The Internet is not just for browsing anymore, says Kevin Cork, financial planner with the Absolute Group in Calgary. It can make your office more efficient and less costly to run.

Tools that are available online can now replace basic services, such as fax lines, and change how and where you work. It also offers cheaper alternatives for standard office software.

Making better use of software and technology will help to “ease time and money spent on administration,”

Cork offers these tips for making your office more efficient and less expensive:

> Work from home
To save money on office space, consider having some employees work from home using a virtual private network or VPN.

An Internet tunnelling protocol, a VPN is essentially a secure connection between a home computer and a network.

Cork says a VPN has worked well for his business. One of his employees works mainly from home.

“She logs into our server and does the work she needs to do and then logs out,” says Cork. “It saves the hassle of me paying for her parking and renting an office and an extra phone line and all of that stuff.”

> Cut software costs
Office software can be expensive, but a number of low-priced or free-of-charge alternatives are available.

For example, Open Office (openoffice.org) is a free, downloadable alternative to pricy Microsoft Office. It provides the programs you need to do business, including spreadsheet, word-processing and presentation software. It is an excellent choice, Cork says, particularly if you want software for a laptop or a secondary computer.

If you work with PDFs, Adobe Acrobat is an important — but expensive — tool with prices ranging from $300 to $450. PDF Converter from Nuance Communications Inc. (www.nuance.com) enables you to create, edit and sort PDFs. It costs US$99.

> Online storage
Create a digital filing system to save office space — and trees.

A program called Evernote, from Evernote Corp. (www.evernote.com) is a low-price tool to make your filing system virtual. “It allows you to basically take snapshots of emails, web pages, documents — whatever,” Cork says, “and it stores them, keeping a permanent copy.”

The program costs US$49 per year.

> Throw out that fax machine
Fax machines are going the way of the eight-track cassette, but a few offices still use them. There are several online options that allow you to send and receive faxes via your email instead of through a fax machine.

Myfax.com (www.myfax.com), for example, offers the service for US$10 a month.

Says Cork: “Any fax you’re sent will come to your email, or your assistant’s email or both, as PDFs, which can then be deleted or filed.”