Data organisation

I’m a fan of anything that gives a store for day-to-day information and keeps data synchronized between devices so I was keen to give Evernote a try. It has grown on me in a short amount of time. It’s great for keeping snippets of information, replacing post-its and scraps of notes, and a store for pasting research from the internet.

It’s got a fairly unique set of features and fills a gap in my workflow I’d been looking to fill in terms of applications, so here are ways to use Evernote to make life easier.

1. A store for those day-to-day snippets of information so achieving more organisation and less clutter. Let Evernote clean your office.

2. A destination for emails that don’t fit into the office filing system. Just forward them to your Evernote account.

3. When you do research online, compile the relevant information from each page into a research file in Evernote.

4. Take notes during meetings.

5. An always-accessible idea file

6. Plan big projects in Evernote - start a new notebook for a particular project and sort different tasks and research topics using the tags feature. Now, everything you could possibly want to recall or act on regarding a project will be in one spot.

HMRC scam emails

It looks like the scam Reveunue emails contine. This is the latest one received:

Tax Refund Notification

After the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity, we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of 1527.29 GBP. Please submit the tax refund request and allow 6-9 days in order to process it.

Click Here to submit you tax refund request

Note : A refund can be delayed a variety of reasons, for example submitting invalid records or applying after deadline.

Yours Sincerely

HM Revenue & Customs

| © Crown Copyright | Terms & conditions | Privacy policy |

The graphics have been removed from the text above and make it look quite convincing but let's face it the Revenue are never going to try that hard to give back tax!

Sage 50 Accounts 2010 - launch Sep 2009

Sage 50 Accounts 2010 is due to be launched next month.

New features include:

- Sage Pay "pay now" option
For Sage Pay users there is the ability to put a "pay now" button on invoices that will enable customers to make immediate payments.

- Credit note raising directly from an invoice

- Barcode creation

- Cash Register management

- Improved data importing

For more details call Sharon or Karl on 01462 687339

HMRC security breach

IT security is a hot topic again with fraudulent tax claims being made to HM Revenue & Customs. It appears that an Accountant was logged on to the Government Gateway and unknowingly the PC was taken over by an IP address in the Far East and fraudulant tax claims made.

This is a salutory reminder about IT security to all businesses and throws up the following points to consider:

- Password security should be reviewed and robust rules applied.
- Staff should not know each others passwords and shared passwords should not be used.
- What obligations does your business have under the Data Protection Act? What liability might you have for breaches?
- How is remote access to your systems regulated?
- How secure are the PC's being used to access the systems remotely?

The security topic is vast and it is easy to overlook and think it will never happen but as regular headlines prove it is a real danger to businesses.

Sage Accounts 50 errors

We have come across a number of instances of what seems to be a bug in Version 15 (2009) that is creating what is called a Bucket corruption. This causes the trial balance to not balance, but the corruption does not show up on Disk Doctor warnings.

This can be relatively easily fixed, but I believe if you speak to Sage they are charging £300-£500 to put it right.

For a lower cost solution to this or to discuss any other Sage Accounts 50 issues call Sharon or Karl on 01462 687339.

Webshop opportunity

Virtual Business Source have teamed up with Norwegian company eXcommerce to offer low cost, high functionality, professionally designed ecommerce websites.

This recession-busting product allows any business to enter the world of ecommerce, so broadening their potential customer base to anyone in the world with access to the internet. For a small monthly subscription and potentially no upfront design costs a business can be selling online within 48 hours using the template driven software.

Read more and visit the eXcommerce demo site. If interested call 01462 687339.

Small business software

When looking at accounting software for a small business it is easy just to focus on the accounting aspects. There are a number of packages that will deal with the accounting for a business perfectly well. However the question to as is will the software help you to develop and grow your bisiness?

These days business owners need every advantage possible and so software that can provide some or all of the following should be sought:

- CRM (marketing)
- Logistics (building and moving things)
- E-commerce (selling over the internet)
- Document management
- Integration with Outlook
- Remote access (capable of being used when away from the office)

For an example of software that does all this at small business prices look at Mamut Business Software.

Ten reasons a small business should look to outsource

Successful small businesses know that outsourcing various aspects is part of their key to success. They know how to get the best from outsourcers and know how to cut through the jargon and agree sensible commercial relationships to increase profits.

Ten reasons a business should look to outsource:

1. Do what you do best - spend the maximum time doing the things that add the most value. Outsourcing something like your finance function will free up time for you to focus on whatever is most important.
2. Cost savings - outsourcing should cost less than the in-house equivalent.
3. Quality of service - outsourcers should be experts in their field and so do a better job.
4. Faster delivery - in the case of financial information you will find it much easier to keep banks, investors, partners and suppliers on-side.
5. Keep your options open - outsourcing gives flexibility to adapt to the future.
6. Accuracy - correct and on time.
7. Business partnership - a good outsourcer should provide a range of skills that can be callled on when needed.
8. Space saving - less people in-house means less office space needed or space can be put to other uses.
9. Access to specialists - in-house someone has to be a jack-of-all-trades, with outsourcing specialist knowledge is available.
10. Dealing with red tape - outsourcing financial matters can mean others can deal with the meeting of time consuming regulations.

Sage and Outlook integration

Sage has been lagging behind other software such as Mamut in terms of adding a diary to their small business accounting software. Sage 50 Accounts 2009 addresses that with an in-built diary to help prioritise workloads, sets reminders for recurring tasks, automate diary events (such as following up promised payments) and integration with Microsoft Outlook.

Further details can be found here.

Tips of the Day

Two tips seen recently on how to communicate that struck chords with me:

1. When you leave your number on someone's voicemail or answering machine, speak it slowly, and then slowly REPEAT it. Put yourself in the shoes of the person listening to your message. They may not have pen and paper quite yet. They have to hear it, understand it, and write it.
2. Take the time to edit subject lines in replying e-mails. Most peole have huge e-mail volume, and being able to scan for the thrust of relevant communications on the fly makes a difference.

Posting from a Blackberry

This is a case of thinking somthing would be a nice idea and then finding out others have thought the same and made it possible. This is typed as an email on my Blackberry and sent to an email address set up in Blogger. Before you know it the post appears on the blog.

In case I'm not the last person to learn this the Blogger guidance is found in the Help section of the site under 'How do I post via email?'.

What Would Google Do?

I'm mid way through a book - "What Would Google Do?" by Jeff Jarvis - and as a good book should be it is massively thought provoking. Jeff examines Google, how it does what it does and the business model it uses. In doing this he demonstrates how the internet is challenging and destroying traditional business models and providing opportunities for those willing to learn the lessons.

The recurring theme is how much is a business willing to give away in order to attract customers so that it can sell to a few the premium products or services it is really good at?

Jeff Jarvis has a blog, Buzzmachine, that has a focus on the publishing and media industries.

Feeding the Sales Funnel

The key to acheiving sales is to make sure that each layer never goes empty - it really is that simple. You should always know how many prospects are in each respective layer. New opportunities are put in the top and worked through the funnel until they either become a sale, or become a disqualified lead.

Knowing that it can take weeks or months to walk prospects through the funnel process, you better have multiple prospects at all the layers of the funnel. So the bottom line is pretty straightforward. Make sure that you have action at all levels in the sales funnel and you'll never be desperate for a deal to close again.

But how do you manage that? Have you got software tools that facilitate and measure the lead to sales process?

Mamut One

Mamut have announced the launch of Mamut Business Platform and introduced Mamut One as the company’s primary offering to its more than 300,000 European customers. Mamut One is the first offering based on Mamut Business Platform combining the power and advantages of business software applications together with web-based solutions. Mamut Business Platform provides all users with the right information on the right device, anywhere, at any time, without any additional investments in infrastructure.

Mamut One is designed to simplify use and management of software and services for small businesses by introducing increased functionality and accessibility. Mamut One is a complete business solution including software applications, web-based services and knowledge all integrated and managed with a single sign-on solution.

Sage 50 2009

The latest Sage 50 version (Sage 50 2009) was released in the latter part of last year and has brought an improvement in two areas that may have been a source of user frustration in previous versions. The new version:

• Makes it easier to fix basic mistakes
• Includes an improved bank reconciliation system.

The Correction option is reached via the File-Maintenance menu, which includes an Error Checking routine and the option to correct errors.

When you open the Bank Reconciliation routine an enter a statement date, all the unmatched transactions up to that date are displayed in the upper half of the screen. The previous balance appears in the lower window and as you reconcile each statement entry, it moves to the bottom window. Up and down arrows allow you to move the transactions around to match the bank statement order and you can group several transactions into one item (or ungroup them later). By changing the period dates, you can also go back and do a retrospective bank rec. The application also has an e-Reconcile option that can download electronic bank statements and carry out automatic reconciliations.

Top 10 tips for a recession proof business

With the UK economy now officially well into the worst recession in living memory it seems timely to reproduce a Top 10 Tips seen recently for preparing a recession-proof business:

1. Always work to a Business Plan and always have a Plan B that caters for a downturn in business.

2. Don’t wait until things are getting really bad before putting alternative plans into action.

3. Ensure your businesses cash management is as good as it can be - e.g. make sure the debt collection process achieves prompt results.

4. Make sure the financial record keeping process is providing prompt and accurate figures.

5. Have a good relationship with your bank.

6. Revisit the businesses tax position and make sure that all is being done to ease tax cash flow.

7. Understand and be in control of all costs.

8. Know what is going to be said to customers, suppliers, bank etc should difficulties arise.

9. Ensure all employees have up to date contracts and understand your options if numbers need to be reduced.

10. Understand your market and price properly. Don’t give profits away.