As dedicated teleworkers, we are always interested to try out new ways of communicating without the pain and time cost of a commute. So when Google replaced its “talk” products with “hangouts” for video calling we were keen to take a look. Despite being pretty happy with skype, we thought we would try out using “hangouts” to do the same things. So what did we think? Hangouts is a very… Read more
There have been some articles in the news media recently dedicated to the rise of “teleworking”. To me the term already seems out of date as it seems to refer to the use of a telephone (invented around 1876) when today it is much more likely that internet technology will be used. According to Wikipedia, the term telework was coined in 1973, which will explain its old fashioned sound. However… Read more
Recent advances in small business accounting software are changing the way that accountants are able to interact with their clients. Using online or “cloud” based accounting software such as Xero gives accountants the opportunity to work with their clients on a regular basis, rather than just collecting records from businesses and preparing annual accounts after year end (as an aside, Xero is fast becoming a New Zealand success story which… Read more
For those who need more functionality than a cashbook system, the next step up in the off-the-shelf software market for business is the simple general ledger system. Typically these systems can keep track of accounts receivable (so you can use them for invoicing your customers), accounts payable (so that you can keep track of who you owe money to and when it is due) as well as all transactions that… Read more
For an owner of a small or medium sized business, the days of “shoebox record keeping” are long gone. There are several good quality, low cost accounting packages to suit every kind of business, ranging from simple cashbook systems to Enterprise Resourse Planning (ERP) systems capable of handling not just accounting information, but also human resources, customer relationship management and a wide range of other tasks. Most SME businesses will… Read more
As a keen follower of the move towards cloud based systems, I was interested to see Google’s foray into the online storage market. Google has had its Google Apps suite of web based applications for some time now but has very recently added a storage component to that. So what does it do? It is probably easiest for me to say the way that I am using the products, as… Read more