BPMN Business Process Modeling Notation

A useful summary/introduction to BPMN useful for anyone creating process maps: Lucid charts

The link is provided by Lucid Charts who provide cloud based diagram software.  It's really good for process maps and mind maps.

A risk-based approach to enterprise resource planning implementations

Read an article titled A risk-based approach to enterprise resource planning implementations in Financial Management June 2015.  Drew attention to fact that many risks are not IT related but soft skill related - managing expectations, buy in and acceptance.  This link works for me only due to copyright of the article.

Notes from a talk by Andy Carfax:

How Systems can unlock growth

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

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.

Intuit's New QuickBooks Online Accountant Brings the Cloud – and Its Benefits – to Accountants | AccountingWEB.com

Information about Quickbooks online (cloub based) and a new service they have provided for accountants supporting clients using QB.

Intuit's New QuickBooks Online Accountant Brings the Cloud – and Its Benefits – to Accountants | AccountingWEB.com:

'via Blog this'

Pearltrees

This clever idea lets allows you to make 'trees' out of web sites and then share them (mindmap meets shortcut).  I haven't had the chance to play with it but image if you could use it with local content too and share directories not just pages  How many places have you seen company hard drives with data stored one way for one reason but for other users would be much more useful another way?

For example, one department looks after day to day data input but creates an accrual at the month end.  Another department collects the journals and posts them.  This idea could allow sharing in a better way than just shortcuts so that each party can find the data where it is logical for them..

Pearltrees:

'via Blog this'

A really interesting article predicting an IT implementation boom, mainly lead by the Cloud revolution.  I think this could be possible, especially when you consider how many companies have held back on IT implementation for the last 5 or probably 10 years.  As soon as the economy picks up it will be upgrade time.  Of course the forward thinking companies will be doing this now so that the investment is in place before their rivals so they can concentrate on growth when boom times come.

Tech - Companies

First impressions of Microsoft Office 365

See my main blog for this post.

Cloud computing could lead to more adaptive finance function

Interesting article from CIMA - not necessarily new but good revision.

The gap in the market seems to be ultra-cheap start up solutions. At present there is no cost incentive for small business and personal users to switch from their already paid for legacy systems.

Cloud computing could lead to more adaptive finance function