More about adding Evernote notes into Mindmeister

Adding Evernote notes without leaving Mindmeister (and other new updates)

Boundaries, Custom Styles, Dropbox and Evernote | MindMeister Blog:

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Linking mindmaps in Mindmeister with notes in Evernote and vice versa

Mindmaps in Mindmeister are great for structured thinking and planning and Evernote is great for storing anything that you might once have printed.  Here's how to connect the two.

The Seven Imperatives to Keeping Meetings on Track - Amy Gallo - Harvard Business Review

Useful tips, especially if your meetings meet the committee definition (take minutes and last hours):

The Seven Imperatives to Keeping Meetings on Track - Amy Gallo - Harvard Business Review:

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IT Faculty issues draft Excel good practice code | AccountingWEB

Some good reminders of best practice here.

IT Faculty issues draft Excel good practice code | AccountingWEB:

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How Huddle is transforming business collaboration | News | TechRadar

How Huddle is transforming business collaboration | News | TechRadar:

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Anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing

Completed and passed a 2 hour CIMA course on anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing AML/CTF.  A good on-line course that made it much more interesting than I had expected.  My evidence is recorded here.

Notes from a talk by Andy Carfax:

How Systems can unlock growth

Excel tool to easily copy location of spreadsheets

If you use a network drive (or Evernote or Dropbox) adding the location tool to your tool bar will save you having to email spreadsheets.  Sending the link is much quicker and gives access to the latest version of a changing document.  The tool allows you to copy the location of the file with a right click and control C.

Adding the (file) location tool to Excel or Word

(Note that the destination of this link is in Evernote - if your employer blocks you from Evernote, you may have to view it at home but it is worth your time.)

Technical update - IFRS and UK GAAP

Found this one hour webcast update kindly shared by wwwDeloitte.com (use STOJUL13 as the recording ID).  It has useful information, especially about the proposed changes for accounting treatment for leases and FRS102 the new standard to replace UKGAAP .

Tracking changes in Word (warning) and PDFs

Interesting discussion about risks of track changes in Word and recommendation of using pdfs instead

Track Changes option | LinkedIn:

UK company law library | AccountingWEB

Extremely useful resource: UK company law library | AccountingWEB:

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Spreadsheet skills: reducing file size

A good explanation of how to deal with the issue when the bottom right of your spreadsheet is much further away than you expected (or it needs to be): Spreadsheet skills: reducing file size:

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11 ways to protect your privacy on Facebook - Telegraph

11 ways to protect your privacy on Facebook - Telegraph:

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Six thinking hats for accountants | AccountingWEB

A thinking process for generating new ideas and planning to deal with obstacles that may be put up by others:

Six thinking hats for accountants | AccountingWEB:

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Six techniques for building a strategic finance department

Six techniques for building a strategic finance department:

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Making the most out of meetings

Revision tips for meetings: Making the most out of meetings:

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Latest trends in perks

http://www.businesspundit.com/the-perks-of-the-new-management-style-in-business/

Pensions automatic enrolment - official information sources

This link is to the (UK) Pensions Regulator with a host of resources about automatic enrolment.  Auto enrolment has started and is being rolled out starting with big companies first.

Useful article for introducing people to Evernote

It is certainly true that the more you use it, the more useful it becomes:

I've Been Using Evernote All Wrong. Here's Why It's Actually Amazing:

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Employment Law update 2013

Went to an employment law update arranged by Hays and presented by Julie Jones and Amanda Lyons of DMH Stallard.

Key points:

• Compromise Agreements are now called Settlement Agreements and there are new rules allowing Pre-Termination Negotiations (PTNs).  These allow discussion which cannot be used as evidence of unfair dismissal (unless discrimination).  Disclosures need to be made explaining this and allowing a colleague to sit in, so some organisations may not use these and rely on best practice instead.  See ACAS Code of Practice for Settlement Agreements for more.
• Employment Tribunals (ETs) will from 6 Apr 2014 have an extra step: Early Conciliation.  Before progressing to ET, the claimant must complete an on-line form and then if both parties wish it, ACAS will attempt to mediate.  If this does not work or either party does not wish to mediate, an Early Conciliation Certificate will be issued which will allow progression to ET.
• Employment Tribunal (ET) fees introduced 29 Jul 2013.  Issue fee and Hearing fee for simple/complex cases: £160/£250 and £230/£950 to be paid by claimant to deter frivolous claims.   Successful employer may claim up to £20k from claimant for costs if claim found to have no legal basis.
• Unfair dismissal has a new cap from 29 Jul 2013: £74,200 or one year's gross pay (applying to terminations after that date).
• Following the Woolworths case, for the purposes of collective redundancy consultation, establishment is now taken to mean a company rather than a building when calculating the total people being made redundant in a time period.
• Whistleblowing from 25 Jun 2013 must be in public interest, rather than in good faith as before.
• Vicarious liability was introduced on 25 Jun 2013 so that an act of an employee is an act of the company unless it can be clearly shown the employee was acting against company policy and had sufficient training etc.
• Changes to TUPE rules Jan 2014.  Renegotiation of terms of transferred employees is allowed one year after transfer.  Location of a workforce can be within scope of economical, technical or organisational (ETO) reasons.

Cautionary tale about Google Drive

This article will be especially useful for people considering swapping from Dropbox to Google Drive.  Driven to despair by Google Drive | PC Pro blog:

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Team Charters

Although it's normal to define what a new team is for, this article could form the basis of a good check list to ensure that everything is covered at the outset.

Team Charters - Team Management Training from MindTools.com:

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Working in a Virtual Team

Some useful thoughts about working virtual teams:

Working in a Virtual Team - Career Development From MindTools.com:

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Transferring an Outlook mail folder to another user

Handing a task or role over to someone else?  You probably have an Outlook folder full of emails that might one day be useful.  Here's how to hand a copy over.

Competition Act - is it working for hotels?

This article in the Sunday Times seems to indicate collusion by hotels and 'discount' agents.  It will be interesting to see what the OFT comes up with (eventually).

http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/Tech/article1314099.ece

Flexible Working Infographic: Win-Win For Employers & Employees

Useful statistics for anyone thinking of introducing (or withdrawing) flexible working:

Flexible Working Infographic: Win-Win For Employers & Employees:

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Read an article in the Sep/Oct AAT magazine about E-learning.  Unsurprisingly it seems to anticipate a big move to on line learning for accountancy.  More surprising is that it still sees the cost of computers as an obstacle; can there really be many aspiring accountants who do not have access to a computer?

I certainly find my self making more use of computer based training and webinars for my CPD.

Speed Reading - Study Skills from MindTools.com

While researching a potential new role, found this very useful article on speed reading (only takes a minute or 2 if you speed read it).

Speed Reading - Study Skills from MindTools.com:

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Blogger or Evernote - which is best for recording CPD?

Evernote continues to improve and become more central to my life with clipping from the web, emails and paper so easy and excellent tagging and search facilities.  It is possible to make Evernotebooks partly or completely public and to tag them, but what still gives Blogger the edge for sharing CPD is the following:

• Sharing a link to a page on the blog then allows the reader to browse the rest of the blog (a link on Evernote goes to either the page only or the whole note book only so cannot be specific then general)
• Blogger is set up for allowing comments, Evernote has no way that I know of, where the content can be protected but comments allowed

Conclusion: Evernote is brilliant for many things but for a blog, the Blogger app is still better.

To see my other posts about Evernote, click here.

NLP - Neuro-linguistic Programming

I read an article in the AAT magazine (the link is here but only works for me due to copyright).

Main points seemed to be it could be used for the following:

• 'Anchoring' to positive feelings eg associate sinple repeatable gestures with positive feelings to help a salesman remember success before going into a negotiation to give more confidence
• Being aware that feelings are linked to actions so watch body language to help understand what people are feeling

Creating a table of contents for notes in Evernote

This short video shows how to create a table of contents (or list of short cuts) to items in Evernote.  It is different to sharing URLs in that it works in a desk top version of Evernote rather than a browser.

This will be useful for me for building up a Financial Manual - linking various policy and task notes together.

Webcasts for CPD

Webcasts are a maturing technology and with the proliferation of free courses by leading universities, I hoped to see some good material for CPD.  Now while some of the university courses could certainly be used for CPD, I was hoping to find something more aimed at staying up to date with UKGAAP/IFRS, UK law and UK business based ideas.

CIMA does have a suite of material available here but at £30 for an hour's course seems expensive (the special offer bulk buys only allow a restricted choice).

I would be interested to hear if anyone has found a good alternative?

Skrill - could this be used like escrow for low amounts?

Please note this link may only work if you have a subscription to The Times.

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/business/industries/banking/article3819003.ece

Notes from Modelling and Financial Planning Webinar

Business Modelling and Financial Planning Webinar

Date and time:	16 Jul 2013, 10:00
Duration:	1 hour
Description:	Business Modelling and Financial Planning Webinar  In this webinar Andy Cooper, Business Consultant from Advanced Business Solutions, examined the challenges that organisations face with the modeling and forecasting process offering insight to how you can develop these processes beyond finance to gain a real business advantage.

Presented by Andy Cooper, Advanced Business Solutions

• Move to modelling and planning rather than systems replacements
• Third of orgs use specialist tool (half for large orgs) - typically not outside finance.
• Doing more with less and backlash against ERP-like projects.
• Short ROI - less than 18 months in many cases.
• 63% of orgs (up from 54% in 2011) plan to upgrade business modeling in next 2 years.
• But over 70% of BI/BM projects fail.

Action items

Look at Adobe Meeting - worked well for Webinars (from web link with no log in required).
Consider business opportunities of specialising in this area - but with which software?

Everything you ever needed to know about dropbox in seven minutes or less. | Dotto Tech

For anyone not already using Dropbox for backing up, syncing and sharing, this is well worth 7 minutes of your time.  It could just save you that sinking feeling the next time someone says to you 'when did you last make a backup'?

Everything you ever needed to know about dropbox in seven minutes or less. | Dotto Tech:

If you do decide to give it a try, I'd appreciate you using this link so that Dropbox gives me some extra free storage in case I ever need it.

Evernote reminders (for Android, iOs and web but not Windows yet)

This video shows you how to use the new reminder feature on Evernote but note you may need to download the latest updates first for Android (it's one that you need to do manually).

About Google Hangouts (video chatting and conferencing across different platforms)

http://smallbiztrends.com/2013/07/google-hangouts-collaborate-any-device.html

SME accounting changes - the new UK GAAP: FRS 102 explained | AccountingWEB

Summary of main changes planned for UKGAAP (bringing UKGAAP in line with IFRS).

The new UK GAAP: FRS 102 explained | AccountingWEB:

The full standard is available here.

More about Bitcoin

http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23150740

Trello - could be useful for tracking team meeting actions or audit follow ups

Trello is a web based app for collaboratively keeping track of tasks.  It's a crowded market place but here is what makes it different and what task it might be really good for:

What's it like?
Think of being in a team meeting with a pack of post its.  You write a task on each post it and stick it on a board in a column called 'to do'.  There is another column for 'doing', another for 'done' and you can add others for 'waiting' or 'for review' if needed.  The post its (or cards) can easily be dragged from one place to another.

To the cards can also be added further details, checklists, attachments, links, due dates, owners and comments.

What would it be good for?
In a team meeting, a group could brainstorm ideas, allocate them to people with a due date.  The group members can then work on items after the meeting but also add comments later as they think of ideas or as scenarios change. Any invited member of the team can see who made which comment and when and see the progress as a whole.

What else could it be good for?
Suppose an organisation has a list of improvements to implement.  Each item could be added as a separate card with a summary of what needs to be done.  The task can be allocated an owner and due date.  The owner can add comments and then attach evidence when the task is complete, giving a good audit trail.

Other thoughts
It is possible to have different boards for different subjects (separate sharing for each) and boards can be filtered.  Cards can have categories allocated to them within boards.  According to the web site, works on PCs, Android and iOS.

Cost
The basic version (that would do this) is free.

Outsourcing with the web and mechanical turks

The web still has more to give for outsourcing work.  This article is about Amazon's Mechanical Turk that allows tasks that only humans can do to be subbed out or crowdsourced.  This is not available in the UK as far as I can find but seems to be good for transcriptions and surveys.  With a bit more development on building reputation of the workers (and higher pay for higher rated workers) perhaps this could be good for translations, proofing, spreadsheet fixing and  many other things.  Definitely an idea to watch.

Accepting Bitcoin for business

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/226716

How to print from Android (free)

I have spent the last 20 years or so trying to eliminate paper but there are still occasions when you need to print - often to give to someone else.  Here is how to set printing up from your Android device to a 'normal' printer:

1. Download Google Cloud Print onto your Android (it's free from Google Play)
2. Follow these set up  instructions to make your printer available (easier to do from your PC)
3. You may need to wait a few minutes for everything to sync up
4. Print from your Android by using share, then picking Cloud Print from the list

This worked very well on my Nexus 10.

Practical use of Google Glass - review

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/226685

Taking a Vacation? Take an Email Sabbatical! | LinkedIn

Ideas for arranging an empty inbox when you return from holiday.

Taking a Vacation? Take an Email Sabbatical! | LinkedIn:

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Handling competency based interviews

http://ht.ly/lvhWV

Tips for powerful writing

Five Writing Tips that Can Double Your Salary | LinkedIn

Is Facebook Stickier Than LinkedIn? | The Magnet Blog presented by Ongig

Interesting article from employer's side comparing effectiveness of LinkedIn and Facebook in converting shares to brand awareness and applications.

Is Facebook Stickier Than LinkedIn? | The Magnet Blog presented by Ongig:

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Windows 8 training

I have just completed some basic training for using Windows 8.  I have been using it for over a month now and thought it would be good to check through what I have not been able to figure out on my own.

Top of the list is a (slightly) quicker way of turning it off:

• Hover over the top right to bring up the menu
• Select 'Settings'
• Click the 'Power' button

I know that when Windows 95 came out, we all thought that clicking 'start' to shut down was strange and we all had to get used to it - but clicking 'settings' to shut down seems neither consistent nor logical.  Still, I like to end on a positive note: it does boot up much more quickly than my last system.

How to Answer the Top 35 Interview Questions [INFOGRAPHIC]The Undercover Recruiter

The Twitter CV: how to sell yourself in 140 characters | iJobs

Could Twitter CVs become a way of shortlisting the CVs that make it through for full reading before the interview shortlist is made?

The Twitter CV: how to sell yourself in 140 characters | iJobs:

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On motivation of staff and the risks

Free exchange: Making pay work | The Economist

A glimpse at the future for secure and time limited electronic messaging

Why We Should Celebrate Snapchat And Encourage Ephemeral Communication - Forbes

How An Online Reputation Can Hurt Your Job Hunt http://www.forbes.com/sites/deborahljacobs/2013/05/17/how-an-online-reputation-can-hurt-your-job-hunt/

Making remote working work

Working from home: do you think it's a good idea? Click below for some tips on managing your remote workforce. 

Productivity tips for meetings

Do some meetings feel like a total waste of time? Here's how to cut down... https://plus.google.com/109024479252402619908/posts/9EUtg5L8XXP

Ways to minimise risk for investors

5 Ways to Minimize Risk for Investors | Entrepreneur.com

Scanners and paperless working

BBC News - Clear your desk and go anywhere (almost) paperless
This article may not have much new about paperless working for those of us who have been using Evernote for several years already but does have some useful information about the latest scanners.

Bitcoin - what is it?

Bitcoin, the 'new gold' - but what on earth is it? - Telegraph

Short summary about Finance Leases

Please explain more about the finance lease and its appearance in statements. | CIMA Financial Management Magazine:

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8 ways to… find alternatives to bank finance | CIMA Financial Management Magazine

I am pleased to see Peer-to peer lending gets a mention here, I can see this area growing a great deal.
8 ways to… find alternatives to bank finance | CIMA Financial Management Magazine:

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What’s a brand really worth? | CIMA Financial Management Magazine

What’s a brand really worth? | CIMA Financial Management Magazine:

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CGMA-How to make the transition from CFO to non-executive director-CFO

CGMA-How to make the transition from CFO to non-executive director-CFO: "How to make the transition from CFO to non-executive director ".

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Small company RTI relaxation (only applies to weekly paid with < 50 employees

HM Revenue & Customs: Reporting PAYE in real time (Real Time Information or RTI): relaxation of reporting arrangements for small businesses

Tips for sling a product go viral

The Secrets of What Makes a Product Go Viral | Entrepreneur.com

Finger prints instead of passwords becoming more likely

Smartphone fingerprint tech could replace passwords - Telegraph

Google tools update for small businesses

These days, technology evolves at the speed of light, as do the technology needs of small business. Rich Rao, Director of Worldwide Sales and Operations for Google, joins Brent Leary to discuss Google small business technology and the changing te ... http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SmallBusinessTrends/~3/jXxrqxwiwIg/google-small-business-changing-needs.html Shared via my6sense

Networking (or not) - latest trends

BBC News - Teleworking: The myth of working from home

Killing off cash

BBC News - Killing off cash: Could new tech mean the end of money?

4 Critical Ways You Can Stop Wasting Time Today - Lifehack