Faster month end using social media

Accountants out there may be interested in this post on my CPD log, starting to look at whether social media could be used to improve month end.

Evernote makes paperless storage a practical (and affordable) reality

I have spent years inching towards paperlessness.  My working papers have been paperless for over 10 years but the question has been what to do with all those bits of paper everyone else gives me.  Scanning seemed to be the answer but filing in a searchable way was a problem - this is now solved!

Evernote now offers a solution that costs from nothing up to $45 a year (yes free to £30 a year).  At its simplest, it allows scanned images to be flicked through like a paper file but it is much, much more powerful than that.

Key points about the paid for version:

• Invoices (or anything else) can be scanned as pdfs and are then searchable (Evernote uses optical character recognition (OCR) to 'read' douments)
• Electronic papers can be emailed in and are searchable
• Any part (or all) of a web site can be 'clipped' into a notebook - great for evidence of web transactions or for collecting research materials
• Notebooks synchronise with the cloud (and other machines/users if you wish) so it is more secure against loss than paper
• Notes can be accessed and stored by smart phone and Evernote will use OCR on photos of receipts and other documents

I have been using Evernote since about Dec 2010, gradually testing ease of use, reliability and different settings.  Following the purchase of a new scanner in May 2011, I really am ready to stop storing paper. 

In my opinion, with the right help, it should easily be possible to set everything up and learn how to use Evernote in a day.  This could be for a home office or SME office - accommodating up to about 5 ring binders full of paper a month.  

If you would like to investigate this more and see a demonstration, please send me an email at: michael@veale.org.uk

Disclosure: Michael Veale is a director of Smart Accounts Sussex Ltd and neither he nor the company has any financial links to Evernote (except using their software).  Evernote is easy to learn but if you would like to save yourself some time and effort, he would be interested to discuss providing training and set up assistance, for a fee.

One step ahead of the tax man

It can be frustrating to be ahead of the tax man.  Today I am ready to file my Corporation Tax return for year ending 30 April 2011.  All enthusiastic, I logged into HMRC's website to be met by:

Yammer to help reduce internal emails

I am sure you have seen the problem: someone sends an email to 10 people and asks for their ideas.  6 of them read their emails within 24 hours, think they have good ideas (which of course may be duplicated) and 'reply to all'.  The active 6 (plus the person who started) now all reply (CC all) to each other's emails (6x5) + 6 = 36 more emails to everyone and by then, everyone is so confused as to who is talking to whom about what that it grinds to a halt - apart from the 4 of the original 10 who have now got back and are trying to catch up....

The answer to this (unless a meeting is possible) is some kind of forum so that there is one conversation going on, people can see what has been said already and only add if they have something new to say.

There are many possibilities available to do this cheaply (or free) and I have been looking at Yammer for a sailing club committee of about 10 people.

Why use Yammer?

• Its free
• Threaded conversations
• It allows 'Groups' so that users can opt to be involved in some subject discussions but not others
• Conversations can be tagged, to make it easier for people to find relevant information later
• It's secure - default setting is that only people with www.yourdomain.com email addresses can sign up

What problems are we having?
Because the club email addresses that we use are all aliases, if someone sends an email from Yammer and that person replies by email, Yammer does not recognise the user (because it has come from the real email address me@home.com not the alias me@sailingclub.com).  There may be a way around this using 'communities' which allow users from outside www.yourdomain.com (subject to admin approval).

The other problem is not unique to Yammer - some people are change resistant and not keen to use a new system - especially if it is thought to be anything like Facebook.

What's it good for?
Spreading information where 'one to many', 'one to one, CC many', and 'many to many', emails may have been used in the past.

What's it less good for?
One to one messages - suggest using separate group or sticking to email for this to spare other readers from having to read messages to check that they don't need to read them.

Microsoft Office 365 Beta

I have started playing with a beta version of Office 365 beta.  This seems to be Microsoft's alternative to Google mail, Google Docs, perhaps Evernote and possibly Google Apps.  Normally it wouldn't be worth much time since I'm happy with Google and really happy with Evernote BUT this is Microsoft - if this provides an easy transition from desktop Office to the cloud, it could be really big.

First impressions
It's clean and seems easy to use.  There is a group home page (like a Facebook wall) that could be really useful for short updates to your team - it does not have comments though which limits its usefulness considerably.  Other tools are Word, Excel, Powerpoint and OneNote.

Cost
The beta is free but the final version will be between $2 and $24 per user per month (that's $24 to $288 per user per year).  When compared to (free) Google Docs this does not seem to be good value for money - on the other hand, so many people are already comfortable with Office, they will probably pay to keep it.  It will depend how much of the advanced functionality will be available from the cloud (Google's spreadsheet is fairly basic).

Benefits
I expect the benefits to be in group working and file sharing.  I am here, you are there and this could allow us to work on the same document without having to email it back and forth.

Dropbox - an easy way to share files without emailing

For anyone operating without Dropbox, I strongly suggest reading this short review.  I have been using it myself for a couple of years and it is great for the following:

• Security - gives you a copy of the file on your hard disk and in the cloud
• Ease of access - keep multiple machines up to date with the same versions of files
• Share access to work on files with a group
• Even access from your smart phone  
• Safer and more reliable than memory sticks (unless your phone is insecure)

The basic version is free!  Go to www.Dropbox.com to get started.

Finding the interesting news using news aggregators

What does it do?
A news aggregator is software that allows you to collect sources of changing information (such as the BBC and FT) and sort the articles into an order that is useful to you.  The paper equivalent would be having an assistant prereading the newspapers that you specify and arranging the articles in the order that you would find most interesting.

What's so good about that?
You probably don't have time to read a newspaper from cover to cover or to read every article from every source that you would like to.  By sorting them in order, you can concentrate on reading the most interesting or important articles first and read others only if you have time.  Better than that, many readers monitor what articles you actually read so they can continually update their model for what you will find interesting in future.

Is it free?
It certainly can be.  I use Google Reader which is free.

How can I use it?
Google Reader has its own instructions but in a nutshell, when you find yourself reading an interesting article on any website, look for an RSS logo like this:


If it has one, cut and paste the URL into Reader (using 'add a feed') and that will be added as a news source.  Easy.

Will it work on my Smartphone?
Yes.  I use an Android phone and can access my news in 3 ways:

1. Use the web browser to go to Google Reader
2. Use the Google Reader App
3. Use the My6sense App

My preference is the My6sense App which will can import all the feeds from Google but also picks up Twitter and Facebook and ranks the whole lot in interest order - and continues to learn about what you find interesting.  It just gets better and better.

A useful update from the FT on the latest developments with email.

Management - Management

Square payments - cheaper than Paypal

It seems that the cheque replacement cost cutting battle has begun.  Square is offering a cheaper and simpler charging structure than Paypal: a straight 2.75% of the transaction.  Even better (for most businesses), this is designed for 'customer present' transactions and designed to work from a mobile rather than a PC.  Note that if the customer is not present, the charge is 3.5% which is close to Paypal's charge.  See this link for more.

What does the end of cheque guarantee cards and cheques mean for business? | Liquid Accounts

I think the end of cheques is a great idea - removing all those pieces of paper. The problem is for many small companies clubs, schools etc., cheques are a cheap way of transacting. Paypal can facilitate the payments but at upto 3.4% plus 20p per transaction it is expensive. There is room out there for cheaper competition.

What does the end of cheque guarantee cards and cheques mean for business? | Liquid Accounts

Switching to Android

After careful consideration I have retired my Nokia E63 (mobile phone) in favour of an HTC Desire Z running Android.  I almost kept my Nokia for a few more years feeling the technology had matured - I could already phone/text/email/surf/sync calendars and what more could there be?

One week on, I can confirm that the difference is enormous.

Speed
The first thing I notice was the speed - especially when searching or using the internet.  The 'Z' is so much faster.

Ease of use
The multi-finger gestures really are intuitive - once tried they become obvious and make it so much quicker and more precise to scroll down a page.  By day 2, I caught myself with my fingers on my laptop screen trying to do the same thing.  Data entry is also easy - there's the on screen keyboard (landscape or portrait) both of which let you dictate your message if you prefer.  For normal typing, the gadget tries to make sense of what you are typing so even if you missed the correct key, it often manages to correct the word.  For typing email addresses and strange passwords, there is also the slide out physical keyboard which seems to work well.

Google
I have been a user of Gmail and Google Calendar for years.  They work well with Windows (using Goosync); they work reasonably well with Symbian (using Goosync) but the calendar would only sync by manually pressing a sync button.  With Android everything syncs oh so simply and almost instantly.  Multiple calendars are easy to use and gmail labels and folders sync too.

Available apps
One of my main reasons for moving from Nokia was that many PC apps that I wanted to use - such as Evernote (see earlier post) are not supported on Symbian.  Moving to Android has fixed this and there is so much choice of apps now available.

Screen
I knew that the screen on the 'Z' would be twice the size of that on the E63 but the resolution seems much sharper too.  It's easy to read conventional web pages by looking at the whole page first (to orientate yourself) then with a quick gesture zooming in on the part that you want to read.

Unresolved issues
The only issues that I have not found workrounds for so far relate to reminders.  With my Nokia, if you set an alarm call, the phone would switch itself on and give you the reminder - the HTC only gives you the alarm when you switch it back on.  With the Nokia, it was easy to make emails arrive silently and texts to make a noise.  So far with the HTC, I have not found how to do this.

Conclusion
The step forward is immense and I highly recommend anyone changing their phone considers using Android.

Footnote
I found the best deal at Phones4u using Compare Mobiles as £20.42 per month for 24 months, 300 mins, 300 texts for an HTC Desire Z (with slide out keyboard).

Free business web site and domain name - no catches

To anyone out there who does not yet have a website for their business, the link below could save some money. It seems to be a joint project with Google, BT and some public money.  It's simple but allows a free domain name (www.yourcompanyname.co.uk) and sets it up in Google Sites where the user can start designing their own web site.

Getting British Business Online

Quick, clean and free.

Record your expenses without those pesky paper receipts

Here is a practical alternative to keeping all those little receipts for your expenses/taxman.

1. Set yourself up an Evernote account (it's free).  More about Evenote in my earlier post here.
2. Add your Evernote email address to your mobile phone (to find the email address in Evernote look at: settings, account summary)
3. When you get a receipt, take its photo and email it from your phone to your Evernote account (test a few first - my first photos of small receipts were blurred because I had the camera too close to the paper).

Those are the 'must do' steps.  For extra security and ease of searching, I suggest the following extras:

1. In Evernote, set up a separate note book for your receipts and periodically drag your receipts there.  This will allow you to easily share your receipts with others (accountant/taxman) when you need to.
2. It's better to scan your receipts as soon as you can (not in big batches).  As well as reducing the chance of you losing them, it means that the dates will be more meaningful, which will help if you need to retrieve one later.

Notes for the future

The solution proposed above is the electronic version of putting the envelopes in a big envelope.

What would be even better would be a way of dynamically linking these scanned images to a cloud based accounting system, so that you could drill down from profit and loss account, to transaction list, to transaction, to scanned receipt.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but so far that is not available for personal/SME users.

Security

Many people distrust computers in case they lose the data.  If you have Evernote installed on your PC, you have a second life: you have a local copy on your machine as well as the copy in the cloud that you can get from any web connected computer (or phone), with your password.

Comparison of cloud based accounting systems

This link will take you to a comparison of cloud based accounting systems.  For medium sized businesses they look good value but for small businesses some still look pricey.  I aim to add further details as I find them and would be interested to hear of any other web based systems that people may wish to recommend.