Accounting software?

[Folk Trakers]

Coming from working in nonprofits all my life, I’ve found some great resources that are either cheap or free. At my last job, we downloaded a program called PDF995 from the internet for free and it allowed us to convert any file into a read-only PDF. It was really simple to download. Once installed, go back to your file, go to File-Print and the PDF995 should be an option to choose.

Good luck!

[Buy_The_Tie]

I’ve had pretty good luck with this PDF writer (for Windows) too: Primo PDF.

[Decrepit]

Thanks! I just downloaded the free stuff. Now I can get to work on the newsletter. 😀 All the little hedgehogs are thanking you!

[Team Deejay]

I can vouch for PDF995. We aren’t nonprofit, but nearly everyone uses it here. For some reason, our IT department has not set a standard for this particular app.

Be aware that this is not really freeware. This is “ad-supported” software. That means that when you go to “print” a document to a PDF file, you will get a a pop up window with an ad in it. If you don’t like the ads, you can pay a nominal fee (I think its $20) and they will send you a “kill the ads” keyword.

[abcdmCachers]

@knoffer wrote:

You need to have an Adobe Writer utility. This is different then the free Adobe Acrobat reader. To my knowledge you will need to purchase something like Adobe Acrobat 8 Standard. I have never searched for a free writer utility however one might exist.

I use PDF995 http://www.pdf995.com (free with ads, $9.95 if you don’t want ads). It works very well. I have a co-worker who uses CutePDF http://www.cutepdf.com This might be the better option since it looks like it’s free with no ads, but I haven’t personally used it.

As far as accounting software, we use QuickBooks Pro. I think this would be appropriate for what you are looking to do.

[Team B Squared]

I believe Open Office has a program that is comparible to publisher. If you were to open the files in the open office suite, you have the option to export your project as a pdf file.

Open office is free and available at http://www.openoffice.org

This may work for what you are doing.

[Decrepit]

All right… new question. Does anyone have a program (that is assuming that one exists) that will take a pdf file and work backwords and turn it back into some other type of file so that I can get the HWS logo off of it and use if for the new newsletters?

[Team B Squared]

@Decrepit wrote:

All right… new question. Does anyone have a program (that is assuming that one exists) that will take a pdf file and work backwords and turn it back into some other type of file so that I can get the HWS logo off of it and use if for the new newsletters?

If you are just looking to take the graphic off the pdf image, the easiest thing to do may be to get a screen capture program. With this type of program you can select an area of your screen and save it as a picture file (JPEG, Bitmap, whatever). This would probably work for what you are describing. I use snag it, but it was preloaded on my work pc…I don’t believe it is free. There is free screen grab software out there, but I can’t really vouch for any of them.

[Thraxman]

@Team B Squared wrote:

If you are just looking to take the graphic off the pdf image, the easiest thing to do may be to get a screen capture program. With this type of program you can select an area of your screen and save it as a picture file (JPEG, Bitmap, whatever). This would probably work for what you are describing. I use snag it, but it was preloaded on my work pc…I don’t believe it is free. There is free screen grab software out there, but I can’t really vouch for any of them.

On a PC you can capture a screen by simply hitting the PRINT SCREEN key. The screen capture is copied to the clipboard and may then be pasted to your favorite image manipulation program.

If you have a MAC running OSX, Cmd+Shift+3 Captures the screen and the automatically saves it as a file on your desktop. Or you can use Cmd+Shift+4 instead, which turns your mouse pointer into these cool crosshairs, and lets you select what portion of the screen you want to capture. BTW, on a Mac, .pdf is one of the operating system’s “native” formats, so you can usually generate .pdf files without any extra software (I believe this question evolved from a question about conversion to pdf).

Summary: Macs just work 🙂

[Decrepit]

Hmmm… I don’t have a mac, but I don’t think I’ll switch just because of this either. Anyways… thanks for everyone’s input. I’ll let you know how things turn out.

[Decrepit]

I just wanted to say thanks for everyone’s help. The latest issue of the newsletter turned out pretty decent, if I do say so myself. Just in case you want to take a peek, here is a link…

http://www.users.nac.net/hedgehogwelfare/newsletters/newsletter_26.pdf

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