www.envisionsbs.com), a software library that comes with policies, spreadsheets, legal documents, business correspondence and just about any other type of document you will need to effectively run your business. In all, Business-in-a-Box includes over 700 document templates (basic version) or over 1,200 document templates (professional version) that you’ll be able to use. These document templates can also be used on most word processors, so you won’t need a fancy program in order to use them.

Business-in-a-Box is not the only program that provides document templates, but it is certainly one of the most comprehensive. Envision SBS, the maker of Business-in-a-Box, even offers a downloadable demo on its website. So you can give it a test drive before you decide whether or not to buy it.

There are a few other things you’ll want to keep in mind when considering the option of buying a specialized program that generates document templates. For one thing, you will want to get a solution that is not platform dependent. You may also want to consider a template collection that works with the software you already have. You’ll also want to ensure that the solution you ultimately buy has a wide range of templates available, such as document templates for contracts, memos, sales letters, collection letters, request for proposals and more.

Being a small company means that you’ll have to be more judicious when it comes to deciding what qualifies as your firm’s core competencies. When you consider cost containment, productivity improvement and customer service enhancement, I’m sure you’ll agree that using templates to quickly and easily create professional and high impact business documents is a smart business move.

Copyright 2004 Cavyl Stewart

Cavyl Stewart is the owner of http://www.find-small-business-software.com, which is dedicated to providing resources and information on finding the software solution that is right for your needs and budget. Check the template directory for links to some of the best template sites on the web.

I have over 25 years in the customer service field, having worked most of her life in banking, retail and employee outsourcing. I amalso a Certified PC Technician. My first small business (pre-internet) was running an office support service.