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Coronavirus Fightback: Software Deals to Keep You Trading

Accounting Software
Written by
Sholto Macpherson
Published on
April 4, 2020

https://www.digitalfirst.com/news/coronavirus-fightback-software-deals-to-keep-you-trading

Here’s a list of software discounts and specials (usually three months free) to help businesses keep trading through the Coronavirus lockdown and its aftermath. It is a free page of resources, collected from various locations and through direct requests I’ve made to software companies.

Some notes:

  • The list is organised by industry, apart from horizontal services and software such as cashflow which apply to all industries.
  • Most offers are for new customers not existing customers. There are some offers for existing customers (eg. CloudFlare for Teams, G Suite Hangouts Meet).

Contents

Retailers
Ecommerce
Customer loyalty
Productivity/Collaboration
Hospitality (Cafes, Bars, Restaurants, etc.)
Gift Cards
Professional Services – (Accounting, Engineering, Architecture, etc.)
HR
Security
File sharing
Electronic Signatures
Video Conferencing
Extra resources
For all industries
Cashflow Forecasting

Retailers

Tough times, but people still need to lead their lives and buy supplies. Below are some suppliers who can help you set up an online store to keep your stock moving. Can’t sell your stock in this market? Why not pivot and sell some homemade masks until this passes? You will have plenty of buyers! It’s working for these guys.

Ecommerce

Why you need it: If you can’t move your inventory by selling it online then you’re in a really bad place right now. It’s not easy setting up this stuff, but now that you have time you can integrate it with your in-store inventory and keep cash moving.

Vend + BigCommerce

Shopify

Customer loyalty

Why you need it: Your customers want to support you if they can. Let them know that you are missing them, and give them a way to show their love.

Vend + Marsello

  • Deal: 3 months free on Marsello Pro Plan
  • Link to offer: https://www.marsello.com/vend#
  • Price after discount period: USD$49/month
  • Useful for: Retailers using Vend who don’t have a system for staying in touch with customers
  • What it does: Email campaigns, online forms, loyalty program, SMS messaging (SMS costs  not included in offer)
  • Works with: Vend, BigCommerce, Shopify, Kounta
  • More information

Sales SWOT

  • Deal: Free for three months for new customers
  • Link to offer: www.salesswot.com
  • Price after discount period: From AUD$200/month for five users
  • Useful for: B2B inventory businesses with multiple product lines
  • What it does: Shows outbound sales reps how to increase sales to customers based on previous orders, similar products, cross-sells, buying habits and trends
  • Works with: SAP, Oracle, Dear Systems, Xero, Sybiz, Sage 300, Microsoft Dynamics, Microsoft NAV

Productivity/Collaboration

Why you need it: You may have office or warehouse workers who don’t have business emails but still need to talk to the remote team. Here are some easy options to keep in touch with everyone without spending more on those expensive productivity suite licences.

Microsoft Office

  • Deal: Office Free 6-month trial of 365 E1 (including Microsoft Teams)
  • Link to offer: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/e1-trial-license
  • Price after discount period: USD$8, AU$11/user/month
  • Useful for: Businesses wanting to stay in touch with remote workers by email, chat, video and online calls.
  • What it does: Web versions of Office apps and apps on iOS, Android, and Windows devices (no desktop software though). Simple file sharing, real-time co-authoring, and online meetings
  • Works with: iOS, Android, Windows
  • More information

Quip (by Salesforce)

  • Deal: Free until September 30, 2020.
  • Link to offer:  https://quip.com/work-from-home
  • Price after discount period: USD$10/user/month
  • Useful for: Businesses that heavily use Salesforce and don’t have cloud-based documents and spreadsheets.
  • What it does: Combines documents, spreadsheets and chat.
  • Works with: Salesforce

Accounting and Operations

Why you need it: It can be tough trying to run your business from home when it depends on complex on-premise software. Online ERP systems are gradually replacing ERPs running on-premise servers; this is a great time to re-evaluate the back office and prepare for a post-pandemic boom. Plus anything cloud is much easier to run when you’re remote working…

Wiise ERP (Australia only)

  • Deal: 3 months free for up to 10 users, plus six months free subscription to Microsoft Teams. No joining fee. Free data migration up to $5,000 if you’re moving from Microsoft Great Plains or NAV.
  • Link to offer: http://www.wiise.com/au/move-to-cloud
  • Price after discount period: From AUD$49/user
  • Useful for: Any business ready to step up from small business accounting software to a unified operations platform. Wiise is specifically targeting on-premise ERP users such as MYOB AccountRight, Microsoft Great Plains/NAV, etc.
  • What it does: Wiise is an ERP built on Microsoft Business Central. It includes accounting, cashflow forecasting, complex inventory, distribution and warehouse management, basic manufacturing.
  • More information

EzyCollect

  • Deal: Two months free for new customers on the Business Support package, with deferral of the install and training fee (AUD$995)
  • Link to offer: https://ezycollect.com.au/business-support-program/
  • Price after discount period: From AUD$125/month
  • Useful for: Any business that wants to move accounts receivable online
  • What it does: A platform to automate collecting your debts and managing accounts receivable that gives you insights into credit risk
  • Works with: ABM (Beta), Pronto (Beta), Attaché, MYOB, NetSuite, Xero, JCurve ERP
  • More information

Extra Resources

Hospitality (Cafes, Bars, Restaurants, etc.)

If you’re fortunate enough to be doing home delivery, then that’s about the best news there is. I’ll add some more services here that can get you set up for home delivery. There is plenty of demand at the frontline: restaurants in the US, the UK, Australia and around the world are making meals for health workers.

‍

Gift Cards

Why you need it: Quite a few pubs, bars, restaurants and cafes are experimenting with gift cards. Not for products but for future meals. Buy your next dinner date for half price; a good deal for regular customers, and a great way to keep the cash moving.

Stampede

  • Deal: Free
  • Link to offer: Try Stampede
  • Price after discount period: Free, with options to add a managed wifi service for patrons. Pricing here.
  • Useful for: Cafes, restaurants and bars with an established and loyal clientele.
  • What it does: Gives your fans a way to pay for food and drink services in advance.
  • Works with: independent of accounting software

Accounts payable automation

Why you need it: Automatically process invoices from every supplier and get rid of that paper. This will help you work out how much cash you need to pay out and when it’s due, so you can make better cashflow decisions. Once set up it will reduce your bookkeeping costs.

Lightyear

  • Deal: Two months free, plus free phone consultation.
  • Link to offer: www.app.lightyear.cloud/register using referral code COVID SUPPORT
  • Price after discount period: From AUD$45, USD$27.50/month
  • Useful for: Businesses with high volumes of invoices like restaurants and bars, as well as non-hospitality businesses
  • What it does: Automatically turns paper and electronic invoices into bills in your accounting software. Plus audit trail, automated reconciliation against your bank statement, and other good stuff.
  • Works with: Xero, MYOB, QuickBooks Online, Sage, Oracle.
  • More information

Professional Services Industry – (Accounting, Engineering, Architecture, etc.)

Delivering on projects is all that matters now (like it didn’t before!). Keep the projects rolling out and the cash rolling in. Trying to do this while juggling kids at home, keeping your people focussed, finding the next sale is tough. But it’s not impossible. Here are some things that will help with the transition to a remote workforce.

HR

Why you need it: Your office is empty, and all your employees are working from home. Can they focus on their work? How is their mental health? These survey tools help you communicate informally with your staff so you know if they can deliver or are about to drop that big project.

Qualtrics Remote Work Pulse (by SAP)

  • Deal: Free to organizations of all sizes, no end date given.
  • Link to offer: https://www.qualtrics.com/here-to-help/
  • Price after discount period: From USD$1,500/year (unconfirmed – one reader inquired and says this costs AUD$85/employee/year)
  • Useful for: Checking in daily with your staff to if they have what they need to succeed on a work and personal front
  • More information

SurveyMonkey – Only for Educators, Students, and Not for Profits

IntelliHR

  • Deal: A free package of essential IntelliHR people management features
  • Link to offer: https://go.intellihr.co/covid-19
  • Price after discount period: Free
  • Useful for: Managers supporting teams working remotely.

EverPerform

Clarity WAVE

  • Deal: 90-day free access to for new customers who sign up before 30 April 2020
  • Link to offer: https://www.claritywave.com/free-trial-covid-offer/
  • Price after discount period: USD$2-4/user/month
  • Useful for: Companies that want to support their office employees with weekly check-ins and monitor their wellbeing and productivity
  • What it does: An online platform that sends weekly surveys to measure performance management and employee engagement
  • More information

Security – Single Sign on

Why you need it: Single Sign On tools create a secure dashboard with all your business applications. Staff working from home or office need to log in once to access them all. Multi-factor authentication increases the level of security for the login by asking for a second or third key on a mobile device or dongle.

Okta

  • Deal: Okta Single Sign-On (SSO) and Okta Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) to 5 apps for all users, free for six months from date of signed contract, could extend if emergency continues.
  • Link to offer: https://www.okta.com/okta-for-emergency-remote-work/
  • Price after discount period: US$3-6/user/month for MFA, US$2/user/month for SSO
  • More information

Cisco – Duo Security

  • Deal: Cisco Extended free licenses and expanded usage counts at no extra charge until until July 1, 2020.
  • Link to offer: https://signup.duo.com/
  • Price after discount period: USD$3-9/User/Month
  • More information

Security – Password Management

Why you need it: Any business still saving passwords in a spreadsheet or Word doc – or reusing the same password (please no) is even more exposed when staff are working from home. Password management tools are an online/offline directory of all your passwords, protected by one really big password. Automatically fills in passwords for your favourite work and personal websites.

‍

1Password

  • Deal: Sign up for 1Password Business and get your first 6 months free.
  • Link to offer: https://1password.com/business/
  • Price after discount period: USD$8/user/month
  • Works with: Mac, iOS, Windows, Android, Linux, and Chrome OS
  • More information

Security – VPN

Why you need it: Don’t have a VPN and want to secure access to your office network? Try Cisco’s AnyConnect. Have a VPN that is struggling to deal with all your employees working from home? Check out CloudFlare for Teams, which provides a VPN-style connection that scales much better.

CloudFlare for Teams

  • Deal: Cloudflare for Teams is free for new customers until September 1, 2020. Existing customers can add extra seats for free until September 1, 2020.
  • Link to offer: https://www.cloudflare.com/cft-onboarding-offer/
  • Price after discount period: From USD$3/user/month
  • More information

Cisco – AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client

Security – Web security

Why you need it: Everyone is at home, working on sensitive documents outside of the secure corporate network. Here’s how you can protect them and your confidential data, wherever they are. (At home, of course.)

Cisco – Umbrella

  • Deal: Existing customers get all extra licences for free until 1 July, 2020. New customers can extend free 14-day trial to 90 days (on request).
  • Link to offer: https://signup.umbrella.com/
  • Price after discount period: approx. cost USD$2.70/user/month
  • Useful for: Businesses wanting to protect staff at home on laptops and mobile devices from Internet based threats.
  • What it does: Cloud based firewall, web gateway, threat detection and DNS layer security.
  • More information

File sharing

Why you need it: Sick of trying to VPN into the office server? You can move your most critical files to highly secure, cloud-based storage services. Enterprises have been using online storage for many years to improve collaboration between employees and partners. And the cost is very cheap – much cheaper than that office server.

Amazon WorkDocs

  • Deal: Free for first 50 users (1TB per user) from March 16 to June 30, 2020.
  • Link to offer: Pricing page
  • Price after discount period: USD$5-8/user/month (pricing varies by AWS region)
  • Useful for: Any industry with users dealing with large files.
  • What it does: It’s basically Dropbox for enterprise. Replaces your file server with a cloud-synced desktop drive and collaboration features such as commenting, approval workflows, offline editing, versioning and good data security.
  • Works with: Any file types, including Microsoft Office

Box

  • Deal: 90 day free trial
  • Link to offer: https://account.box.com/signup/business?tl=oWgBWV
  • Price after discount period: USD$51.90 for 3 users/month
  • Useful for: Storing your files on a cloud drive with enterprise-grade security
  • What it does: file sharing and collaboration platform
  • Works with: Microsoft Office 365, Google G Suite
  • More information

Electronic Signatures

Why you need it: You’re not going to be going to a customer’s office to sign that big contract right now. Electronic signatures have legal standing and (I think) are even more secure than a wet signature. These can esignatures show a timestamped IP address for all signing parties.

Pandadoc – new offer

DocuSign

Compliance

BGL CAS 360

  • Deal #1: Existing clients – Increase your number of companies and get the first 3 months free on the new companies. Move to CAS 360 from CAS (desktop) and get the first 3 months free.
  • Deal #2: New clients – First three months free
  • Link to offer: https://clients.bglcorp.com.au/newpurchases
  • Price after discount period: AUD$13/company p.a. (min. 25 companies), AUD$100/fund p.a. (min. 5 funds)
  • Useful for: Accounting firms that set up and manage companies and SMSF funds for clients.
  • What it does: Company incorporations and reservations, trust management, distributions, etc.
  • Works with: Xero Practice Manager, Xero HQ, AccountKit
  • More information

BGL Simple Fund 360

  • Deal #1: Existing clients – Increase your number of funds and get the first 3 months free on the new funds. Move to Simple Fund 360 from Simple Fund (desktop) and get the first 3 months free
  • Deal #2: New clients – First three months free
  • Link to offer: https://clients.bglcorp.com.au/newpurchases
  • Price after discount period: AUD$100/fund p.a. (min. 5 funds)
  • Useful for: Accounting firms that set up and manage SMSF funds for clients.
  • What it does: Trust management, distributions, etc.
  • Works with: Xero Practice Manager, Xero HQ, AccountKit
  • More information

Account Kit

  • Deal: 50% off for 3 months for new customers. Enter coupon code COVID19ASSIST
  • Link to offer: https://www.account-kit.com/
  • Price after discount period: From AUD$44/month
  • Useful for: Accounting firms looking to improve efficiency
  • What it does: A wide range of useful calculators and tools to reduce time in various compliance activities
  • Works with: Xero, Xero Practice Manager
  • More information

Video Conferencing

Why you need it: When you replace face to face meetings with phone calls you lose the body language. Video meetings are a big step up from phone calls. Now you can try them for free

Cisco Webex (most OECD countries)

  • Deal:  Free plan now has unlimited usage, support for up to 100 participants, toll-free dial-in and VoIP capabilities.
  • Link to offer: https://www.webex.com
  • Price after discount period: USD$13.50/user/month
  • More information – check for your country

Amazon Chime

Microsoft Office 365 – Microsoft Teams

  • Deal: Businesses that don’t have a Teams licence can get Office 365 E1 plan for free for six months
  • Link to offer: https://products.office.com/en-au/microsoft-teams/free
  • Price after discount period: USD$8, AU$11/user/month
  • Useful for: Businesses wanting to stay in touch with remote workers by email, chat, video and online calls.
  • What it does: Web versions of Office apps and apps on iOS, Android, and Windows devices (no desktop software though). Simple file sharing, real-time co-authoring, and online meetings
  • Works with: iOS, Android, Windows
  • More information

Adobe Connect

G Suite – Hangouts Meet

  • Deal: Free access to advanced Hangouts Meet video-conferencing capabilities for all G Suite and G Suite for Education customers until 1 July, 2020.
  • Link to offer: Automatically applies to all accounts
  • Price after discount period: USD$25, AU$34/user/month
  • Useful for: Businesses that want to video conference with large numbers of employees or customers
  • What it does: Video conferences with up to 250 participants, live streaming for up to 100,000 viewers, record meetings and save to Google Drive
  • Works with: G Suite
  • More information

Zoom – standard offer, free Basic plan

  • Deal: Basic Plan, Host up to 100 participants, Unlimited 1 to 1 meetings, 40 mins limit on group meetings
  • Link to offer: https://zoom.us/pricing
  • Price after discount period: Always free

GoToMeeting – standard offer

  • Deal:  GoToMeeting Starter allows you to host meetings with up to 10 participants and costs $19 monthly (billed annually at $228).
  • Link to offer: https://www.gotomeeting.com/training/pricing
  • Price after discount period: USD$19/user/month

Zoho Remotely

  • Deal: Free to all new customers until July, 1st 2020
  • Link to offer: https://www.zoho.com/remotely/
  • Price after discount period: Free
  • Useful for: businesses in need of online collaboration for remote meetings
  • What it does: Zoho Remotely is a suite of cloud applications that helps teams collaborate and communicate.

Extra resources

For all industries

Cashflow Forecasting

Why you need it: Knowing your cashflow has never been more important than right now. SMEs need to stretch out their supplies as long as possible, factor in when they will get government subsidies, and know exactly when supplier payments will be charged.

Float (Global)

  • Deal: Extended three month trial for new customers until June.
  • Link to offer: Try Float
  • Price after discount period: Starts at USD69/AUD99/GBP49 a month.
  • Works with: Xero, Quickbooks Online, FreeAgent
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