The Intuit Community Blog

Why add a new post? That's my exact issue!

Recycling. Its so much a part of our daily lives now, that it seems like there's no wrong time to practice it right? Wrong when it comes to posting a question in the QuickBooks community forum. Here are some things to consider.

1. Just because you found someone with the exact issue, that doesn't mean you found someone with an answer to that issue.

2. Questions in a forum are sorted by date. So if you tack your question on to the end of a question that was asked last year, guess how far down on the list it is?

3. People who graciously answer questions scan the forums and tend to look more at unanswered questions. If you add a comment or additional question to the end of an answered question, it is likely to go unnoticed.

4. Like everything, time makes us more knowledgable about issues. Sure an answer may have solved a question 3 years ago. But what have we learned since then?

5. When you ask the question, you will be notified when there is an answer. This isn't the case if you add a question to the end of an existing discussion. Unless you remember to subscribe to it. It definitely won't show up if you've asked the question through Live Community.

When you have an issue that you want to bring to the community, start by searching. If you see a post that looks like your issue, go ahead and read it. If it doesn't solve your issue, don't post a "me too" or "this is happening to me" at the end of it, make a new post.

Let's make sure your question is visible. Save the recycling for things that really can benefit the Earth!

RSS brings the QuickBooks Live Community to you

Hopefully you've had a chance to visit our new community site over the past few weeks. If not, click here to take a peek! When you visited, did you notice the funny little square that looked like it was broadcasting? That square is the icon for RSS feed. It is the new way to subscribe to our forums and discussions. If you begin to look across other websites, you will notice that RSS feed icon is prevalent throughout them. I can tell you have questions. First of all you may ask, what is RSS and why should I care? Once you know this, you are definitely going to want to know how to play. Let this blogger jump in.

RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication". It also may be referred to as Rich Site Summary. It is a way to distribute new information as it is added to a website.  How is this better than receiving e-mail notifications? Well, how many of you already receive way too much e-mail? My hand is certainly raised.

Remember when you first discovered interest groups out there on the internet and decided to subscribe to one? People may care about whether the skiing is good in Vail, but one subscription could easily fill your inbox with hundreds of responses. Most of them saying things like "I agree" or "Great information!". The problem is you have to read through all of those to know, then delete, and then empty thetrash. What a pain! An RSS subscription does not clog up your inbox.  A reader is used to receive the broadcast. Most web browsers have a reader and there are several other good free readers out there.Just like Outlook, some actually provide notifications when a new article is posted. Many e-mail programs have them as well.

The RSS reader pulls in a list of articles from your subscription. You click on items in the list that are of interest to read the article. Once you click on it, the item is removed from the list. The next time you return to your reader, the list you see will be new, unreviewed articles. To subscribe to a website, newsfeed, or in our case a forum or discussion, just click on that funny icon I mentioned earlier. Your RSS reader is displayed. Once you click subscribe now, that's it! Now your reader will list unread articles for that subscription. In this reader, when you click on an article, a synopsis is displayed. Now you can choose to read or ignore.

Over the last few weeks, how many of you spent a little bit of time glued to a news site waiting for the latest financial update? If you were one of the many, RSS feed could have helped. It brings the news to you so you can continue on with your life. You can be also be a part of a community without clogging up your inbox.

Community Rules of the Road

Original Author Host_Nic

You may be aware that we have a Terms of Use page for our community.  Much like software End User License Agreements (EULAs), very few people actually read our Terms of Use before posting.  While there is valuable information in there, it can be hard to extract from the legal wording and the length of the document. 

First time visitors to our site usually have to learn what is acceptable on the QuickBooks Community site by watching the behavior of others, or by trial and error. 

To make this a little easier, I've condensed down some of the key sections of our Terms of Use into a "Rules of the Road" list.  This list gives you a quick reference for what is okay to post on our site, and what sorts of posts we discourage.  I've included a "why" after each rule, so that you can understand the reason behind each rule. 

1. No profanity (including masked profanity, where letters of swear words are replaced with other characters) or inappropriate content.
Why: We want to keep the community a friendly yet professional place.  We welcome your opinions, as long as you refrain from using profanity.

2. No personal attacks or insults
Why: We want to make the community a safe place where people can learn from each other without fear of being insulted or attacked.

3. No Spam, off-topic commercial postings, or blatantly self-promotional posts are allowed.
Why: For the same reason you don’t want Spam in your email.  Posts that are merely advertisements waste time and make it harder for people to find what they are looking for.  If you want to advertise, please use the Classifieds forums!

4. A link to your business website is allowed in the signature field.  No pictures or email addresses are allowed in the signature field. 
Why: If people need to contact you, you can opt to make your email address visible in your profile.  We want to keep emails out of the post for two reasons: to reduce spam harvesting of emails; to encourage conversations to stay in the forum so that everyone can benefit from them.  Allowing a business website in the signature field allows community members to publicize their business, while making sure that discussions still stay on topic and don’t devolve into spam-fests.  You can also use the “Show me on Map” feature in your profile, which will put a link under your signature to display your location and contact information.

5. No links or contact information in the body of post (unless the link is on topic for the discussion).
Why: Your profile is the best place for contact information.  If someone wants to contact you, they can find that information there.  You can link to other pages if those links are relevant to the question being asked.  Again, this makes sure that discussions are on topic and reduces spamming.

6. You can link to your own products by linking back to the Classifieds forum or the Marketplace website, as long as your product is on topic for the discussion, and it is clear that you are offering your own product.  No detailed discussion of your own products and services in the post itself. 
Why: To reduce spamming.  You can make people aware of the fact that you have a product that meets their needs if they are explicitly asking for such a product; if they are interested they can click on your link.  You need to make it clear that you are promoting your own business, rather than astroturfing (pretending to be a satisfied customer).

7. Acceptable usernames: you can use your business name, but not the URL to your website.  You can use Intuit in the username, but not to mislead people about being affiliated with Intuit.
Why: We want to make a clear distinction between Intuit employees and other community members, so that you know where information is coming from.  Obviously, allowing usernames such as “IntuitEmployee” defeats this effort.

8. Hosts reserve the right to make judgment calls on all situations.
Why: There are always cases where there is no clear cut right answer.  In those cases, the Hosts will make a judgment call on whether to edit or remove a post.

Extra Extra!! Read all about it in the Classifieds

Have you been looking for a specific product or service that you haven't been able to find anywhere? The QuickBooks Community Classifieds might be the place for you to look. Below I've listed the different classified sections and a summary of what you might find.

Warehouse/Inventory
Inventory and Order Management, Integrated bar coding for Quickbooks, Mobile Inventory solutions and eCommerce solutions that integrate with QuickBooks.

Retail
Integrated Retail bar coding for QuickBooks, Ability to process level 3 purchase cards, Integration of Quickbooks with different shopping carts

QuickBooks Developers and Programmers
Sending items from an ASP.NET application to Quickbooks, SDK programmers, Custom Programming; Bar Code, Warehouse, Hand Held Scanners, QB with Excel formulas, ISO QB Developer

PDA and Mobile Applications
Integrated Mobile Bar Coding, Customer Order Picking System, Custom mobile solutions,bMobile Sales for QuickBooks, Time Tracking for Windows Mobile/Pocket PC

Non-QuickBooks Hardware and Software Products

Marketing and Sales

Legal

Independent Contractors
Various services from Bookkeeping and Online remote Bookkeeping to Programmers

Forms
You'll find various custom form and report builders

Productos y Consultas en Espanol
The Name says it all - Products and Consultants in Spanish

Education and Training
Training and Seminars covering a wide range of subjects, some of the training can be done remotely and you can find training in Spanish.

eBay Tools
eCommerce, Pay Pal and Customer retention tools

Business Coaches

Add-ons and QuickBooks Integration
This is probably the largest section in the classifieds. You will find a large variety of products that add-on and integrate with QuickBooks.

Accounting and Bookkeeping
Find all your Accounting and Bookkeeping needs in this classified section.

I hope you join us in the classifieds sections of the communities. You will be surprised with all the products and services you will find, so stop in and peruse for a while.

Best Wishes,

Bryan

I posted a question, but nobody answered...

It can be very frustrating when you post a question in a forum but it seems like nobody is willing to answer.  There can be a number of reasons why this is the case, so I thought I'd give some tips on how to improve your odds.

   
• Search: Start off by using the search tool.  It can be accessed from any page in the forum.  It's possible that your question has already been answered.  That will save you a lot of valuable time. 
   
• Create a new discussion unless you are replying to an existing post.  It's OK to add a 'me too' to an existing discussion but make sure you're talking about the same thing.  If you post a question that is off topic for a discussion, it's quite likely that it won't be seen.
   
• Create your post in the proper forum or sub-forum. Sometimes it's easy to figure out but sometimes it's not so easy.  It's almost a sure bet that if you have a question about online banking and put a post in the Installation forum, you're not going to have the right kind of experts looking at your question.  Think about what it is you're actually doing (or trying to do) and use your best judgment. 
   
• Make the title of the post descriptive of the problem. I see a lot of posts with titles like 'Help!' or 'Why doesn't this work?' or 'Just Starting Out'.  While I'm sure the idea was to 'tease' the reader into looking at the post, it can sometimes have an adverse effect.  Many of the users that spend time answering posts don't have time to read all of them, so they will open the posts they believe they will know the answer to.
   
• Give enough information about the problem.  You understand the problem because you've been working with it, but someone unfamiliar with the issue sometimes has to guess.  Try to put yourself into the readers shoes.  If you were reading about the problem for the first time, would you know what it was about?  Another good idea is to let us know what you've already tried.  That can help to reduce duplication of effort.
  
   
• Don't post a laundry list of problems. Many users will be less likely to answer posts with multiple questions if they don't know the answer to every question.  It's much better to create a separate post for each question.

Also, keep in mind that this is a user to user forum.  It may take a few days for the right person to read your post.  If it's been a week and you still don't have a response, add a reply to your original post to bring it back to the top.

What is community?

posted by Community_Guru_Steve

 

I've lately been thinking about what community means in regards to the QuickBooks Community. Occasionally, I will see posts made by site members complaining about not getting an answer to a question. I figure, if one person posts a statement like this, there are probably ten others thinking it but unwilling to say so. This brings a whole bouquet of emotions to mind...anger, frustration, sympathy, and sadness just to name a few.

As a forum host, I'd like to see an answer for every question. But, as our community grows in size, it becomes increasingly more difficult for the 'gurus' to pick up the loose ends. The charter for this community is to provide an environment where QuickBooks users can help other users with their issues and questions, not as a primary support channel provided by QuickBooks tech support agents.

When I think of 'Community', I think of a group of people with similar interests helping each other to make their community a nicer place for everyone. In the community where I live, that means I will loan a tool to a neighbor that is repairing his car or help to dig a hole for a neighbor that is planting a tree. When the neighbors dog gets out of the yard, I don't call the dog pound or ignore it, I take the dog back to its home. It means my wife baking a cake for a neighbor's birthday or being invited to a neighbor's barbeque. It's watching a neighbor's house when they are away and waving hello when they return. It also means that when I need help with something, I can go to a neighbor and ask for assistance without shame. It's a two way street. We give and we take.

In order to make our QuickBooks Community a real 'community', we need to encourage an atmosphere of 'neighbors'...people helping each other.

Broken (MS) Window theory

Do you know the Broken Window theory? The infamous Malcom Gladwell discusses this in his book the Tipping Point. But Malcom borried the idea from Fixing Broken Windows: Restoring Order and Reducing Crime in Our Communities by George Kelling and Catherine Coles.

The theory basically says that if you repair a a broken window within a short periiod of time there is less of a chance for vandals to break that window or other windows again. It states that neighborhoods problems do not escalate as quickly.

Well, I am here to tell you about my broken Window's theory. .. which basically states that you don't need Microsoft Office nor Microsoft Windows anymore. I just bought a MAC (yes, I am back with a MAC after being away from one for 10 years), but I could have used Linux. And with my new Mac, I didn't load MS Word or MS Excel. Instead, I can use Google's Docs and Spreadsheets tools. There are a few drawbacks to the product such as I have to be on the Web to use them. But boy oh boy do I feel free. And I am not just saying this because I am an Intuit employee and Microsoft is one of our biggest competitors. Google's product is great for collaborating. I can work on a word processing type of doc and then share it easily with my coworkers and -- when they are editing the doc, I can see when they are editing it so that I don't add something that will override their comments. In fact, our Community team does most of our collaborative work using the Docs and Spreadsheets product.

So, if you are on a really tight budget or you don't want to load a bunch of software on your laptop/desktop, check out Google Docs and Spreadsheets. It is probably too early for Google's product to have a big impact... but it will be increasingly difficult for Microsoft to justify the cost for their product.. and it's raison d'etre.

Their belief/theory that we all need Windows and MS Office has bugs in it.

don't be afraid to fail

As some of you know, I am a New York Yankee fan. Yesterday, Derek Jeter went 5 for 5 in a playoff game. Almost unheard of. 5 times he stepped up to the plate and 5 times he got a hit.

After the game, he was asked the secret to his success (he will also probably be this years MVP) and he said: 'you just can't be afraid to fail.'

Just a morning reminder…… for all of us. Note: It isn't necessary to get a hit everytime you come are at bat! .. and that success can be 'just getting on base' I think some of us who start companies dream of being the next Steve Jobs (yes, I am sharing all my heroes with you today). Instead, just do what you enjoy and know that incremental improvements (just getting on base) can go a long way.

Wilder

Spinash and getting what you want

Spinash is top of mind right now. Users are blogging about it quite a lot. And everyone (well at least in my generation) grew up with Popeye.

I'm Popeye the sailor man
Popeye the sailor man
I'm strong to the finish 'cause I eats me spinach
                     I'm Popeye the sailor man

Since we might not be able to get our (inner and physical) strenght from old reliable sources such as Spinash, it might be necessary to tap new resources ---  So even though we might want spinash even more these days (this usually happens when someone tells you that you can't have what you want.. ....and you know that you can't always get what you need), it is important to lean on your business partners, friends, family and Small Business associations for support. It is also important to tap government funded resources to find out what is going on. Or are you the type that doesn't believe our government sometimes?

By the way. Since we should all be thinking about wrapping up our 2006 financials for our accountants, it might be worth taking a few minutes and reflecting on a discussion Popeye had with a tax man:

The Tax Man: You just docked?
Popeye: I has.
The Tax Man: Ah ha, let's see here, that'll be 25¢ docking tax.
Popeye: What for?
The Tax Man: Where's your sea craft?
Popeye: It ain't no sea craft, it's me dinghy and it's under the wharf.
The Tax Man: Ah ha. ahh-ha. This your goods?
Popeye: They is.
The Tax Man: Yeah. You're new in town right?
Popeye: If you call this a town, yes.
The Tax Man: Well, first of all, there's 17¢ new-in-town tax, and there's 45¢ rowboat-under-the-wharf tax, and one dollar leaving-your-junk-lying-around-the-wharf tax, so all together, you owe the Commodore $1.87.
Popeye: Uh, who's this Commodore?
The Tax Man: Is that the nature of question? There's a nickel question tax.

a Step Up for you guys

There seems to be lots of interesting buzz on the Web about the Google deal. But a lot of folks are missing the other partnership. In fact, it's an acquisition. Intuit acquired a little company called StepUp Commerce, Inc.

StepUp will power the new and exicting QuickBooks Listing Service, which helps Small Businesses get placement on (and their images up loaded to) services such as Google's Froogle.

As you can see, we are trying to help our customers build their own businesses. And after listening to them, it is clear that 'getting new customers' is one of their biggest pain points. Boy can I relate to this. When I had my bookstore I constantly thought about how to drive foot traffic into the store. I tried newspaper ads (those are slowly becoming extinct), flyers, discounts, home delivery (not pizza, just books), etc. And that was a few years ago. Now you have Google -- and everyone is going to Google first to find something. I know that Froogle still has a ways to go, but it's getting there..

70% of local customers (the youz and Iz) are using the Internet to find products and services. They are doing price comparison shopping, doing research etc. (such as seeing what other stores are in the hood)