How long do you spend writing your funder’s reports each quarter and at the end of each year? Wouldn’t you rather spend more time actually delivering your services to your clients?

What about measuring the impact you have on your clients? How easy do you find it to measure and report on your social impact?

As you know, here at The Tool Factory our aim is to make your lives easier. We spend our time developing tools and resources that help you do a great job in achieving your vision - and saving you time and money in the process.

That’s why we are really excited about our Social Impact Tracker tool - which we launched yesterday at Charity Fair.

Social Impact Tracker is the first monitoring database that measures your social impact. So not only does it keep track of everything your clients do and are involved in but it also creates funders report and reports on how well you’ve done at achieving your social aims - all at the touch of a button.

You enter your vision, mission, aims and objectives, decide on what you will monitor and what questions you will ask. Then over the year you enter your data as you would normally.

That’s when it gets interesting. Rather than spending time going through files trying to find all the relevant spreadsheets and reports to pull together for the funders … you just press the reporting button and the software does it all for you.

We think that’s worth a look. Check out our website at the end of the week for more information on how you can get a look.

In exchange for your help with some research (it will take just 5 minutes) Work On The Business are offering a free simple business audit tool

A message from Nicola at Work On The Business:

“I am doing some research at the moment as I am trying to increase the amount of work I am doing with leaders working in social enterprise. I wanted to ask if you could take five minutes to answer the 11 questions below to help me focus what I can offer. In return for your time I will send you a FREE business audit tool to help you determine some possible areas of focus for your business growth, if you can get your answers back to me in the next 7 days. All information will be treated in the strictest confidence.”

If would like to complete the survey for Nicola please email me at bev@thetoolfactory.com and I’ll forward it to you.

Work On The Business also has some great workshops coming up in June and July. We’ll be attending their Your and Your Business Workshop - why not come along and join us. Visit their website to find out more.

On 23rd and 24th June ACEVO are launching their new Full Cost Business Planner software developed in partnership with The Tool Factory.

It is two years since ACEVO introduced its national programme in Full Cost Recovery (FCR) and launched the irfirst electronic FCR template.

The Tool Factory has been working with ACEVO since September last year writing the new version which includes a version of The Tool Factory’s own Business Plan Writer software so now you can write your Business Plan and include your Full Cost Recovery calculations and reports.

The Full Cost Business Planner is a much more advanced version of the original FCR template with some great improvements allowing organisations to cost multiple projects ensuring all overheads are allocated consistently and appropriately.

Come and join us at the launch events:

- 23 June 3pm-5pm, Leeds

- 24 June 6pm-8pm, London

For more information and a booking form follow this link - FCR Launch Events Flyer

The Tool Factory will be exhibiting at Voice08 in Liverpool on the 26th and 27th February.

If you are attending the event do come and visit us on Stand 9 and get an exclusive look at our new product that we will be launching at the event.

As well as exclusive discounts on our products you could also win £50 Amazon vouchers if you enter our prize draw.

We are working on a version of Business Plan Writer designed specifically for Co-operatives and we need you help.

If you are a co-operative or you support co-operatives we would love your input to find out what features and content would be the most use to you and the co-operatives you support.

We would be really grateful if you could complete our short survey - it’ll take you just 5 minutes. You can access the survey by clicking on this link.

The Tool Factory is attending the Co-operative Futures event this weekend and we are running a session on developing tools specifically for co-operatives. We’ll put the results of the survey and the feedback we get at this event up on the blog for everyone to see.

We are looking forward to seeing what you have to say.

2008 is off to a flying start here at The Tool Factory as we are preparing to launch some new products in the first half of this year.

We will be visiting a number of events this year so if you are planning to attend any of the following do come and say hello. Look out for our prize draws as well. Here at The Tool Factory we love giving things away - last year we gave away ipods and vouchers for a well-known online bookstore. This year we’ve got even more great prizes.

JANUARY

25th - 27th - Future Co-operatives Residential Workshop - we will be previewing the prototype of Business Plan Writer: Co-operatives Version at the workshop with the aim of getting feedback from those working alongside co-operatives.

29th - Citizen’s Advice North Regional Conference - Bev will be running a workshop on social enterprise at this event which is to be held in Preston.

FEBRUARY

26th - 27th Voice08 - this year at Voice08 we will be celebrating one year since the launch of Business Plan Writer: Social Enterprise Version. We will also be launching a new product at the event - more of that at a later date.

MARCH

13th - ACEVO’s Spring Conference “The Business of Charity” - Bev has been invited to speak at ACEVO’s Spring Conference as part of the panel on “Business Development - Driving Growth and Overcoming Market Competition”.

APRIL

25th - 26th - Social Entrepreneur Show - after a very successful two days at the Autumn Social Entrepreneur Show we are returning to the event in April.

JUNE

27th - 29th - Co-op Congress - we will be returning to Co-op Congress again this year ready to launch Business Plan Writer: Co-operative Version.

We are offering a 30 day trial of the full version of Business Plan Writer to all CVS’s and Third Sector support organisations.

It will cost you nothing and there is no obligation to buy anything - we just want to give you the opportunity to try it out and see what you think.

All you need to do is email Bev at bev@thetoolfactory.com with your name, organisation and address and she will put a copy in the post to you.

Business Plan Writer found it’s way into The Co-operative Bank’s quarterly newsletter for all of their Community DirectPlus account holders this month.

The newsletter ran an article offering tips on how to manage your organisation’s finances with a list of useful websites. Our Business Plan Writer software was the named example given as a software tool that will help organisations write their business plans.

The article can be found in the Autumn 2007 edition of the ‘It’s Your Community’ newsletter for their Community DirectPlus account holders.

The Tool Factory has just launched a free e-book on business planning which can be downloaded from our website.

The e-book answers 12 of the most common questions we are asked about how to write a Business Plan. The e-book is free to download and please feel free to pass it around or send your colleagues or the organisations you support the link.

Download your copy from http://www.thetoolfactory.com/ebook.htm.