New Business Direction LLC
The New Business Directions Team is bringing the #1 employee-rated and requested Time Tracking Software to you. Sondra Love, Wayne Kukuruza, and Rhonda Rosand, CPA have recently joined the 6000+ TSheets PRO community by participating in an exclusive TSheets PRO certification course accredited by CPAacademy.org.So what exactly is TSheets? TSheets is a time tracking and scheduling software designed for businesses that track, manage, and report time. TSheets provides the alternative to paper timesheets and/or punch cards to simplify human resource and data processing roles for companies of all sizes.
But here’s the best part, TSheets fully integrates with QuickBooks by syncing accurate timesheets to your QuickBooks file and eliminating manual, duplicate time entries. Tracked and approved time can now be easily exported to either QuickBooks® Online or Desktop with just one click. Management can then use their favorite tools within QuickBooks to process payroll, calculate job costing, and create invoices in a more simplified work flow.
TSheets is also a scheduling software making it faster and easier to build and share schedules with employees, assign jobs, and alert shifts while increasing profitability and improving communication. In other words, we want to keep your workforce running like a well-oiled machine.
Oh, and have I mentioned their amazing customer service department? The TSheets team who’s behind the product is just as amazing as the software itself. Customer service team is passionate about their customers and provides exceptional support in times of need. They make your entire TSheets experience FUN and might even give you a smile or two.
Have you ever wished you didn’t have to buy yet another server? Do you have to delete old files on your hard drive to make room for new ones? If disk space is an issue in your company, the good news is there may be a better and cheaper way: cloud storage.
You might think cloud storage is only for large companies, but it’s surprisingly easy to use no matter whether you have a full technology department or you simply call your neighbor when your PC starts doing something strange.
One such vendor is Amazon with their S3 product in their AWS or Amazon Web Services division. The three S’s stand for Simple Storage Service. It works just like your PC’s hard drive. Think of a filing cabinet where only you have the key to all your business’s private files. Instead of folders (or file drawers), Amazon calls them buckets, and instead of files (or Pendaflex®), Amazon calls them objects. Once you set up your account, you can create buckets and upload your files as objects in the cloud.
If you have large files like video files, old records you need to keep for tax purposes but don’t access any more, or just a need for more disk space, this service is perfect. Amazon charges three cents per GB monthly, which is much cheaper than an additional server, website hosting rates, or even external disk drives.
There are many options beyond basic storage, including who can access your files. You can also use it to store data used in programming and there are developer guides for companies that have that need. The S3 product is not designed to be used to share files like a DropBox-type product although you can make certain files publicly accessible. The S3 is also much cheaper than file-sharing products as well.
You can check out the S3 product here: https://aws.amazon.com/s3/
Get smart about storage options and you’ll save a lot of money down the road.
This year’s theme was “epic” designed as the epic conference to empower small business advisors to develop and sustain the epic practice that distinguishes itself and embraces the key differences that separate ProAdvisors around the good, the great and the “epic.”
Sessions
The four-day conference kicked off each morning with Power Breakfast Sessions followed by main stage presentations with keynote speakers such as Daymond John of Shark Tank, Joe Buissink of Canon Explorer of Light, and author Mike Michalowicz of Profit First. In between general session, attendees dispersed around the conference center into rooms where cutting edge training sessions were being held. Training sessions were broken down into 5-tracks for Practice and Professional Development, Practice Growth, In-Depth QuickBooks Training, ProAdvisor Certification Training and QB Integrated Apps.
If you were fortunate enough to attend, Rhonda Rosand, CPA
taught a 100-minute informative training session titled Successful Implementations from Initial Contact through Ongoing Support on Sunday, May 22nd. As the evenings came around, networking sessions were held consisting of ICB Bookkeeper’s Symposium, the Woodard Network Social hosted within Atlantis’ stunning marine life exhibit, The Dig and of course, the infamous TSheets dance Party on TSheets Tuesday.
Sondra’s Take on Vendors
In between training, I was able to visit the exhibit ballroom which held over 90 vendors, some of which were very familiar. I came across software I use everyday to make my work flow run smoothly and now I am able to put a face to the product. For example, SmartVault allows me to access files anywhere, anytime and from any device. I also have the capability to securely share files with clients and our team.While at Scaling New Heights, I learned the importance of technology and how it relates to strengthening our firm and supporting our clients.
Do you love using Facebook with your friends but know you’re missing out by not using it in business? Do you feel guilty when you post a business promotion and would prefer not to bug your friends? The good news is there’s an easy way to separate Facebook personal use from business within your personal account.
The answer is to group your friends by lists. Once you do that, you can selectively post to the appropriate list(s). Here’s how to do it, step by step.
Log into Facebook and go to your Home page. From the left column, locate the section on Friends and click on More, which is just to the right. At the top right of this Friends page, you’ll see a button called Create List.
Create two lists: one labeled Business and one labeled Personal. You can create far more than two if you want, but for now, start with two. Click the Create button and it will then ask you if you want to add friends. Click that button and select the friends you want to add to each list. In some cases, you’ll want a friend to be on both lists, and that’s fine. Once you’re done, you’ll have a list of business friends and a list of personal friends.
When you post an item, you can select which list you want to see your post. If you’re showing private events like birthdays, weddings, drunk parties, and grandbabies, you may only want friends to see those posts. If you’re pitching a new product, your business list should see that post, but you might not want to bug your friends.
Enter your post as usual and locate the Custom button to the left of the blue Post button. Select the list of friends that you wish to see this post. Then click Post. You’ve now successfully separated your personal and business friends and posts on Facebook.
Almost every social media account has a way for you to separate business from personal, so don’t let this excuse be a reason to miss out on some great marketing opportunities for your business.
Slack is a relatively new collaboration tool that is designed to cut down on emails among team members and boost productivity. It provides messaging by topic or channel so that threads of communication can be streamlined and accessed easily.
Slack is a searchable messaging portal that allows document sharing from a team member’s computer or integrated apps such as Google Drive, DropBox and more. Slack has 300,000 paid accounts and 1.1 million active users per day. There is a free option.
Once all your team members are in Slack, they can create channels and have conversations within the channels. Channels can be organized in any way you want, such as by:
- Departments
- Projects
- Clients
- Locations
- Trips
- Office talk
Channels can be made public within your team or private.
You can also direct-message anyone else in the group so two or more team members can have a private talk. Conversations can be followed on any device – computer, tablet, and phone.
You can add documents to the message stream so team members can review and make comments. These documents can come from your local computer or one of the 900 integrated apps. And the messages are searchable to boost efficiency.
If you’re looking for a tool that reduces the number of emails across team members, try out Slack at slack.com.
Periscope is one of social media’s newest darlings. It enables cell phone users (iPhone and Android) to capture and steam live video from their phone. Periscope was acquired by Twitter in February 2015, and it launched in March. As of August 12, 2015, Periscope announced they had 10 million users watching 40 years of video per day. Here are a couple of tips to get you started using Periscope:
Getting Started
If you don’t already have a Twitter account, do that first. Periscope uses your Twitter info to log you in. Start following people and they will follow you back.
When someone you follow is broadcasting live, your phone will whistle and you can join in the broadcast. Once you do, tap the screen to give the broadcaster hearts (likes), which will display and float up the right side of the screen. You can make comments or ask questions during the broadcast as well; it’s designed to be very interactive.
Your First Broadcast
You can broadcast anything:
- A new product or service you’re offering
- Events you’re attending
- Interviews with people
- A great view at a party
- News like a police, fire, or weather event
- A speech you want to give
Make sure you’re on long enough for people to join in, unless you’ve invited them ahead of time. You can also keep your videos private if you want to.
To start the broadcast, use the third icon on the bottom which looks like a lens with a small red part. Title your broadcast, then hit the start button and you’re live. Double-click the screen to toggle the screen toward you and away from you. For long broadcasts, consider getting a table tripod or a GorillaPod tripod (by Joby®) with a cell phone holder so your picture will be steadier than handheld.
Broadcasts are listed for 24 hours and then they drop off. If you want to save your broadcasts to your camera/video roll, be sure to go into Settings under your profile and turn on Autosave Broadcasts. You can also send your video to the cloud using Katch.me.
Have fun with Periscope; it is a great way to get the word out about your business.
Keeping a to-do list is a great way to be productive, avoid having things fall through the crack, and unclutter your brain. How you maintain your to-do list varies: some people use pen and paper because they love the feeling of crossing tasks off, others use Excel or Google documents. Still others might try Evernote.
If all of those still have you feeling unorganized, then you’re in luck. There’s a whole new genre of apps to automate your to-do list. Here is a list of things to consider:
- Would it be great to access your to-do list from any device?
- Do you need subtasks?
- Would you like to set priorities and due dates?
- Do you want notifications or reminders?
- Do you want to share tasks with others?
- Do you have repeating tasks that need to be handled differently?
- Do you need to be able to make comments or notes for each task?
- Would it be nice to forward an email to your to-do list and just have it logged?
- Do you want to be able to print your to-do list?
- Do you want to be able to set hash tags, filters, and labels for each task?
Once you’ve thought about your requirements, now you can look for an app that meets it. Here are two to get you started:
- ToDoist.com
- Wunderlist.com
If those don’t work out, Google “to-do list apps” and you’ll have a bevy of selections to choose from. These to-do lists will work for not only business projects but also major life projects like weddings, vacations, and more.
Try these new to-do list apps and let us know what you think.
There’s a visual side to every business, and Pinterest and Instagram, which are social media applications, can show your customers and prospects what your business looks like form day to day. Plus, you can have some real fun with it.
Pinterest allows people to post graphics to online bulletin boards and share them with others. In Pinterest, graphics of all kinds are allowed, including photographs, screen prints, logos, and more. In Instagram, photos are posted and shared among users. Here are some tips you can implement in your business to take advantage of Pinterest and Instagram.
1. Take pictures of your work.
Even if you’re a plumber, work can be interesting and artistic at times. Take a picture of the child’s toy that was clogging the toilet, and you could have an entire pinboard of “Things that we’ve pulled out of toilets.” If you’re in personal service, you can photograph your client’s new manicure or hairdo (with their permission of course). If you’re in landscaping you can snap the cleanup job you just did. If you’re a webmaster, take screen prints of your clients’ new webpages and post them to Pinterest.
2. Take pictures of the happy client.
Before leaving your happy client, grab a photo of them showing their new product. With their permission you can post these to both Pinterest and Instagram. As an added plus, use the client’s testimonials or review as your caption, and if they are a small business owner, include their URL to help them out a bit with their marketing and social media.
3. Grab before and after shots.
Before and after photos are great for your portfolio and work well in both Pinterest and Instagram. They can show a future customer what’s possible with your service.
4. Shoot daily scenes at your office or place of work.
Do all your employees hangout in the morning before going their separate ways? Do you ever have all-hands staff meetings? If so, you can add these photos to your growing collection at Instagram.
5. Create topical pinboards.
Even if your job isn’t very funny, you can make funny pinboards about it (exceptions possibly being hospitals and funeral homes). Accounting humor, attorney jokes, and engineering humor can make for a fun Pinterest board. Other ideas include:
- A pinboard of people you look up to or who have mentored you,
- Favorite books you’ve read or like,
- Inspirational quotes,
- Favorite places,
- Your team of employees, and
- Any of the categories mentioned above.
Go wild with photos and screen shots in your business, and your business will get noticed on social media.
Do you need to get data from one app to another? If so, it’s time to check out Zapier.
You might be moving data manually from, let’s say, your shopping cart to your CRM or from Evernote to Google Docs, or something like that. Zapier allows you to automate the process with what they call a Zap.
In the Zapier app, click Make a Zap, and you’ll see two dropdown menus: Trigger app and Action app. Your trigger app is the one where the data is stored and your action app is the one where you want the data to be moved to.
Continuing the shopping cart example above, you would choose your shopping cart app as the trigger app. Zapier support BigCommerce, Ontraport, Infusionsoft, Shopify, Magento, and more. It will then ask you for details about the transaction and the type of data you want to port over. Your action app will be your CRM, and Zapier supports dozens of them. It will ask you for your user ID and password for each application and some more specifics about the type of data you want to transfer.
You can run your zap one time or every fifteen minutes, depending on the nature of your data transfer. Here are some ideas to get your creative juices flowing:
- From Evernote to Google Calendar, add an event.
- From your blog to Facebook, post your latest blog entry.
- Create QuickBooks Online sales receipt from PayPal
- Create QBO customer from Salesforce (or other CRM)
- Create Constant Contact contact from QBO customer
- And several thousand more combinations!
The admin time you will save will amaze you. Data entry and moving data around is truly becoming a thing of the past. You can go to Zapier.com and create a free trial. There is a charge for a larger number of zaps.
And, as always, if you’d like our help, please reach out.
Have you ever been in a situation where there’s no internet and you needed it? Or perhaps you’re at a hotel and don’t want to pay the extra $15 per day for wireless internet. If so, you’re not alone, and luckily, there’s a gadget for just about everything. This time, it’s a gadget you probably already have: all you need to do is whip out your cell phone.
iPhone
Your cell phone can act as your wireless modem. Plug the iPhone into your PC using your USB connection. Go to Settings on your iPhone and one of your settings will be labeled Personal Hotspot. Tap it and toggle it to “on.” Set a password.
On your PC, view your wireless internet connections, and the name you’ve given your phone will show up. Click to connect and enter the password you set on your phone.
Voila, internet!
Android
If you have an Android, tap More… and select Wireless and Networks, then Tethering and Portable Hotspot. Check Portable Wi-Fi hotspot. Tap Portable Wi-Fi hotspot settings and you can edit the Wi-Fi network name, and choose a password.
On your PC, view your wireless internet connections, and the name you’ve given the Wi-Fi network will show up. Click to connect and enter the password you set on your phone.
Fees
Ask your cell phone network provider if this hotspot feature is included in your package or is an extra charge. You may also have to call then to enable this feature.
Once you’ve used this once, you’ll be hooked. You now have a new internet access alternative anywhere you have cell phone coverage.
