Setting Up Your First Home Office

The essentials of leaving your corporate job and setting up your own house based business

Transitioning from corporate office to home office is not as tough because you might think. While each home based business has different needs, every home office must provide the same fundamental functionality:

1. A clean, well-lighted place for the owner to run the business clear of noise and distractions

2. A place to sit down and operate (desk, chair, lamp)

3. A place to store information about them (computer, filing cabinet, electronic manager or database)

4. A approach to communicate with your customers speedily and efficiently (phone, fax machine/software, Internet connection)

Since most home based businesses are service businesses, not retailers, makers or wholesalers, it's rarely required for a home office to end up being large enough to store stock or component parts. And since most home business owners travel to their customers' offices for meetings, you probably will not need a conference room, a white board or even a projector.

How much should you expect to pay to equip your houseoffice? The good news is that the cost of computers, fax machines and other place of work automation equipment has come down dramatically in the last 10 years. Prices for phone service consist of place to place, but completely new all-inclusive packages from providers just like AT&T, MCI and Verizon present unlimited local, regional and long-distance calls cheaper than $60 a month. Likewise, high-speed Access to the internet (broadband or DSL) is available for $50 to $100 per month. Here's a sample budget for setting up a home office from the beginning:

Computer: For roughly $1, 000, you can find an IBM-compatible computer with the Pentium 4 processor, 2 GB of memory, a 600GB hard push, a 17-inch monitor, a CD-ROM push, a modem and a Ethernet connection from Dell, Compaq, Gateway and also other leading suppliers. Multifunction machine: With regard to $250 to $500, you can get a machine that acts as a fax machine, copier and printers. Most machines offer an automatic document feeder, a scanner and the chance to print out digital photos with color. Machines like these typically run at print speeds as high as 12 pages per minute (ppm) in monochrome and 10 ppm in coloration.

Two-line cordless phone: Today's top-of-the-line cordless phones start at a lot less than $200, offering home offices identical full-duplex clarity as a corporate boardroom using a microphone optimized for hands-free, one-to-one telephone conversations. For example, the Poly cot Sound Point Pro Desktop Conference Phone permits you to hold three-way audio conferences from your desk, allowing callers to speak whenever they want without the clipped content and one-way conversations typical of most speakerphones.

Office furniture: Depending on how fancy you would like to get, you can spend anywhere from a few hundred to some thousand dollars to equip yourself using a desk, chair and file case. Try Staples and IKEA for affordable priced furniture that won't fall apart. And don't be afraid to splurge on a at ease chair! You're going to be spending a lot of time there, and the extra money you spend now can save you hours of back pain in the future.