Archive for 2006

I finally bit the bullet last week and got my merchant account set up. Most of my clients pay by check, but the trends are quickly changing… Intuit made it pretty easy to apply for the merchant account and all of the approvals came through and everything appears to be working just fine.

Great, so the next thing on my to-do list is to get the online billing solutions working. This is great because it will send a payment link with my invoices via email to clients to pay from. Oooohh… if only it were that easy.

As a bookkeeping professional, I am exempt from the monthly fee for this service. The problem? There’s no where to sign up for it. The service is only $15 per month, and well worth it, but in the interest of research, I decided to see how long it would actually take…

It’s now 6:17pm. I’ve called 12 different Intuit telephone numbers, been transferred 28 times (4 of those to India’s tech support people which can’t help me unless I have a technical issue – honestly, I almost had a technical issue when I considered picking up the computer and throwing it out the door). And… no luck. No one over there seems to have a clue how to set this up for me. It’s actually kind of funny. So, “a supervisor is going to call me back”

… I’m holding my breath.

It’s actually an interesting thing for me to watch because Intuit offers these items free to both ProAdvisor professionals and Non-ProAdvisor professionals since they want us to tell our clients and refer them to the programs. Of course, signing up my client will be easy, but they make it so difficult that I wonder if they realize the mistake of lost business they are making. Having easy answers for clients should be closer to the top of their minds than it is.

Anyway, I’m sure it will be worked out, but it was a nice exercise in futility.

I was just finishing up lunch here and browsing through the news stories, when I see THIS little gem. I’m pretty dumbfounded.

Now, before anyone can come down on us, I don’t hate Microsoft. I don’t like their business tactics very often and hell will freeze over before you’ll actually get a human-being on the phone if something is wrong. But most of all, over the past few years, I’ve really seen them acting like the bully of the school yard, taking all the other kid’s toys away. They are greedy – and underhanded. I believe in competition – good, healthy competition. This, well… this is rough.

Last year, Microsoft sent me their Small Business Accounting software – for free. They also sent me their full Office suite along with it – for free. Apparently, it went out to a good many bookkeeping and number-nerds. I installed, I tried it, I was amazed at what a complete rip off of Intuit’s QuickBooks it seemed to be. I uninstalled it.

Now, I’m not much of a QuickBooks fan either. I use it because it’s what my client’s like and – let’s face it – everyone pretty much uses QuickBooks. The software itself is fine, it’s the whole idea of “anyone can do accounting with this software,” that they use in their marketing – very misleading and I get a good many clients that have screwed it up “doing it themselves” — anyway, I’m off the subject here…

Fast forward to this year… Microsoft is giving away the express version of their accounting software to EVERYONE. Downloadable. For free.

Let me say that again. You can get FREE software from Microsoft. Real software. (and no, I’m not linking to it, google it if you must have it)

(the professional version, you have to buy)

Huh. Then it hit me…

They really are going after Intuit HARD. And that, folks, makes me angry. I don’t think that Microsoft can affect Intuit that badly, too many bookkeeping and accounting folks are die-hard QuickBooks users. But I’m supremely bothered that not only did Microsoft rip off the look of QuickBooks, they are now trying to get all of their clients by giving them something for free.

Doesn’t sound like good healthy competition to me…

Remember, just my opinion…

Your Bookkeeping Stinks!
By Scott Gregory, CPA

The world is filled with books about how to do your books. It is easy to find books on paying your taxes and balancing your checkbook. There are even books that introduce you to double-entry accounting. Understanding these books, however, is hardly ever easy. Rare is the book that is written to be understood by the average business owner. Luckily, “Your Bookkeeping Stinks!” is one of those rare gems that is both informative and easy to read, even if you are not a CPA.

Gregory is experienced at working with the owners of small businesses. This is evident in the simple and to the point topics that he covers in this 50 page book. You will not find a lot of “How-To’s” in this book. What is covered are the many pitfalls and time sinks that many new (and old) business owners find themselves caught in time after time.

The book is broken down in to 21 “Stinkers”. These topics range from balancing your checkbook to how to prevent fraud from occurring within your business. Gregory has even included a checklist at the back of the book to help readers ensure that all the “Stinkers” have been cleared from their business. The book also includes an appendix with a list of monthly reports to help business owners understand the health of their business.

I have two problems with “Your Bookkeeping Stinks!” First, it is too short. At only 50 pages, it is easily read in one sitting and just as easily forgotten. Second, at times is reads like a QuickBooks advertisement. The solution for a “Stinker” is most often, “Get good accounting software, like QuickBooks.”

However, these shortcomings aside, “Your Bookkeeping Stinks!” sets itself apart from the pack of self-help accounting books by ease of reading, and well categorized content. Scott Gregory’s “Your Bookkeeping Stinks!” is a good book for someone who wants to understand the world of accounting without being an accountant.

We were talking on the VANF forum recently about favorite toys (tools) of the trade. I have two actually. The first is easily Morris, my Treo. That guy is my brain, if I lose him or forget him, I feel naked all day long. My schedule, my address book, EVERYTHING is in this guy. And when I’m away from the office, I can still check email, browse the web, send SMS messages, you name it! I LOVE my Treo.

My other favorite is my VAdala that I won at the IVAA Summit – yes, I actually won something! That never happens! This thing is awesome. I’m a fiddler, always fiddling with something and this is a great stress relief to keep on my desk to grab at random times and mess with.

Anyway, so of the many uses of the VAdala, my favorite is a holder for Morris

I may be one of the last hold-outs on this technology. I’m still not all that impressed with it, to be completely honest. Oh, I love that you can take your phone with you and plug it back in anywhere, of course, but the quality just isn’t up there for me. We first tried VOIP as our personal phone line about a year and a half ago and it was a nightmare. It was in Beta for Time Warner and we agreed to be guinea pigs. I am not kidding when I say that there was a week where we had no less than 20 people going through our home trying to get this thing to work for longer than an hour. When it did start working, we had some pretty bad problems with garbled messages and skipping and other “data packet” errors. We had then take it out after a month.

We recently had a client want us to answer their phones (temporarily while they are moving). We have had the same type of problems. This is Vonage this time – and we use a business internet account so we have a higher bandwidth than residential. I will say that installation was much easier, but we still have the same “packet error” type of problems. We have noticed that it seems to be worse if we are uploading a file or doing something that uses a lot of bandwidth. We specialize in bookkeeping and sending/receiving large files is just par for the course.

An article caught my eye because apparently Microsoft’s Summit seems to be having similar problems with a similar technology. I’m just not sure if this has been refined enough to make a viable option for business owners. After thinking about it, the only way this would work for us is if we had a separate internet line coming in JUST for this technology. For that price, we may as well have the landline.

The article on the Summit, referenced above, can be found HERE.