3 is the New 2….When it comes to Monitors anyway…

Hi all – It’s time for a “tech update” about what’s new in the office.

We ordered awesome new desktops for Jamie, George and Linda. George will be joining the world of desktop-computer users – it’s new for him, but necessary since he started working in tax.

Linda and Jamie need new desktops too – their current machines contain faulty capacitors that are effectively ticking timebombs. It’s only a matter of time until they fail, and in doing so join my and Brian’s old machines on the scrap heap.

This time around – its Windows Vista of course, 4 gig of ram,  and beefed up video cards to support multiple monitors. When the machines arrive, we’re going to reshuffle things so that Jamie, George and Brian each end up with 3 monitors. Having spent two years developing our paperless best practices, it’s clear that 3 is the new 2 when it comes to monitors.

Me? I’m going to be testing the cutting edge theory “4 is the new 3″. 

We’ve installed and configured the latest version of CCH Scan (Thanks George!) This version has the new autoflow technology we saw in the training course last week. This technology is going to revolutionize the way we prepare personal tax returns – You’ll see how at our next training session.

Merry Christmas Everyone

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for reading this blog and following the ongoing developments within our Firm. Its been a very interesting year with many positive changes put in place and many more still to come.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to everyone . I’m looking for to spending time with my family – I hope all you get to do the same.

Welcome Back – Kyle Kroeker!

Kyle has Arrived - Two Thumbs Up

We’d like to take the opportunity to welcome Kyle Kroeker back to the Brampton office family. Kyle just graduated from Wilfred Laurier University in Waterloo and started with us full time yesterday. He’s well known to us – he spent two co-op terms with us and we’re glad he decided to join us after graduating. He’s a very funny guy who’s known especially for putting Frank’s Hot Sauce on pretty much anything and everything he eats.

If you haven’t met Kyle already, take a good look at his picture – there’s a pretty good chance you’re going to get to meet him over the coming busy season.

Questions about Secure Client Portals

Secure Client Portals

We’ve noticed that many readers of this blog are looking for information about secure client portals. I imagine you want to know the how, what, when, where and especially “why” of using a client portal, so that you can deal with the issue of client portals at your own firms. You’ve probably guessed that we’ve done a lot of work in this area, if you’ve been following this blog

I figured the best thing to do was to open this blog to your questions. So….that said, if you’re looking for information about using client portals, please feel free to add a comment to this post. Go ahead and ask your specific question(s) – Other people probably have the same question too anyway.

We’ll do our best to answer them and to get you the help you need.

How I spent my Friday Night…..

The Other Guy

My New 2008 Chevrolet Suburban

I know this isn’t exactly on topic but I had a really bizarre Friday night and thought I’d share it with you. While on my way home from the office tonight, a car turned in front of me just as I entered the intersection on a green light, travelling at about 60km/hr.  I had no time to react and I hit him and hit him HARD. His car spun around two or three complete times.

The airbag went off in my face with a bang, but my truck just kept going straight ahead. I guess that’s what happens when you hit a little car with a BIG truck. I pulled over right away and was about to get out of my truck to go check on the other driver when the Onstar operator came on (just like on the commercials!) to ask if I was OK and to patch me through to the 911 operator. It all happened so fast, I couldn’t answer some of their questions as I hadn’t even had the chance to get out of the truck yet to check on the other driver.

They insisted on sending an ambulance, fire trucks and police (because of the airbag deployment, they said)who came and found us shaken up but otherwise not seriously injured. We were so lucky – have a look at the picture of his little Nissan. I am so grateful he’s OK and that there wasn’t anyone sitting in his passenger seats.

Everyone was so awesome, they made a crappy situation bearable – from the witnesses who confirmed it wasn’t my fault to the Caledon OPP and Firefighters, who checked us out and even to the tow truck drivers who looked after our vehicles.

I had them take my truck to my favourite dealership, John Logan Chevrolet. This is funny – they are clients of our Firm and I emailed them on my Blackberry from the accident scene saying “Keep an eye out for my truck – I just got in an accident and its going to be towed to you. Never thought I’d be helping improve your bodyshop profits so soon & in this way. Hope to see you Monday.” I can’t wait for them to put my truck back into pristine condition.

Lastly, thanks to Jen for coming to pick me up and for helping me grab all my stuff (laptop bag, Fender Telecaster, two weeks worth of mail, etc.) from my truck before it got towed away.

So…..in the end, I’m very thankful that no one was seriously hurt. After all, vehicles are so much easier to fix than people.

Coming Soon – Updated Client Portal

Our client portal has become hugely popular with our clients. We now have over 100 client portals in operation and the feedback has been excellent. Its the perfect way to pass information securely back and forth – especially those clients who winter in Florida. They can access their information whether they’re home here in Canada or avoiding the worst winter weather in the sunny south.

Our portal login is found at www.macgillivraybrampton.com. We’ve realized that we’re missing an opportunity – with so many visitors coming to this site regularly, it could be the perfect place to pass on useful information to clients.

Connected Technologies has started building a new “front end” for this site, that will be full of useful information for clients and staff. We hope to have it in place early in 2009. I’ll keep you posted.

Portable Monitors have Arrived!

Good news, the new portable monitors we ordered arrived yesterday. I distributed them around the office – if you are out of the office, your monitor is sitting on your desk waiting for you.

Rupy and George set theirs up for testing and their initial reviews are good. They remind everyone that you need to step the resolution on your machine down to 1024 x 768 for them to work.

Portable Monitors for Field Staff – Already Shipped!

In a post earlier this week, I mentioned that while at the CCH User Conference, I’d finally been able to locate a good “second” monitor for staff to use in the field. I’d been looking for something suitable for months and had assumed (erroneously as it turned out) that it would be EASY to find a monitor to fit the bill.

We’ve all gotten soooo used to our second monitors while in the office – they’re now essential to our efficiency. Given that we’re now paperless, we desperately need a portable solution for staff while in the field as well. Otherwise we’d be in a situation where we’re more efficient in the office than out, which directly conflicts with our wish to do as much of our work as possible at client premises.

Well at the conference, during one of our roundtable sessions, a few people mentioned that they had found a good solution. It turns out that there were a few of these monitors in use at a Booth, so I even got a chance to see them in action.

If you’re interested, its the Megavision MV141 (which you can find at http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1546305&Tab=11&NoMapp=0&cm_mmc=Email-_-WebletMain-_-CANLET-_-03ship&SRCCODE=CANLET)  I ordered them for all field staff yesterday from Tigerdirect.ca. The emailed me today that our order has already shipped, so they should be in our hands early next week.

What’s Better than a Blog?

With all the rapid forms of communication that are around today – from texting, instant messenging and the ability to send email from your hand using a Blackberry or I-phone, is there something better than a blog for disseminating information to an audience?

I learned this week that yes, there is something better than a blog: two blogs.

Allow me to explain. At this year’s CCH User conference, Howard Cox of Somerset CPA’s spoke about blogging strategies. In particular, Howard made the point that the vision for a blog should be to create an online community and to then add value to the members of that community. Well, I’ve come to realize that my existing blog is a hodge-podge of my rants, plans and reflections about all sorts of issues, both client and staff related – it lacks a clear intended audience.

Clearly, I need to better focus my efforts.  I’ve decided to keep writing my “MacGillivray Brampton – The Inside View” blog and focus it on staff and office technology issues. I’ve started a second blog to specifically cover news about our exciting new Business Compass Services.

My new blog is called ”MacGillivray Business Compass – Charting Your Course to Success.” It should be ready to go live in the next week or so. We’re going to use this blog to chronicle our experiences with clients who use our Business Compass services to basically understand the financial consequences of any business decision they are faced with making before they make it. Its a radically different tool than people have seen before. But……more on that later.

The View from Palm Springs

Palm Desert California - CCH Users Conference

I’m sitting here typing this post while sitting in the airport in Palm Springs waiting for my flight home. From where I sit, its 90 degrees in the shade and there’s not a cloud in the sky. I saw the Toronto area weather report this morning – 3 degrees, rain with a chance of snow! I’m certainly not looking forward to going back to that.

I’ve been fortunate to have spent the last three days here at the 2008 CCH User conference. What an amazing event it was. The good folks at CCH went all out to put on a truly world class event. Let me tell you what I got out of this year’s conference:

• I learned how to better identify our Firm’s strengths and weaknesses in the marketplace and how to develop strategies to capitalize on those strengths and minimize our weaknesses. After a few sessions, it quickly began feeling like I was in “Partner School”. 
• We had a great roundtable discussion about paperless best practices for accounting firms, security issues and how to best use CCH document and CCH client portal
• We saw demonstrations of the next generation products coming down the pipe from CCH. Its clear that we’re going to see an unprecendented level of connectivity between their software products which will definitely make our jobs and our lives easier. My only beef is that the products will debut in the US, then come to Canada the year after. We just don’t want to have to wait that long.
• I finally found the answer to my search for a good second monitor to purchase for our fieldstaff so they can have a second monitor while working at clients. I’ve been trying to find a monitor to fill this role for months! The CCH automation workflow booth had these amazing folding monitors that will easily fit in our current laptop bags – I asked and got their model number and where they can be purchased!
• Lastly (for now anyway!), I learned that our staff are indeed second to none. For almost everyone at the conference, quality of staff is their number one issue. When we talked about staffing, I heard lots of comments about how impossible it is to find good people. I was able to honestly say “We have the perfect staff complement at the moment. I wouldn’t change any of them.” People looked at me with envy and told me how LUCKY we are.

I’ll post more later as I think of it. I just wanted to let you know what I’ve been up to the last few days.

I’d also like to take a moment to thank our Canadian contingent of CCH reps for taking such good care of ts during our stay – Doug, Tim, Philippe, Gerry, Linda and Anthony, you guys are AWESOME. Roger the cabbie  told me to bring you all back soon.