Not enough attention is given to those who remain married or committed to their life-long partner. The street says: there must still be sexy stuff going on to keep all parties happy. It’s not just familiarity and complacency. And this not so small population of people committed to each other forever seems to possess a cool secret worth sharing. Shared values likely, feisty arguments probably and stick-to-it spirit, definitely.
I have been married better or worse for 26 plus years and almost equally as long to the makers of AccountEdge. Same husband O:! and the same group of people located in Rockaway NJ. I am certified consultant #34, honored as 2010 Acclivity Partner of the Year and was recruited after Boston MacWorld in the early 90’s by the current Manager Tom Nash. A jewelry client of mine fell in love with MYOB, now AccountEdge in the 90’s and many other clients in the design field seeking MAC only solutions. Short story I was hooked.
Acclivity Group LLC, the publishers of AccountEdge, and an small group of other certified consultants have been committed to Apple even longer, starting in the late 80’s. Most, if not all, other Apple accounting solutions partners have gone away or only showed up when the pressure was on to develop for Apple (that’s my two cents).
Support your partner: give a hug, see what’s new in AccountEdge. Some of you have not upgraded in a dogs age and there is much to love for you to get.
Here’s why:
And the list goes on….check out www.AccountEdge.com, then email us at mail@dmcsystems.com with questions.
To our Acclivity AccountEdge Colleagues and Friends:
All of us at DMC hope that you have had a successful 2012 and are well positioned for a prosperous 2013. We look forward to continuing to assist you with accounting support and with financial systems consulting.
As year-end approaches, it is a good time to review the status of your system and ensure that it is current with the latest publisher updates. We would be pleased to perform any update work for you and ensure that your system is functioning properly.
Acclivity has added many new features to AccountEdge, which you may find very useful. These include document management technology which enables you to attach documents, images and scans to AE records; improvements in its bank statement import feature which will enable a greater degree of automation; ability to set up retainer, escrow and trust accounts and write checks directly from them. Go to http://accountedge.com/windows/features/new/ to read more about these and other new features.
Coming soon is a mobile app in the Version 1.2 upgrade that will enable you to accept credit cards and perform other work from an iOS device.
Please contact Chip Herzog, at 617-383-6090 x109, or chip@dmcsystems.com to request our assistance with upgrading your AccountEdge system.
Have a safe and happy holiday season!
To our Deltek Vision and Axium Ajera Clients, Colleagues and Friends:
All of us at DMC hope that you have had a successful 2012 and are well positioned for a prosperous 2013. We look forward to continuing to assist you with accounting support and with financial systems consulting.
As year-end approaches, it is a good time to review the status of your system and ensure that it is current with the latest publisher updates. We would be pleased to perform any update work for you and ensure that your system is functioning properly.
Deltek
For Vision users on Version 6.2, Deltek has released Hotfix #10, with more to come in January. There is also the upgrade to Version 7, which offers several new features. If you’re already on Version 7, Deltek has released Hotfix #7.
You are probably aware that Deltek now offers mobile timesheets for Vision 6 and 7, which works with both iOS and Android systems.
These are relatively quick updates and we would be happy to perform the work for you, at off hours so that your business is not interrupted.
If you use Advantage and are contemplating upgrading to Vision, we suggest moving directly to Version 7. This is a comprehensive project which we have performed for many clients. If you are not yet ready to replace Advantage, please note that we continue to support it and can help solve many of the problems that you encounter.
Axium
For Ajera users, Axium has released an upgrade, Version 7.50.07, which we could install for you during non-business hours. Both Ajera Core and Ajera Complete now have mobile timesheet technology which we can get running for you. In addition to remote timesheet entry, this feature enables your team to enter notes and make corrections while in the field.
Please contact Chip Herzog, at 617-383-6090 x109, or mail@dmcsystems.com to discuss any of this work.
Have a safe and happy holiday season!
We all do it, that is, Google your name, at least once in a while. See what pops up? :-) That’s what I did yesterday. I typed Doris Cahill CPA, hit enter and oh my, up came this: a 1999 article about QuickBooks, published by Accounting Technology:
“QuickBooks is so off-the-shelf and so many people have it, the client mindset doesn’t value it as it deserves,” says Doris Cahill of DMC Systems Group in Waltham, an authorized QuickBooks Professional Advisor. As a result, consultants find they have to justify their fees when fixing a client’s chart of accounts by pointing out, “It seems simple, but if you don’t know your accounting, you’ll get into a mess.”
http://business.highbeam.com/392996/article-1G1-54470717/quickbooks-consulting-gets-smarter
Wow, could have written that baby today - or I am channeling Thomas Jefferson? Has the value of consulting services caught up to QuickBooks’ online offerings today?
The answer is yes and this is why: The QuickBooks Online offering has removed the overhead cost of having accountants manage data-sets and software version madness. Clients have never really valued the upgrade aspect of Quickbooks or the complexity of moving data-sets, plus the accountants review product worked poorly (explaining it is exhausting). So the Online versions allow the consultant to monitor what matters to the client (the accounting of money and profit), not the technology. Also, mid-range software pricing and license policies of industry specific software has suffocated the small business and start up. And the online offerings of legacy products dragged behind in getting to market or convincing clients to upgrade.
We see increasingly complex businesses squeeze their needs to the QuickBooks Online version allowing for more consulting. Additionally all the online add-ons (if you want to call them that) allow for easy download of the day-to-day data entry. These include bank transactions, credit card statements, PayPal merchant accounts and streamlined automated invoicing that push data into financial statements.
The good stuff is left for good accountants and consultants: cleanning up messes and mis-postings, configuring use of the software and producing/formatting financial statements. These tasks help the client make money.
Its not raining QuickBooks clients, and I had a good creepy giggle locating my old quote from 1999. We did render three new great online clients this fall, thus it’s been a turn for the better. Please visit us at www.dmcsystems.com, call us at 617-383-6090 or email us at mail@dmcsystems.com.
Alone the traveler gets to observe and feel unencumbered by others. It’s neat to meet colleagues born elsewhere without influence. Those encounters bring new ideas to the table and that connection hones my thought processes.
Hats off Deltek, you sure made me a happy client with this upgrade and that’s a high bar. As a user for 25+ years, lately I have wondered why it took so long to dig in and make what are the coolest operational changes in a long time. Last time I checked the Vision transaction screens I found the all-time bummer of the repeat button having been removed :-)! And, in interactive billing, one could delete an issued invoice!
There is good stuff in 7.0. including a few show stoppers that caught my eye quickly.
All transaction entry screens got a face-lift. I never liked the standard order of the columns. For instance, the cash receipt screen just seemed illogical to me and obviously others felt the same. Deltek has re-engineered the screens in transaction entry to shuffle the order of columns and pin them in place as you scroll. If your cup of tea is to enter the amount of a cash receipt first, then select the project, then the invoice, you shuffle and pin and your columns in that screen so it meets your liking. This small change will allow for more effective and faster entry, thank you, thank you.
PIN the Grid View is now available on some other grid views so you do not scroll away a critical column(s) that need to remain in view. This makes most sense when you apply it! Excel users will love it.
Billing Credit Memos are here, welcome to the new millennium and another essential operational change in 7.0. The credit memo feature can initiate and create full or partial credit memos from interactive billing for posted invoices. No more rigging units or add-ons or creating negative invoices - nice!
Email EFT and direct deposit remittances. Yes, that’s correct: email employee expense, vendors and payroll, finally. This should help communicate to employees when their payments have been processed, alleviating their need to ask or even look it up (although not real hard) and vendor calls should be fewer, yes!
New Contract management Tab. Under Project Info Center, it will remain to be seen if clients use this, but good effort at organizing contract and change order management and sales reporting.
Display Settings in User Options. Again, I’m not sure users will jump on this one, but now in Vision forms, menus, grids, and navigation can be set up to match your personal requirements. So each user can have their screens look unique in regards to color, font, text, etc. from the default. I think this could be a challenge for support staff!
Checkout Deltek Defect Fix list and Database changes. Loads of defects have been corrected since 6.2 sp4 and prior, yours may have been addressed. And of course new known issues exist such as Mobile Time OS compatibility.
Login and Checkout your customer care account url https://deltek.custhelp.com/ci/fattach/get/821174/1348072285/redirect/1/filename/DeltekVision70ReleaseNotes.pdf
We at DMC upgrade our Deltek Vision as soon as we can from a new release. Not only do we use it to operate our business, but more importantly we want to be among the first to brave the “new” and “fixed”. Clients ask us about it and we need to know! This upgrade went smoothly for us thanks to our hard working staff. http://www.dmcsystems.com/
My poor car, it may be fancy, a Jaguar, but it’s seen better days and lots of miles. With those miles, oh the stories. If 179Q could only talk. Laugh is more like it, from the minute I got bought her, right up to today.
Things just happen to me, really they do :-). And if you’ve driven with me at least once, (it’s a well known office giggle), you’d best be prepared to hang on! From 13 flat tires (don’t ask) to driving with my trunk open on Route 128, to U-Turns in Harvard Square the wrong way on a one-way street next to our city’s finest…you just take things in stride. I’m gonna miss her, from the quirky electrical problems to “not my fault’ fender benders, to contending with all them feisty Bostonians. It’s time - sadly she has yielded and must go.
Even with being meticulously clean, I won’t get much for her, as she does have that bad car fax :-). So, two choices: list her on Craig’s list or donate her to charity. Currently trying option one: Craig’s List.
Well, I learned something! Theft comes in a wide variety of E-cocktails. Upon listing the car I quickly got an email, almost too good to be true. Strange, a UK “eager” emailer wants to Fedex me a ‘cashiers check’ written to me for more money than I am asking, $6,000! And, if I would be so kind as to write a check back to the transfer agent for $2,500 when they pick up the car, site unseen. Simply wait for my check to come! Very skeptically, I said ok. Maybe a good blog story in this.
So arriving via Fedex this week came a check written to me. It definitely was a check, with proper watermarks, written on a reputable drawing bank, Wells Fargo, with California router number and San Francisco addressee. On the memo line it says approved. Nothing else in the Fedex package, just a phone number and return address to California on the Fedex package.
Ok, so who writes a $6,000 check to a stranger cross country, but emails from the UK? Without getting the car? Answer: crooks.
Checked it out with my bank, its a scam. The check is not good. In fact, had I cashed it would have bounced. And since it is fraudulent it would make me liable almost indefinitely to return the $6,000 to my bank. Had the check been cashed and then I wrote a check from my personal checkbook to the transfer agent who was supposed to pick up the car, well, let’s add it up: one, I am out $2,500 transfer fee, plus the car as I would have handed them title (hey, there is some value to her)! Plus, the embarrassment with my bank.
By the way when you call the phone number on the Fedex package it rings and rings. Oh, and the crooks could have had my name and router number, yikes!
A+ accounting, D in driving. If you’re in the car with me buckle up! However, if it is accounting, pass me the ray-gun.
Craig’s List does have a buyer beware of cashier check scam notice on their web site. Big deal, I think people could easily get ripped off on this.
DMC Accounting + Technology digs in on operational details, theft can be twisted and we have seen a lot of it. Foiled Batman!
Why always focus on costs - yes while important, certainly no one should be a spendthrift - but constant cost cutting is depressing and often a warning sign of the obvious problem: not enough revenue. Spending more time growing the top line, just seems to make more sense to me. Cost needs to fit based on how much the top line brings in. The number crunchers out there will cringe at the thought of that, since they’re always analyzing why health insurance and IT costs are rising, rrrr…
Whether selling services or products, one can easily feel comfortable when a sale is final. On that day or month, the sale is complete when its delivered. Don’t we wish all revenue was that simple. Timing and complexity comes into play, some of it good some not so good. Returns, write downs or write offs exist in most businesses. Again a fairly simple concept, you’re typically going to know in the short run, after that you must accept returned goods or not collect money due to servicing issues.
Complexity builds when a sale spans time, involves change orders/additions or ordering of goods with future delivery dates. You have to measure or estimate and reasonably guess the value of the sale and that it is revenue.
Complexity lends itself to mistakes. Mistakes in estimating revenue are the most costly business mistakes. In a theoretical math sense it is only high risk that drives above average return. Cost management does not drive money to increase profit, revenue risk does. Last thought, with too much risk, like monopoly, one goes broke, just had to fit that thought in.
DMC Accounting + Technology understands and consults on how numbers work to drive results to profit. Profit is not bad, it fuels growth, livelihood of owners and employees.
This blog is for my dad: those fond days at the liquor store thinking how we could sell more and advertise :-).
Traditional and Cloud IT departments assure accountants and their departments they are taking backups every night or constantly infact. And with the newest technology restore you back to where you were. Allow me to argue and disagree about this.
What you may not know about backing up. And the real problems we see that no backup can protect you from.
Clients can operate for weeks or even months not knowing a software patch has disabled other functionality in the software. A good example are clients on payroll, tables need updates, the software company really is not sure how you, the client have specifically configured THEIR software. End result, payroll liabilities and tax deposits can be reported in correctly. Penalties plus from the IRS for under paying payroll taxes. First client knew of it, IRS notice. Last nights backup is not going to fix this one, the patch was 3 months ago.
A another example, databases can half post entries (ie an unbalanced entry). Accountants are busy, often they ignore software warnings routinely. In my experience, go months without if ever addressing fixing these errors. Now they can not upgrade a year later without custom repair work. Backup, useless too much time has lapsed.
Last example, Hardware breaks, specifically hard drives (average about 5-7 years old). All the backups are on the same hard drive. Yes, this really happens. Or better, the tape unit died months ago, but the client failed to check it was even working, only just swapping tapes. Backup useless.
Having run a Company for many years, I get the why this happens and how apologetic/embarrassing the client plight is . Firms are swamped with technology upgrades, alerts, security warnings and the never-ending tight budget. Just know your backups may be useless.
We offer a pretty inexpensive routine, additional backup once a month service for for Deltek, Ajera and Account Edge clients. This may be or often is the only good data. To boot, we know accounting technology not just IT.
My box, by the way, is super cheap :-); constructed of pine, about 5” wide, 7” tall and 7” deep. It has a slightly slanted roof (15 degrees) and a door flap that can be easily opened for cleaning. I stained it mahogany, with the exception of the doorway, which is an acrylic primary blue with a primary yellow crescent moon accent. The hole is 1.5” round.
The bird box is hung on a 4 X 4 pole that is six feet from the ground at the edge of a hill, next to running water, yellow pontentilla, and veggie garden. It has access to the woods as there is a clearing 50 feet or so away. It’s hung by a thin but heavy gauge rod that extends out two feet from the pole. I clean it out in the winter and place it outside late February/early March.
You’d think this box was the Ritz Carlton. It attracts up to three broods of differing birds species each season. And the new tenants take the time to toss out the others’ nests :-), tenant #1: soft grasses/duff/fur vs tenant #2: tiny pine twigs/grass. So far this spring a brood of seven little chickadees has nested. And now, a repeat species (I’m not sure if it is a thrush or wren) has moved in, singing prettily. If the second brood is set by July’s end, the box should attract the third.
In my opinion small businesses need to be niche, like a bird box. You hang your special box out to deliver a need. Money into the box does not really matter. Your visitors make their home for a short time, then fly off, sometimes returning. Their offspring spread the word for others to come. Good boxes are never empty.
DMC offers accounting consulting solutions for Deltek, Ajera, AccountEdge and Quickbooks software. We provide accounting and implementation/training, custom reporting and database solutions for a focused set of industries. It took many years to hang our box out just right.