The QuickBooks Team Blog

Harold Rosenbaum, Chartered Accountant Extreme EPISODE 2 Depreciation to Death

Memorial Day

The QuickBooks Online Community team wants to wish everyone a Happy Memorial Day.

Memorial Day is a United States federal holiday that is observed on the last Monday of May (scheduled next for May 29th, 2006). It was formerly known as Decoration Day.

It has been a tough week for veterans -- especially with the news that 26.5 million U.S. veterans were put at risk for identity theft after their electronic records were stolen from the residence of a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) employee. We are especially sensitive to this issue because we have two members of our community team who served in the military.

So, there are many reasons to think about are fellow country man who have fought in past wars -- whether they are alive or not.

One can not overemphasize the value of keeping an individuals information private. Especially on the Internet. One can also learn more about their privacy at Federal Trade Commission website.
And of course, we have our own privacy policy.

So, if you are a business and have access to customer information, think carefully about how you use customer information. Think carefully how you protect your customer's information. If you need help, go to Nolo Press' website.

Anita Campbell and QuickBooks Online Community

I am pleased to announce that this week, the QuickBooks Online Community, is featuring Anita Campbell, CEO, Small Business Trends." She is our Ask The Expert of the week. An entrepreneur at heart, she is currently CEO of her own business, Small Business Trends, LLC, a media and information company. In her role, she closely follows trends in the small business market and as a consultant, speaker and writer, she also works with many different types of companies. So.. to tap into Anita's network. come over to the QuickBooks Online Community and hear what Anita has to say. The events starts on 5/22 and lasts for three days.

Business Cards, Newton, Beaming info

Recently, I ran into a group of folks from the San Francisco Small Business Expo. And I would say about 25 people I ran into gave me their business card and most of them were purchased on VistaPrint.com. I think these guys (vista print) offer one of the best deals around. See sample below.

You can basically get 250 business cards for free (excluding shipping and handing) and then pay a little bit more if you want a fancy graphic imported to your card, etc.

Obtaining business cards --- seems to be
a) one of the biggest needs of small business owners and
b) something they often leave to the very end -- until someone asks for them.

OK. You might be thinking paper based business cards is old school -- and maybe they are.. but they work. BUT, business card technology is changing rapidly. One company Toroblue.com has a technology that beams you someone's business info when you walk into their office. It reminds me of the old days, when I worked at Apple and worked on something called the Netwon Message Pad, which was one of the first handheld devices. While in a meeting a bunch of engineers and I would 'beam' each other our personal info back n forth across the table. Nerdy, eh?

<------------ Picture of Apple Newton Message Pad

But the Apple Newton Message Pad failed --- According to one chap, he felt that engineering and marketing never worked well together. He obviously wasn't there in Cupertino with us.

Why am I going on about this? Cause while I was standing outside the expo, filling my wallet with other people's business cards (and feeling like George Costanza -- did you ever see the episode when he had so much stuff in his wallet he couldn't fold it -- episode 168), I wondered when b-cards will be extinct and we will just bean our information to each other -- everyone will beam. OK - I need to tie this to QuickBooks. Imagine if you could 'beam' real-time all your receipts to your accountant. :  )

 

<---- 'Beam me up me receipts, Scotty'

Thanks Mom

Everyone is blogging about their mom today. I probably should too. And I probably should salute all them moms who own and operate businesses.

Since my Mom is on the East Coast and I am on the West Coast, I decided to visit two close friends, two female friends who are moms and who own their own businesses.

First Janice, who runs the Yoga Garden Studio in San Anselmo, California, and Mercedes who just opened a great store in Corte Madera, California called Tiller Digs Garden Home, which sells nature inspired and organic items for the home. And while I was buying lots of goods, I noticed that Mercedes daughter gave her a great gift. She volunteered to work in the store.  Both Janice and Mercedes are fulfilling a life dream -- and doing what they love. Having their own business about something they care about. According to the SBA there are another 10.6 million women doing the same thing out there. And these are just a sixth of all the working mom's out there. That's a lot of moms. Imagine holding two jobs like they do. Their work job and their home job.

I suggested to Janice and Mercedes that they check out annual Women's Business Conference in San Francisco June 2-3.

FYI, since I am in my forties, I no longer call her Mom. Instead, I call her Mother Nature.

Harold Rosenbaum, an Accountant hero

The QuickBooks Online Community team salutes Harold Rosenbaum, Chartered Accoutant Extreme. Learn more about him:

Chapter 1: Audit of Evil

Stay tuned for the next episode of Harold Rosenbaum, Chartered Accoutant Extreme

Special thanks to  crazy4ytv

Eating Your Own Dogfood (aka Using Your Own Products)

You can only learn so much by watching and talking to customers, doing usability testing and reading feedback.  I’ve found it to be really valuable to have the team use the product and truly walk in our customers’ shoes.

As context, I am head of the Board of a local non-profit, the Bay Area Glass Institute (www.bagi.org).  To help fulfill our glass-art educational mission, we hold several large scale public events every year where artists sell their glass art.  BAGI uses QB POS to make sales, track inventory and customers at these events.  Our fall event, the Great Glass Pumpkin Patch®, is held in conjunction with the Palo Alto Art Center and has gross proceeds of over $300,000 in just two days with about 4,000 items sold to thousands of customers.

The last weekend in April was our spring event, the Great Glass Farmers Market.  This was smaller than the Pumpkin Patch, and the first time we held in our parking lot with about a dozen participating artists.  The goal was to raise money for the artists, BAGI, and the Second Harvest Food Bank as well as bring visitors into BAGI's studio to watch glass art being made to educate them about the process.

Inventory Set-up and Label Creation

Since all of the items are handmade, we need to provide labels for each artist’s work to make the sales process efficient and track inventory to accurately count sales for each artist.  The artists provided a list of the items via email they thought they would make including price and basic description.  BAGI’s operations manager consolidated that information into a spreadsheet.  I used the import process in QB POS to add new vendors and bring in the inventory for each artist in one step.  That process worked really well as it took only a few minutes and alerted me to some errors I had made before importing the information into inventory and turning my inventory into a mess.  I fixed the problems and imported smoothly.

I used the Zebra LP2824 printer to print tags and had a problem getting my PC to recognize it.  After multiple attempts on my own, I called support on Saturday morning.  They picked up quickly and in about 2 minutes diagnosed I had plugged the USB cable to the second port, not the first one that the PC expected.  We had seen similar issues with customers and we’re going to do something about that in the QB POS software itself as well as work with the manufacturers to make the installation easier of hardware.  The printer works so fast … I printed over 3,000 tags for over 100 items in one morning.

We printed out labels on the small size labels and customized the design of that label to put the artists name and description along with the price on the tag.  We also set up two non-inventory items (donation to BAGI and donation to the Second Harvest Food bank, a partner in the event) so we could take donations right at check-out.  We left the price blank on the two donation items so the cashier would need to fill them in at check-out.

Installing the Software and Hardware

We wanted to set-up a five workstation check-out tent connected via a wireless network to the BAGI network to process credit cards.  I worked with the team last year to set up QB POS on a network and v5 was dramatically easier … I installed QB POS on the first PC as the Server and when I installed POS on the other PC’s, the Database Connection Wizard found the Server and connected to the database automatically.  This was a real wow for me given the difficulty I had last year with trying to figure out how to set it up (including calls to support that I did not need this time).  Hardware set-up was also easier as we used the set-up interview to guide us through the hardware install process.

The wireless network was another story all together … although unrelated to QB POS, it was essential that we have connectivity so we could take credit card sales since nearly all of our customers buy with credit card.  None of us were networking experts and it took several hours of time on the phone with the wireless device manufacturer and SBC (who provides the DSL service at BAGI) to figure out how to do what we wanted.

To be continued … I’ll talk about training the volunteer cashiers, the check-out process for patrons, running reports through-out the day to give the artists real-time feedback on how they and the event was doing, reconciling payments at the end of the day, and producing the final reports.

Misfits, Rebels, ...Change the World

“Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes... the ones who see things differently -- they're not fond of rules... You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things... they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.” - Steve Jobs

(Those who know me, know that I believe in the crazy ones --- the round pegs --- the ones who see things differently. They don't necessarily have to be misfits or rebels or trouble makers. In fact, I also prefer if they have WIT (a Whatever it Takes Attitude).  I have worked at a few companies in my lifetime, and I have to say there is a great group working on the QuickBooks Online Community. And I am not just saying that 'cause I work with them. They remind of the groups, Warren Bennis described in Organizing Genius -- The Secrets of Creative Collaboration. A great book! It discusses some great teams: Disney animation teams, Clinton/Gore 1992 campaign, Macintosh team (Lead by Jobs), Manhattan Project, Xerox PARC, ... Bennis outlines 15 key ingrediants to establishing a great group:

Greatness starts with superb people

Every Great Group has a superb leader

Great Groups and great leaders create each other

The leaders of Great Groups love talent and know where to find it

Great Groups are full of talented people who can work together

Great Groups think they are on a mission from God

Every Great Group is an island -- but has a bridge to the mainland

Great Groups see themselves as winning underdogs

Great Groups always have an enemy

People in Great Groups have no distractions

Great Groups are optimistic, not realistic

In Great Groups, the right person has the right job

The leaders of Great Groups give them what they need and free them from the rest

Great Groups always deliver a product

Great work is its own reward

Ah -- great teams! They make my day