All posts in Technology

Year Anniversary

This week apr16.com turns 1!!!  So much has happened in the past year, I don’t know where to begin.  Lets start with: I opened my own firm, met a group of people who Have/Will shape my outlook on the accounting profession, I hired, I fired, and I have worked on the confidence to say that “I can.”  My reason for blogging was to share my experience, successes, challenges, and to connect with potentials wanting to convert from old ways.  In mid 2009, I was ready to check-out of public accounting.  I told myself there was no way I was going to do this for the rest of my life.  Most of my discouragement came from a rigid routine which I felt zero appreciation for and my environment did not breed growth; I was dying.  Through twitter, I stumbled upon an interview with Ron Baker challenging the timesheet as a viable metric in public accounting firms.  It was my “a-ha” moment.
Six months later I launched this bad-boy and the first post was a three part post on trashing the timesheet; I was ecstatic at the freedom of not tracking time and wanted to share all.  I feel it would only be fitting to celebrate this occasion with another video.  This came to me from John Shaver at Aries Technology Group.  It really needs no introduction, enjoy.

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Google Docs is for me! (and our clients)

We are doing super exciting things at Chris Farmand + Co these days. While we are still developing our image, our process department is hard at work. From time to time I will share how we are empowering our clients to work smarter. This week we set up a payroll client to submit timesheets using google docs. Here is how we did it.
  1. Created a new spreadsheet in google docs.
  2. Found a template that would fit our clients needs.

3. Customized the template based on our clients pay frequency.

4. Shared the doc with our client and their employee.

This process utilizes the versatility and flexibility of the cloud. Once our client realized they can view and monitor employees time via the web anytime, from anywhere, they were ecstatic. In addition to pleasing our client, we fulfilled our need to access to the data at anytime. This will cut down on client wait time or chasing a client down for their hours. It was a win-win situation. Great job team. Have a question about how google docs can improve your business process? Contact us.
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Trilogy of social media

I have been meaning to blog about my opinion of social media for a while now.  For all intents and purposes of this blog there are only three social media sites that actually exist.  The hundred thousand others sites are a mediocre shot at what these three have accomplished.  The three I am referring to are, Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter. Founded in 2003, 2004, 2006, respectively, they have become the “trilogy of social media.”  I refer to them as a trilogy for no other reason than they were founded in different years, and they have become the leaders in social media.  I have decided to do lists of “Pros” v “Cons” for my opinion.

Linkedin:
Pros:

  1. Easy setup
  2. simple layout
  3. group pages are educational
  4. recommendations are cute
  5. earn about local competition
  6. offers everyone a seat in the social media game
Cons:
  1. is a lame attempt at networking
  2. name me one person who has actually finished the interview process
  3. over saturated
  4. groups are poorly monitored
  5. offers everyone a seat in the social media game

Facebook:
Pros:

  1. connects friends and relatives
  2. easy to use
  3. customize-able

Cons:

  1. Security
  2. gateway to a porn addiction
  3. 500 million…seriously?

Twitter:
Pros

  1. Collaboraters playground
  2. Separates the adults from the children of social media
  3. Advanced search to RSS is powerful (thanks Dustin)
  4. Barrier to entry, more difficult than the other two
  5. Content/links are meaningful

Cons:

  1. Days can elapse while reading tweets.
  2. Super spammers

Care to add any?

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Twitter Does

Q: What has Twitter done for me?

A: While on vacation I have found a few minutes to sneak away and blog what I have been thinking about for a while now.  Since joining twitter, I have connected with great like-minded professional. The like-mindedness has re-affirmed me that what I am doing is good for me and the industry.  I think that most the time, all I am missing is a little validation that I can trust my own judgement.  This twitter community (twitterunity), as I call it, allows questions, comments, jokes, feedback (+/-) to passed back and forth without ego’s being bruised.  While I have not generated any new business directly from twitter, it has opened the door to a number of relationships and resources that are priceless.   Care to share what twitter has done for you?

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Dear Abbycus

Dear Abbycus,
Now I understand why certain people act the way they do in the workplace — it’s a generational thing. In my unsuccessful struggle to change others’ thinking to the way I think, the idea of generational differences has popped up a number of times. Me being at the tender age of 31, I can not tell you how many times I have been compared to the 47 year old tax manager or the 56 year audit manager. I am a self-proclaimed Generation Y junkie.  If you have a chance please distribute my following DOs and DON’Ts list to all the late Boomers/early X’er partners out there.
DON’Ts

  1. Money — Try again partner; not really interested. As long as my Corolla has gas in it and there is food on the table, don’t really care about it.
  2. Rigid Billiable Hours — Not for me either. My mind runs a million miles a minute. And with technology today, I am worthless to you in a billable world.
  3. Slow Technology Adoption — See #2. There is an easier way to do things, friend.
  4. Threats — Yeah, see, about threats … If you treat me like a human, I may be loyal to you.

DOs

  1. Challenge me — I am smarter than your 65-year-old pencil pusher in the back office. How do you think I successfully remove half my lunch lodged in the keyboard each day?
  2. Educate me — Teach me what you know. You have years and years of experience, so share it.  I love to learn.
  3. Listen to me — That blue and white screen I stare at periodically throughout may appear epileptic to you, but it gets me in touch with like-minded pioneers of the industry.
  4. Technology — Text, tweet, e-mail, Facebook, link, cloud, Google doc, iPhone, Android, Blackberry with me. It’s fun, I promise.
  5. Validate me — If I do something you like, let me know.
  6. Change with me — The QBox has replaced the shoe box, old timer.
  7. Trust me — My comment regarding the threats may make you weary of this action, but if I gain your trust and we can collaborate together, the sky is the limit.

Respectfully,

Chris Farmand
Generation Y ’79
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Office Set-up

As I embark on my journey, I have been thinking a ton about the setup of my office and office procedures. I have already made significant changes in my current situation to improve my processes. I feel like a kid in a candy store. Not just any candy store — imagine the biggest candy store in times square…..a ha, like the M&Ms store there, but times 100. My excitement is due to the options that are available for me to run my office as effectively as possible. In this post I am going to talk about a few I am considering.

Email: Hosted Exchange vs. Google
I have been on exchange for the past six years now and I respect the functionality and service it has provided. Rules, alerts, folders, searches, calendars have all been great to me and the way I work. I am not a huge fan of the contacts section; I have tried again and again to clean mine up, but have not been successful. My experience has been not with a hosted version, but a local Exchange server. With up to 13 people pecking at the server all at once, other than the occasional server fart or March madness, the responsiveness has been fair. My Gmail experience has been with a personal account only. When I began using Gmail, the threaded email feature annoyed the $#^* out of me. I have since changed my belief system on the threaded feature — it is great. I have tried to use as many of the settings as possible to get a feel for the functionality and they seem to work great. In addition, Google has come out with a business upgrade, called Google Apps. For $50 per user per year, you get the free Google subscription on steroids which connects to your domain. The Google setup makes sense to me. I could rave for days about the docs, picasa, calendar, reader, video, YouTube, groups, but I want to keep this short.

Leaning toward: Google Apps for Business

Tax Software: SaaS vs Local Environment
I would be a lying dog if in this section I told you I was considering a local environment. First, I can’t afford a server, plain and simple. I am not sure I can afford that slimboy cooling system we have in our server room. Folks, for a small firm (1-5 person team), to maintain servers in 2010, it is like an CPA opening a fish market, just plain insane. I can be up and running, full speed, for under $700 per month. SaaS is the way for me in this category.

Leaning toward: SaaS

Accounting Software: Hosted vs Local Quickbooks vs QBOE
This one is still up in the air. I have no personal experience with hosted or hosting QB for my clients. Everything I do is local and our server is littered with backups and copies of client files. I am staring to seriously explore the option of hosting QB, solely for the reason I am feeling a little anti-mega-server.  I also believe I could better service my clients with a hosted environment. There is nothing better than cleaning up a live QB file, does anyone feel me??? While I have clients using QBOE, its not my favorite product out there. It serves its purpose, but I have expierenced some small nightmares with the online matching bank account. Word on the streets is QBOE will mirror the desktop soon. If that happens, I will reconsider my selection.

Leaning toward: Hosted

Audit Software: Office vs Engagement Organizer
This one comes down to cost vs. benefits. If I grow an audit practice to the point I need organizational software, I will purchase it. Currently, I have such a strong understading of word, excel, and the practice aids, it just does not make sense to invest. Engagement packages, I don’t care what the sales rep tell you, is nothing more than a expensive organizational tool. It keeps all your workpapers, checklist, etc in a nice little folders so next year you can ROLL forward. I’m not buying it yet.

Leaning toward: Office

Tax Research: Traditional Library vs Online
HA, sorry I had to put that one in there. Ok, seriously, I ideally would like my tax research software to sync with my tax software. My experienced has only been with the same suite research software and it works well.
Leaning toward: Online
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XBRL Cost/Benefit

Question I came across on a XBRL forum:

“As I go through XBRL tagging exercises with my undergraduate AIS class this
fall, I want to do my best to convince my students that XBRL is beneficial to
the financial reporting process. Biases/proponents aside, my experiences tell
me the students are mainly looking at the simplest cost/benefit analysis they
can get. In other words, they do not want to hear my long-winded examples of
potential transparency, efficiency, and effectiveness gains. They are familiar
with the major players in the XBRL software realm (adding Oracle and SAP with
their UB Matrix add-on, Clarity, Fujitsu, etc.), but have no idea the financial
costs the public companies are incurring. Better yet, from an auditing
perspective they don’t know what the Big 4 are paying for the technology
necessary to do their AUPs. Unfortunately, my best answer to their inquiries is
that they “will have to wait until they are hired by a company or firm to find
out.” Even I think this is a copout, but I cannot find public access to hard
cost numbers.  I know the cost likely depends on the size of the company/firm
and complexity of the existing system (that needs to be expanded for XBRL
capacity), but can anyone at least give me a range of cost (just of the
software, not installation and other necessary costs) for like the Oracle or SAP
add-on or even the Fujitsu tool, without compromising any proprietary
information (no names are needed so as to protect the innocent)? Any cost
information would be much appreciated by my students.”

My response:

While I believe the costs/benefits are important, accounting technology in whole is changing as we speak.  The players who can afford the Oracle and SAP surely are not affected by another measly add-on to their monster accounting package, to tag the financials.  Whereas the smaller “required filers” can’t afford the tens of thousands of dollars per year in maintenance fees per year to upkeep Oracle and SAP.  The shift to more affordable accounting software, has allowed many more options for XBRL reporting.  Some examples of this include, cloud subscriptions, MS word/excel imports, and simple tagging software.  When the market becomes saturated with many comparable options, you know what happens….commodity.  I don’t think we are there yet, however with the insurgence of cloud computing, it’s not far away.  As more and more companies are required to file, I see an opportunity to expand my services through consulting the XBRL process along.

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SaaS not SAS

Cloud
Saas, software as a service, is the ability to use/rent software on an as-needed basis through the internet. Ironically CPA’s who engage in audit and attest services use SAS, Statements on Audit Standards, every day. I would love to be able to tell you that their functions are alike based on the pronunciation being the same, however their purpose is a world apart. Before I get started on my Saas rant, I would like to pull a definition from my trusty wiki to have a common understanding of the acronym. Software as a Service is a model of software deployment whereby a provider licenses an application to customers for use as a service on demand. In laymen’s terms you need no costly infrastructure to run software. You simply activate the service, and use it as you need it. The “other guys” have created the software, built the infrastructure, applied the security, ensured the backup, completed the updates, tested and retested the processes; leaving me with what I know how to do best, make money. The subscription is user based, so if you are a one man shop, you pay for one license. This environment is perfect for the small accounting firm that does not want to pour major cash into servers, server racks, cooling systems, backup drives, battery backups etc. One issue that older partners are obsessed with is, data integrity. Data integrity is a thing of the past in my mind. These guys have their data centers backed up, imaged, saved from here all the way to Moscow. My point is, I would feel safer with my critical data at one of these data centers rather in the back of my civic.

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