CPA Firm Technology Blog

How to get through the holidays without looking like Ebenezer Scrooge by Amye Tankersley King

Editor's note:  My brilliant and talented older sister recently wrote this article for Dicta, the magazine of the Knoxville Bar Association.  I enjoyed it so much (and could have used her sage advice on these topics early on in my marriage and career) that I I am reprinting it here with her gracious permission.  Enjoy. - BFT

How to get through the holidays without looking like Ebenezer Scrooge

by Amye Tankersley King

 

Remember bar review? After three years of being led through the wilderness by the modern day equivalents of Moses (that is, law professors), you finally got a glimpse of the Promised Land (that is, actual answers to questions that were not in the form of another question). Sometimes I feel the same way about holiday shopping. List in hand, I wander aimlessly looking for the perfect gift for  everyone, with no idea where I’ve been, where I’m going, or where I am at the moment. While I don’t claim to have all the mysteries of the perfect holiday gift for everyone solved, I have some suggestions that, for the most part, don’t involve a lot more than swiping or typing the numbers off your gold card. Thus, I offer my vision of the Promised Land of gift-giving for some of the most important people on your list.

 

If you’re in a relationship and want to stay that way, perhaps the most important person onyour list is your partner. I can’t speak for the men and their preferences because I don’t know much about fly rods and NASCAR collectibles, and fortunately Mr. K is pretty easy to shop for because he usually tells me what he wants and then buys it for himself before I get the chance,meaning he’s happy with whatever I get him because he already got what he really wanted.  For you men, however, a non-exhaustive list of a few other things the woman in your life doesn’t want includes: anything made by Isotoner, things that come pre-wrapped from a department store circular display, anything with “As Seen on TV” emblazoned on the box, and anything that came from Best Buy, Circuit City, or the electronics department of WalMart. In fact, go ahead and cross anything from WalMart off the list altogether.

 

I know all you guys think you’ve got shopping for your wife down to a science. December 24th you cruise into the mall about 3:30 p.m. and hit the closest jewelry store to the entrance, where you buy the first thing you see that’s under $100 and comes with a free box of chocolates, then go home for a quick nap in  front of the TV. You know how this ends, and it’s not well, yet you keep repeating it like you’re Bill Murray in “Groundhog Day.” My advice to you is this. Your wife knows what she wants. If you’re not the type to ask her directly, ask her friends. By her friends, I don’t mean your mother, your secretary, or the cute girl at the dry cleaners. Another tidbit for those of you who are still reading–there is a greater than 50 percent chance that what she wants is not available at the mall on Christmas Eve. Ask now. As in right now. Then Google it, compare prices and shipping fees if you must, click “gift wrap,” and order it before you go home today. Sometimes, if you have managed not to glare at your wife’s friends all year long, they might even volunteer to pick The Perfect Gift up for you. If they don’t offer, start working on your charm for next year. Just think, now you won’t have to endure 25 years of dinner party conversation about the Christmas you got her a dustbuster!

 

I know you guys think I’m picking on you, and therefore I will move on to the astonishing number of people of both genders who turn into Ebenezer Scrooge when it comes to their non-attorney staff. I was a member of the pink collar workforce in my days before and during law school and therefore consider myself to have (somewhat dated) street cred here. (And my employers here in Knoxville were always very generous, for the record.) In this arena, there’s not a lot of gray area, and I’m going to give it to you in black and white, or as I used to say back in my private practice days when I was getting really fired up at opposing counsel, “So there can be no mistake, I am memorializing this in writing.”

Rule #1: If you hired and/or have the authority to fire an employee, a gift is necessary. I know what you are thinking.... “He/she gets a paycheck; why do I have to give a gift, too?” Umm, he/she gets a paycheck for doing his/her job. Putting up with your moody self all year requires a holiday gift.

Rule #2: There are really only two acceptable gifts for office staff. They are: (1) cash/cash equivalents, and (2) nothing.

 

Let’s start with “nothing,” because I can hear a misplaced sigh of relief going up over downtown Knoxville. Be advised that you are always treading on thin ice with the Gift of Nothing. You might get away with it if you’re a partner/ shareholder/ owner AND the employee is receiving a hefty cash bonus either for the holidays or organization’s year-end. Just remember that nobody in the office has your back if you roll in a Mercedes but give out stingy bonus checks along with the Gift of Nothing, without regard to the economy. This also doesn’t work if you’re the only one who isn’t giving out employee gifts. It also doesn’t work for non-owners. If you are an employee (read: associate) supervising a subordinate  employee, fork over the cash or cash equivalents. Finally, don’t forget to include a sincere note about how much you appreciate the employee’s contribution to the business. This goes a long way in filling out a thin envelope.

 

Now, let’s go back to the definition of cash and cash equivalents. Cash involves actual cash money (legal tender,  Benjamins, dough, etc.) or non-post-dated checks for which sufficient funds are on deposit at the bank upon which it is drawn. Cash equivalents include such things as Visa gift cards and gift certificates to specific stores or service providers that you are absolutely positive are among the employee’s favorites. Items including but not limited to tickets to the Dixie Stampede that came free with your kids’ Dollywood season passes don’t count. There are some of you who have a long-standing relationship with a trusted staff member who exchange personal gifts, and that’s fine. That is in addition to, not in lieu of the cash or cash equivalents.

 

Next, children. Your children who believe in Santa  will tell you what they want. That’s easy. Get on Amazon and order away. Have it shipped to the office to ensure the surprise. In polling several underage family members and acquaintances who are older than the Santa crew and therefore are wise to the big guy’s game, I have discovered that you again won’t go wrong with cash or cash  quivalents. Cash is better, but if you decide to go with cash equivalents, be advised that even though you think you’re terminally hip because you shop at Gap and J. Crew, they don’t want a gift card from an “old person store.” Stick with the ubiquitous Visa gift cards (get them at the information desk at the mall and at most banks) that spend at the cool stores with loud music, as well as at the clerk’s office when they are paying their speeding tickets. I’m informed that itunes gift cards (available everywhere, including Kroger and Walgreens) are a safe bet, as well.

 

Once you’ve amassed the goods, you have to wrap them. While I don’t advocate this attitude on a regular basis, I’m a firm believer that gift wrapping is one of those areas where you can throw a little money at a problem and make it go away. There is the obvious department store gift wrap service. Neiman Marcus is particularly good about free wrapping promotions, and if you hit their website on a good day, you might score free shipping, too. Amazon has gift wrapping as an inexpensive add-on, and it’s well worth it given how much of your gift list you can knock out in an hour. In a pinch, pay the babysitter extra or find a staff member who is motivated to earn some extra holiday cash. Just don’t make it part of the babysitter’s or the receptionist’s regular job description or you will be punished. Trust me, they will find a way.

 

Happy shopping and happy holidays to all of you!

__________________

Amye Tankersley King is an attorney and a Judicial Clerk for the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals in Knoxville, Tennessee.

[This article originally appeared in Dicta ( the newsletter for the Knoxville Bar Association),  and is republished here with the permission of the author.  ©2008 Amye Tankersley King, all rights reserved ]

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Tags: Holidaygifts

November News and Notes

Some news and notes from the road on what's happening in the world of CPA Firm Technology:

1. WPA is Toast.  Gizmodo reported about 10 days ago that the TKIP variant of Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) has been compromised, and can no longer be relied upon to protect your wireless networks.  More information at http://gizmodo.com/5078317/wpa-wifi-security-gets-cracked-your-network-is-no-longer-secure, and there is a new Security Now podcast episode which discusses the issue (although I have not listened to the episode (#170 - The TKIP Hack) as of right now - but it is available from http://www.grc.com/securitynow.htm).    The AES (Adv. Encryption Standard) variant of WPA (also known as WPA2) has not (as of yet) been compromised by these attacks.  While people told me that they didn't understand why I ran 20 Cat-5 jacks when I set up my office earlier this year, I think this illustrates the risks associated with wireless - it's simply too easy for people to listen to your traffic, and given enough traffic, enough time, and sufficient effort, someone will find a hole in a security protocol. (Thanks to my brother for pointing this article out to me)

2. As previously reported by my friend Greg Lafollette (whose blog, "The Tech Gap" should be on your list of RSS feeds to follow), Intuit has announced that they will be launching a tax document scan and organize tool (powered by Copanion) in the near future.  The tool will use a custom-written front end from Intuit which will handle the communications with the hosted servers which organize the documents.  WIth Intuit's launch of this product, all of the major tax software products have options for scan and organize, and if you haven't tried these products, I think you need to revisit this entire segment - I've been very impressed with what I've seen in the last few months from the vendors.  I'll be writing more about this segment in the coming weeks - I'm planning some conference calls for the week of Thanksgiving to get some product updates.  CPA Firms need to get with the program and check out these applications - these have such a potential to help you save big time sorting and organizing documents that any CPA firm with a significant 1040 practice should be looking into these options.  Some competitors can scan, organize, and digest Schedule D information almost perfectly, and they all can help you bookmark your PDF files.

3. Intuit announced that they have released the ProAdvisor Certification exam for QB 2009, and they will be releasing the new version of the Advanced ProAdvisor certification exam to online course lockers on December 2nd.  (Now I know what I'll be doing the week of Thanksgiving - catching up on QB 2009)

4. I've been playing with my Amazon Kindle lately, and I'm very, very impressed with the device.  I think this may end up being one of the hot gadgets for the Christmas season.  Dr. Bob also gives the device rave reviews as well.  The dream device for the road warrior..... when combined with a 16GB SDHC card, I can pretty much put as many books as I want on the device.  I have put numerous reference documents on my Kindle, including CPA Review Materials, e-Books for Office and QuickBooks Reference, and use the built-in browser and EVDO modem to check connecting flight status when taxiing into the gate on planes (very cool). 

With January closing in on us at breakneck speed, I've got some recommendations for CPA's when preparing for 2009:
1. Catch up with your basic PC and system maintenance, including the following:

• Make sure all PC's and servers are adequately patched with the latest .
• Upgrade the RAM on your workstations, laptops, and servers.  RAM is cheap - 2GB of RAM can be had for $50 or less in many cases (see www.salescircular.com or www.techbargains.com), and it makes a huge difference in the performance of your workstations.
• Get your workflow procedures documented and make sure all of your people understand them.  Laminated reference cards in key location may make sense in some situations.
• Make sure that your scanning workflows are optimized, and be sure that your heavy duty scanners are using a VRS application like Kofax VRS Pro to clean up and optimize your scans.
  

2. If you do tax, look into the Scan and Organize tools out there.  All of the major publishers will have a scan and organize product this tax season for their software, and they work.  Scan Organize and Populate is out there, and I've personally run some returns through various systems.  While Scan Organize and Populate has the most potential for saving lots of time, it also requires much more due diligence on the part of the firms using it.  These technologies are ready for production use this tax season.  I recommend that you run some of your returns with massive document inputs through some of these systems and consider how to deploy this breakthrough technology in your office this tax season.

3. If you're in industry and need to add modules or functions to your ERP system, some software companies (e.g. SAP's offer) are offering 0% financing on purchases as well as some discounts to encourage purchases. The Wall Street Journal picked this one up today in an article about the impact of the economy on companies. Needless to say, with MS and SAP offering 0% financing, it's going to be an interesting year.

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Awards Update

There's been a lot of stuff going on with awards from and for the K2 Team.  In the last week, Randy Johnston was recognized as one of the 100 Most Influential People in Accounting by Accounting Today, I was recognized as a member of the CPA Technology Advisor's "40 Under 40" for my work with the profession, and K2 gave out their annual quality awards to software publishers serving the accounting profession.

Since it is better to give than to receive, I'll start with our annual K2 Quality Awards:

2008 K2 Annual Quality Awards

Hammond, LA – October 8, 2008 -- K2 Enterprises today announced the recipients of their annual quality awards as follow

•        Reseller Program– Open Systems, Inc.

•        CPA Program –Pro Advisor – Intuit, Inc.

•        Installation Channel/Methodology – Rapid QuickBooks Replacements – Microsoft Dynamics GP

•        Reseller Channel – SYSPRO

•        New Product – Workstation 6.5 VMware

•        New Module – Tic, Tie, Calculate – Acct1st

•        New Technology – GruntWorx - Copanion

•        Management Strategy – SAP

•        Technical Support – Sage Software

•        Customer Satisfaction – Thomson Reuters

•        Ease of Use – QuickBooks – Intuit, Inc.

•        Marketing Communications – Doc-It, Inc.

•        Overall Quality – Avalara

•        Tax & Audit – Pro Systems fx Engagement - CCH, a Wolters Kluwer business

•        Accounting Industry Press Coverage – The CPA Technology Advisor

As part of their service and consulting to the CPA industry, K2 annually votes on both hardware and software products for software publishers and hardware manufacturers.  These products are used by CPAs in both public practice and industry. “Great value, vision, and consistency are recognized by our CPA attendees.  When companies are innovating, we can see the quality of their products and/or services improving before the market,as a whole, recognizes the changes,” said K2 Executive Vice-President, Randy Johnston

K2 Enterprises is the premier provider of technology continuing professional education (CPE) in both the United States and Canada.  With seminars in over 47 states in 2008, 1,000+ presentations, special events such as their turn-key Annual Technology Conferences, CPE & Ski, K2 Enterprises - Canada, they are the largest provider of technology CPE in North America.

K2 Enterprises Annual Quality Awards are determined by a poll of the K2 Enterprises instructor team.  The voting members of this team are Randy Johnston, Will Fleenor, Val Steed, Bob Spencer, Alan Salmon, Lawrence(Mac) McClelland, Tommy Stephens, Brian Tankersley, Ward Blatch.  Their votes are influenced by, end user feedback, and experience from consulting and extensive teaching.  Detailed biographies on each of the voting members can be found at: http://www.k2e.com/team

 The other two awards are described at the links listed below:

• Randy Johnston was recognized as one of the 100 Most Influential People in Accounting by Accounting Today
• Brian Tankersley recognized as member of the CPA Technology Advisor's "40 Under 40"

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Tags: 40Under 40, Randy, K2, K2 Quality Awards

Excel Used to Solve Sudoku

Charlie Ellis, a program manager at Microsoft, has an interesting article which uses solving a Sudoku puzzle as a way to teach how you can use Excel to solve extremely complex puzzles using iterative calculations.  Interesting concept, and I look forward to using it on one of my favorite games ever.

Web: Building a Basic, Understandable Sudoku Solver Using Excel Iterative Calculation (by Charlie Ellis from Excel on MSDN Blogs)

• Part 1
  
• Part 2
  

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Tags: Excel, Sudoku, iterative calculations, Microsoft Excel

2008 WSJ Technology Awards

The Wall Street Journal issued its 2008 Technology Awards yesterday, and there were some interesting things in the related special section.  Items which might be of interest to readers of this space include the following:

• Force.com received an award for its suite of applications for creating Software as a Service (SaaS) applications. 
• The Spot satellite messenger won an award for its one way emergency messaging device.  This seems to be the next evolution in text messaging, and confirms trends I'm hearing about which indicate that Americans (and people worldwide) are embracing SMS messaging as part of an overall switch to cellular.  I send SMS to just about every one of my friends and cronies (including my mother-in-law), and my wife, both parents, and sister all have Blackberries.  (If you're wondering, my brother has an iPhone).  SMS is extremely profitable to carriers.  Assuming that SMS messages require 256 bytes of data (160 bytes for the data, plus 95 bytes for the header), the same megabyte of data transmittal which sells for $10.24 at the Sprint "casual data usage" rate of $0.01/kb sells for $822.41 when used to transmit SMS messages.
• Nanocomp Technologies won an award for creating large sheets made from specialized carbon nanofibers.  This is interesting, although I have also seen articles which indicate that nanotubes may have an impact on lungs similar to asbestos..... see this Ars Technica article

Other winners included a technology for using one cable to replace up to 14 cables linking virtual servers in data centers, software for finding bugs in computer code which analyzes the compiled "object" code instead of the raw "source" code, a noise reduction technology deployed in certain South Korean cell phones, a dispersed storage technology which makes it more difficult to retrieve confidential information from file systems by spreading the data across multiple servers, and a service in India which helps farmers diagnose and treat issues with their crops via cell phone based on inputs from camera phones as well as other traditional remote sensing tools.

The complete article is here.

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Tags: WallStreet Journal Technology Awards 2008, Technology

Travel Map for the Next Four Months

I'm going to be on the road a lot over the next four months, and spent a little time putting this into a new service called Dopplr, and it created this cool map showing locations, etc.

It's 5:15 PM. Is Your DNS Server Taking You For a Walk on the Wild Side?

There's a big hole on the internet related to a problem with DNS servers (See article at http://www.accountantsworld.com/desktopdefault.aspx?page=newsstory&category=newsstory&StoryId=h0806204.2ap), the drones that silently and efficiently convert internet addresses like www.bftcpa.com and bftcpa@gmail.com into IP addresses like 65.254.254.34 and 209.85.171.83.   You may also want to listen to the Security Now podcast here, or review the printable transcript of the episode here.  You may want to use one of the three tools listed below to test your ISP's DNS servers to see if they are patched for the vulnerability:

• Dan Kaminsky's DoxPara Site
• The DNS Operations, Analysis and Research Center Testing Tool
• The very nice DNS Stuff site offers their own tool

If your ISP is vulnerable, you might consider using someone else's DNS servers.  Some options include:

• OpenDNS is a free service (Wikipedia article here) which lets you use their DNS servers (208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220) instead of your ISP's servers.  (Open DNS is reportedly not vulnerable to the attacks mentioned in the podcast.)  An article on how to configure Windows XP, Windows Vista, and a router from Computerworld is here. I have been using OpenDNS for about six months, and have been impressed with the speed increases when browsing the web,
• Other options, including talking directly to the 13 root servers and others are in an article from Leo Notenbloom here.

Some Tech Sites and Some Updates to Google Docs

I follow a lot of tech blogs so I can know what's going on and keep lots of crisp, fresh tech goodness in front of you, the gentle reader..... but seriously, some of the better sources out there are:

• Merlin Mann, personal productivity guru - www.43folders.com
• Lifehacker.com - Gina Trapiani's superb tips blog
  
• This Week in Tech (podcast) - www.twit.tv - good general tech news
  
• The CPA Tech Advisor has some good podcasts as well (most notably, their round table podcast called "Tech to Go")

Speaking of Merlin Mann, The King of 43 Folders recently reported that Google has added 300 templates for various kinds of documents.  Like most templates, some are nice and some are campy.  My vote:  Stick with the MS templates - there are more of them, and there are more you could actually use at your office as opposed in your role as a member of the PTA.

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Tags: Lifehacker, 43 Folders, This Week in Tech, TWIT, Tech To Go, Web

Tech News and Notes - Week of 7/17/2008

I'm behind on reporting on the gadgetry in my office, so here are some updates on things :

• I've been working with my  Scansnap S300 for the last few weeks, and I'm really impressed with it.  Although I would like to have TWAIN or ISIS compatibility, it's an amazing little device, and well worth the $260 it costs on Amazon for this piece of hardware.  It has only jammed twice after running hundreds of pages through it, including a couple of hundred thermal receipts for an expense report.  (and in one of the two jams, I had forgotten to take the staples out of the original - Doh!
• I seem to be on a LOT of conference calls lately, and have been using a Plantronics Calisto Pro Phone ( Cordless, DECT 6.0, Bluetooth, speaker phone, and it comes with a really good headset).  If you're a Skyper, this thing even has a USB connection to your PC so you can use it for your VOIP application.  I also really like the range on this thing- in the spring (before my A/C was running all of the time), I could use this item connected to my Jawbone headset (which has noise cancelling) to talk to people while taking in the great outdoors in my yard.  [Don't tell anyone that working for yourself has perks like that....]
• I mentioned that I had converted my home internet connection to TDS' fiber optic (PON) service, and I've also got their digital TV offering.  Verdict: The fiber optic internet rocks, and the digital TV is also very good - but seems to be in early implementation.  Once they start offering On Demand and DVR's in September, the TV will be up to speed with the rest.  The TV service reminds me a lot of dish service, in that there is a slight delay between when you select a channel and when it is displayed on your PC.  It doesn't take long, but it's just long enough to be a little annoying.

A few other things came to my attention earlier this week:

• The Association of QuickBooks Technologists is having a conference this fall for CEO's, CFO's, IT Directors and Management Consultants looking to streamline business processes and who want to learn more about Business Solutions designed for QuickBooks users. The conference is in Deerfield Beach, Florida on October 16, 2008, and appears to be reasonably priced.  (There are worse places to be than South Florida in October).  For more information contact AQBT founding member Dawn Scranton.
  
• The cobranding I discussed a couple of weeks ago has been very interesting, and offers some neat potential marketing tools for mid-sized and larger CPA and bookkeeping firms.  I've actually considered creating a CD for clients with the trial/free versions of Peachtree, OA Express, and QuickBooks SimpleStart along with an HTML page which has links to my site..... really interesting stuff.  This is something I would look into if I was at a firm looking to grow their accounting software consulting business.

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Tags: Gadgetreviews and news items of note FYE 2008-07-17, Office Accounting, AQBT, Peachtree, QuickBooks, TDS, Fiber Optic Internet Access, PON, Plantronics Calisto Phone, Scansnap S300

Multiple Monitors!

Multiple Monitors are the way to go!

Here's a cool monitor stand for four monitors..... Ergotron makes good gear from everything I've experienced and heard.... Now all I need is:
1. 4 24" monitors.
2. A way to run 4 24" monitors off of my laptop OR a nice dual quad core processor desktop with about 16GB of RAM and a tricked out four head video card.....

It's the minor details in life that make things complicated....

I saw on the Techbargains.com website that Dell is now pricing some of their discounted deals with TWO 22" monitors.... entry level for the paperless office, but it's nice to see that Dell understands that you need more screen real estate when you're trying to kick the paper habit...  While people have been doing this for a while, it lets me know that the multi-monitor thing is going much more mainstream - especially since the Vostro line is targeted at home office users and small business users.... very interesting.

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Tags: MonitorStands and multiple monitors