If you find getting a designer to do the design is too time-consuming and expensive, you can consider using templates for a head-start for your business or project. Templates are editable, reusable and customizable. They are great tools to use as some of the templates like Microsoft Powerpoint and web design templates allow you to focus on your content rather than the aesthetic part of it which in turn help you to speed up your works and increase your productivity. There are many ready-made templates available on the web; it ranges from graphic design templates to all types of business functions templates.
Let us look at some of the free templates that are available in the web and in spite of being free; they are well designed and developed to the needs.
Epson CreativeZone
Epson CreativeZone provides free business stationery templates such as business card, letterhead, envelope, newsletter, binder cover, mailing label, postcard, invoice and trifold Brochure. All of these templates are saved in Microsoft word document format so they are easily editable and adaptable to your needs.
Docs.Google.com
This is a great place to get free business stationery templates. The beauty of these templates is that they can be directly created and edited in your browser as they are web-based applications offered by Google.
HP Business Marketing Identity Kits
HP is one of the few sites who offer free business stationery templates in a complete set. Besides the usual free stationery templates like business card, letterhead and envelope, it also has free templates for brochure, flyer, presentation slides, invoice and newsletter which formed the basic marketing materials for a business. The whole set has a same look and feel which is critical for any business as it helps to maintain your branding and identity.
Toolkit.com
Toolkit has the most diverse categories of free business templates compared to other sites mentioned; it also provides quite a comprehensive range of form templates such as IRS Tax Forms, Government Contracting Forms and State Tax Forms. In addition, it is a good resource for HR personnel as it provides free templates on Employee Management, Compensation and Benefits, Recruiting and Hiring.
Office.Microsoft.com
Microsoft office is another website offering wide categories of free business, finance, marketing and design templates; they also constantly offer new templates which are good news to users. Unfortunately, some of their templates are saved in the latest version which makes it inaccessible for those who do not have the latest Microsoft Office version.
Financial and Accounting Templates
This site offers excellent free financial and accounting templates such as sales forecast, annual budget forecast, activity ratios, bad debt analysis, breakeven analysis, business plan, sales business analysis and more for your business. Do a “save as” to download the free templates as opening the templates directly from the browser will cause some of the macro functions to malfunction.
We will look at some premier templates in the later post that offer more features. You are welcome to suggest any excellent free templates you have used or came across that have benefited your business.