Clearbooks update for accountants

I am increasing liking this cloud based accounting system.  Don't be put off that they don't seem to have a shirt and tie between them.  The system seems very professional and is moving forward.  Help is responsive. This attachment is an update newletter aimed at accountants.  (Stored in my Evernote but shared with Clearbooks' agreement).

Prophix ad hoc reporting

Getting to grips more with the ad hoc reporting of the Prophix forecasting software.  With a bit of practice it is getting much easier to compare actuals, budgets and forecasts sliced and diced in different ways to give overviews or spot variances.  I remain really impressed by the way detailed (hidden until needed) lines can be added in the explain changes - invaluable in explaining changes.  The reporting of this detail is not good so far but a fix is on the way.  For the moment, budget managers continue to be wowed when I drill down and show them that the reason a number looks odd is that I have incorporated a change that they asked for a few weeks before but have since forgotten about.

HP Blogs - When the Cloud disappears, IT will transform itsel... - The HP Blog Hub an article about how Cloud computing is becoming the norm rather than the exception.

How to have maximum interview impact - a short article from CIMA on interview technique.

5 minute video about how a food delivery service was optimised to improve deliveries within planned windows.

Evernote for Android with offline notebooks

Evernote has already revamped a few of its offerings this month, and it's now brought some changes to its Android app as well. That includes new offline notebooks for premium subscribers that'll let you download multiple notebooks in one shot, a ... http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/dqctR232fVs/ Shared via my6sense

Advantages and disadvantages of combining phone and tablet - conclusion may not be what you expect

Padfone's take of combining phone and tablet soon will be thing of the past | Dan Gillmor | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk:

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SAP PO authorisation training

To improve controls on expenditure, took part in short on-line SAP course with director about purchase order and invoicing approval.  This system was set up making good use of email notifications and should now allow the director to have a clearer audit trail of PO approval within SAP.

Prophix Forecasting update

Had update training on Prophix P10 forecasting software, following replacement of P3 Personnel module with DPM (detailed planning manager).  Looks good having all the data in one module so that personnel changes feed through to the P&L more quickly.  Also allows improved reporting from the Ad Hoc Report Generator which feeds to Excel - so this should allow easier people cost variance analysis against future actuals.

SAP training

Took a revision course on SAP.  The stand out feature when comparing one set up with another that I have worked with is the log on process: for one organisation, SAP had separate log on details to Windows, for the other, access to Windows gave access to SAP.  Think how much time is cost/saved each day against the potential security risk.

Android tablets catching up

iPad's grip on tablet market weakens - Telegraph

The tablet war continues

Google and Samsung 'plan 10-inch Nexus tablet' - Telegraph

Indexation and the importance between arithmetic and geometric means

Consumer - Uncategorised

Update about new versions of Office

While we still don't know exactly when Microsoft will unleash Office 2013 and Office 365 upon the world, we do know how much they'll cost. While standalone versions, licensed for use on a single computer, will still be available, the new strategy ... http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/qDrx1iJB0T0/ Shared via my6sense

HMRC General Anti-Abuse Rule (GAAR)

Read an article in the AAT magazine about the proposed GAAR.  Seems to boil down to: current position of what is avoidance and what is evasion depends on an interpretation of the rules.  If a GAAR were brought in, what is evasion and what is avoidance would boil down to interpretation of 'what is a reasonable course of action'.  As the article points out, this could end up being even more complex.

I have been using Prophix for financial forecasting and I have to say I like it.  It's good for having one module that has the very confidential payroll information and another that takes that information and the other costs.

What is really good is that when you want to make changes, you can create extra lines that feed into each GL code, to create a clear audit trail.  Yes you can do this with a spreadsheet but there are greater risks that if it in turn feeds other sheets that the complexity causes reconciliation issues.  Downside at present is updating from one module to the other takes many steps and about 10 mins - a pain for last minute tweaking when you know what answer you need to get to and need to be absolutely sure each step takes you there.

Holiday tracking

This souds like a good tool for tracking holidays.
Timetastic Simplifies Taking Vacation Days

I wonder if they have thought about locking holidays after the event and an easy way of sending them with people's diaries.

Tablet market share. I do want to see Android succeed but ipads have strengthened their lead.

The Apple iPad may as well be called the Teflon Tablet for now, since challengers can't quite stick. Thanks to those 17 million iPads shipped in the second quarter, Strategy Analytics estimates that Apple held on to the 68 percent of tablet marke ... http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/oBGXhwy1QNM/ Shared via my6sense

LinkedIn Microsoft Office Integration - Business Insider

Linked In contact syncimg works on my phone so this looks like a sensible step for Outlook.   LinkedIn Microsoft Office Integration - Business Insider:

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Excel Waterfall Chart - Tutorial and Template - Learn how to make waterfall charts using MS Excel | Chandoo.org - Learn Microsoft Excel Online

This is a good step by step guide to creating waterfall charts that look really smart.

Excel Waterfall Chart - Tutorial and Template - Learn how to make waterfall charts using MS Excel | Chandoo.org - Learn Microsoft Excel Online:

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Tablet update

Time flies, doesn't it? It seems like only yesterday that we were just putting the final touches on our spring tablet buyer's guide, and here we are, updating it for a new season. This time, the sun is out and the trousers are getting shorter, wh ... http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/BHGU2J_iLaY/ Shared via my6sense

Nexus 7 tablet review. Sounds good value for money but not direct competition for an iPad.

Google Nexus 7 review - Telegraph

The Best Google Features You're Probably Not Using

Really interesting including digital signing and screen sharing using tools you probably already have.
The Best Google Features You're Probably Not Using:

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Timing is everything | The Economist

Despite its title, this article is more about timing and the risks of over-rushing and does certainly not promote unnecessary delay.

Schumpeter: No rush | The Economist:

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Richard Branson on When Workers Rebel Against a New Manager | Entrepreneur.com

Good article about why people work round company enforced IT rules with good suggestions.

HP Blogs - Cloud and Shadow-IT: It is forbidden to forbid - The HP Blog Hub

Useful update on Eurozone problem

Bank ‘throws kitchen sink’ at credit problem - Telegraph

New web bite suffix implications

The article below talks about why applications for .com and .org replacements have been lower than expected and discusses how the changes will affect us all.
Tech - Companies

Electronic board reports

This article from a bank directors' briefing looks at electronic board meetings from a big company perspective, with lessons applicable to smaller businesses.

Key points:

• Looks at providing board reports on a web site rather that in a printed or emailed report
• Improved security is seen as advantage
• Allows sharing of parts of report 'as ready' rather than 'after last submission arrives'
• Directors are expected to read in full, before the meeting
• Cost for specialised board portal is about US$22,000 a year but I suspect for many smaller organisations pdf files on Yammer could make a workable alternative for free, by creating a group with access restricted to just the Board.

Cash and trade cycles

I'm a strong believer in trade cycles - what goes down must come up.  This article in Financial Management draws attention to the fact that increasing numbers of companies are sitting on piles of cash (well liquid assets on the overnight market anyway) and as soon as they have the confidence to spend it, the economy will be in for a steep take-off.

The big question is: when will that be?  The answer, especially with changes to the fundamentals like Euro problems, is not clear.  Economics works better with hindsight.

Are you an accountant or a problem-solver?

A good article that does more than discuss the stereotypes of the 'accountant' label.  Interesting about 'management boards' and the move away from desks to virtual workplaces.

Are you an accountant or a problem-solver?:

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Lessons from Terminal 5 project

Attended interesting talk by Dr Tim Brady of the Centre of Innovation Management at the University of Brighton.

Key points about Terminal 5 project:

• Massive project (biggest in Europe at the time)
• Set up in multidisciplinary groups to encourage innovation rather than blaming other areas
• Delivered on time and budget - a major achievement for such a project
• First week was then a disaster
• Key lessons: you cannot test for everything so build in some slack (at T5, they were so confident that they started off at almost full capacity.  Some staff and passengers could not find car parks so were late, some staff could not then log on to systems as some test data left in - as little spare capacity, minor problems then caused major problems).

Much more about this project is available here.

Key general points

Project risk can be broken down into 3 main types:

Structural risk:

It's a big project - risk reduced by good planning and control.

Socio-political risk:

It has people involved - stakeholder relationships become very important to manage expectations and keep people working together rather than 'blame shifting'.

Emerging Complexity:

The unknown unknown.  This can be reduced by sharing information eg using web to have single master plan rather than some people working on out of date paper plans.  Need to be aware of this risk and have people looking for problems with capacity (resource and time)  built in to deal with problems.

Board meetings

A reminder about the requirements of board meetings and to keep the minutes for a minimum of 10 years.

http://www.accountingweb.co.uk/topic/practice/board-meetings-get-details-right/516914

Selective sharing on Facebook

Business vs. Personal: How to Selectively Share on Facebook | AccountingWEB.com

Book review: word of mouth marketing

Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking

More small businesses now using social media than print advertising.

Connected business - Management

Business Process Outsourcing

A short article on Business Process Outsourcing.  I already work with one company where invoices are scanned in one place, the bookkeeping is done somewhere else and the business is run in a third location.  With tools like Evernote and Clearbooks, I think this will become increasingly common as it saves time and money as well as improving record keeping.

How to better manage your 'back office' needs and capitalize on talent:

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Facebook to Marketers, It’s Time for a Click to Action | TechCrunch

This article might be a bit 'over the top' for many smaller organisations.  It's good to know what bigger marketing departments are thinking about this channel though.
Facebook to Marketers, It’s Time for a Click to Action | TechCrunch:

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Spreadsheet skills: Excel in PowerPoint

Useful step by step guide for embedding Excel charts in Powerpoint for anyone needing a refresher.
Spreadsheet skills: Excel in PowerPoint:

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Employment Market Insight

Key skills in demand are Management Accounting, Cost Saving, System Improvement, Communication and a Rounded Commercial Skill Set according to a Webinar by Michael Page Finance and Gaapweb.  It's good to be able to tick off the whole list.

Targetting reading

I already use Goo Reader and My6sense to a heave this but it's good to read about alternatives for finding interesting articles quickly.

How Tablets Are Transforming Business Intelligence - TechCrunch

Budgeting and forecasting

Budgeting and Forecasting – Best Practices | Striking an Enterprise Performance Management Balance

Must look into options other than Excel and Winforecast.

Evernote to create business version

This seems like an essential next step.  Evernote is so good for personal and small business paperlessness - I look forward to trying a bigger company version.
Evernote to offer idea- and note-capture tool for businesses | Applications - InfoWorld

An early review of Google Drive

I'm not sure the reaons given in this article fully support the conclusion  Why Google Drive Won't Be a Dropbox Killer | Entrepreneur.com

Google Drive to be cheaper than Dropbox with searching like Evernote

Google Drive undercuts Dropbox - Telegraph

Martha Lane Fox urges business to go ‘digital by default’ with new Go ON venture - Telegraph

Google Alerts and how to filter them

I've used Google Alerts to track what the web is saying about all Michael Veales.  Now I will be able to filter out those of less interest!

How to Use Google Alerts - 5 Quick Ways to Get News About You & Your Blog - Food Blog Alliance:

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Wireless scanner review

Sounds like this scanner needs a bit more development before it's ready for widespread use wirelessly.  It has to be the way forward though.  Scanning is wireless with Doxie Go

Book review about Google +

Is this you? Do you take Google+ as another network you need to manage? Someplace else to post and watch for business social media? As Guy Kawasaki says himself, in the early pages of the book I’m reviewing here: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SmallBusinessTrends/~3/7eCjp-2wPrk/a-quick-practical-business-guide-to-google-plus.html Shared via my6sense

Some good ideas about social advertising best practice.

Social Advertising: Like, Share, Retweet ... Buy? | Entrepreneur.com

CGMA global economic forecast 2012 Q1

This global economic forecast shows improved optimism in every area compared to Q4 of 2011.  Good news although 25% think the Euro will not survive.  CGMA global economic forecast:

HMRC and BASDA to produce phone apps for record keeping - Accountancy Age mobile

Stepcase Lifehack Lifehack Presents: The Thinking Outside the Box Mini Guide

Editing pdfs on an iPad

Back in the day, we all reviewed and edited documents with a red pen, highlighter, and sticky notes. Then came track changes and comments in MS Word or maybe you used the Review tools in Adobe Acrobat to annotate comments and edits on a PDF while ... http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LifeHack/~3/KO1xE2M7Cf4/annotate-pdfs-on-your-ipad-with-iannotate-pdf.html Shared via my6sense

What You Need to Know About the New Google Plus Design | Entrepreneur.com

Investors requiring change in tech companies

Tech - Companies

Timesaving use of social media

Better Leadership Through Social Media

Some good ideas here - many I already do with some good ideas for Twitter.

Linked In advertising

This article talks about the options for Linked In B2B advertising.  Has some useful stats about Linked In growth too.

Six Ways to Make Your Content Go Viral | Entrepreneur.com

A handy tip that gets round mornings rounding down and afternoons rounding up

Excel Tip: Using Today() versus NOW() | AccountingWEB.com

CIMA ethics in 3 minutes

It would be good to see more updates in an accessible format like this although new accounting standards might take more than 3 minutes.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10150787472475757

The Telegraph Guide to the iPad - free iBook - Telegraph

automating financial reporting

Profit drivers

Getting More Profit for Your Business | Entrepreneur.com

Tax can't be simple with a heavyweight finance bill - Accountancy Age mobile

BBC News - Three missing ingredients of small business technology

Google Chrome takes lead from Internet Explorer - Telegraph

EDF Finance Conference

An afternoon at Church House, Westminster, for an ESCS finance update.  Included good explanation  by FD Ronan Lory that co has high fixed costs so changes to other costs important to make or miss targets.

Interesting talk through spot energy prices over last year showing effects of political and news events.

Summary iPad review

BBC News - New iPad faces growing competition from tablet rivals

Small business social media - ideas to improve use

eMarketer commented on some new social data from Street Fight that identified the number one reason small business owners enter the waters of social media. Curious as to what it was? Are you? http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SmallBusinessTrends/~3/-igTlOlSyGI/the-number-one-reason-smbs-go-social-is%e2%80%a6.html Shared via my6sense

Google webinars

I don’t know a single small business owner not actively looking for ways to get more from their SEO. We want trusted information focused on the areas we’re not always too sure about like… search ads. Or how to decipher Google Analytics. Let’s fac ... http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SmallBusinessTrends/~3/-uKmgTBBLS8/google-webinars.html Shared via my6sense

Making social media work in business

supply chain innovation social media casemore GHG

This ties in with some of what I have already been trying - replace email with social media to share better and reduce copies.  The challenge still remains to find the needle in th haystack (what worked rather than what did not).  Tagging could well help here.

Arkadin Web Conferencing

I have started using Arkadin Web conferencing and this looks as if it will be very useful.

Web conferencing allows remote conferencing with multiple users but as well as sharing a telephone conversation, a screen can be shared too.  This is especially useful for business partnering discussions, where I as the accountant am talking operational managers through numbers.  In the past I have sent large spreadsheets, waited ages for my client to open them and had discussion where I might have to keep referring to row numbers and column names.  Now I can share my screen so that the client sees what I see.  They see me point my mouse, I can highlight information and they can see it in real time.

This will also be useful for training where I can show a client what to do, or they can show me what they are doing and I can explain the problem.

More info at www.arkadin.com

Top tips for Twitter

One of the most important ways for businesses to get ahead on Twitter is by helping others who have a problem, according to a new list of tactics. http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/567647/s/1cce4b38/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Ctechnology0Ctwitter0C90A93740A0CTop0E20A0ETwitter0Ebusiness0Etips0Bhtml/story01.htm Shared via my6sense

Clear Books - speed

So far I have found Clear Books to be fast to very fast (evenings and weekend).  Monday night at about 6:30 pm was slow though.  Could have been a once off or a problem my end, but something to monitor.

Clear Books - electronic invoicing (good and bad)

Clear Books has some good tools for electronic invoicing.  Not only can you capture a pdf, there is a tool to click to email the invoice.  The good part here is that instead of sending a pdf as an attachment, it sends an email with hyperlinks to both the invoice and a live statement.

The advantage is that the client can see the latest details.  The disadvantage of course is that if for any reason you were not up to date, the client can see that too!

Security thought: if the hyperlink remains valid for that client for all time and continues to show live information, a former employee of the client with the hyperlink would still have access to live statements and by drilling down, to the invoices.  Need to follow this up.

Clear Books - banking and scans

Spent a few more minutes playing with Clear Books and made a major discovery: you can now add attachments.  The last time I looked at Cloud accounting systems (about a year ago) none supported this.  It now looks likely that this system could support paperless accounts in a good way.

I'm starting to get enthusiastic but will need a bit more testing before I drop my old Quick Books desktop version.

Clear Books - testing

I have signed up for a free 30 day trial of the web based accounting software Clear Books.  First indications are that it is quick and very easy to use.  I dived straight in and was able to create a sales invoice in a few minutes.  Customisation and creating of sales lines seemed easy.  Receipting too was fairly intuitive.  It was refreshing to see how well catching invoices as pdfs was built in - using with Evernote would be easy.

Definitely seems worthy of investing a bit more time to test the banking side.

iPad 3 rumours, specs, price & release date round-up - uSwitch.com

iPad 3 rumours, specs, price & release date round-up - uSwitch.com:

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Future of devices at work

BBC News - BYOD: Bring your own device could spell end for work PC

So what would I chose?  Probably a desktop with double or triple monitors for day to day.  This would be augmented with a tablet and small laptop for meetings, depending on whether I expected to be using the device for input or output.

Future of computers - next 5 years perhaps

The end of the PC, courtesy of Microsoft | Mobile Technology - InfoWorld

Employment law and snow

BBC News - Snow difficulties and your rights

Desktop searches

A replacement for Google Desktop? - Telegraph

Google Is About To Enter The Social Enterprise Space | TechCrunch

An article hinting that Google + may be modified to take on business social enterprise ie apps like Yammer that are in effect Facebook for business.

Watch Out Yammer And Jive, Google Is About To Enter The Social Enterprise Space | TechCrunch: "Google Is About To Enter The Social Enterprise Space"

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Why do people use Facebook?

Study: Why Do People Use Facebook?
An article bringing together conclusions of latest studies.

An update to copying and pasting

Click.to wants to make copy and paste obsolete | VentureBeat
This is a really quick way to allow cutting and pasting text or parts of spreadsheets to Evernote, pdfs or many other places.  A useful tool.

Google+ update

They Did It: Google Personalizes Search & It Is Not Evil
This is a useful article updating on the latest changes to Google+ and Google searches.