Gold star for Depositit, black mark for Camtasia

Yesterday evening, I sat down to finish off a big video I'd been working on. 15 minutes long, with not only screenshots but clips of moving pictures (not something I usually deal with), and lots of Camtasia intricacies like title clips.

I decided to put in some transitions between the clips. That's the page turn / fade / roll over effects.

When I put them in, for reasons known only to Camtasia version 6, the audio went absolutely mad. It cut bits off and stuck some extra at the beginning so that it sounded like there were several Ms all speaking at once. And it stuck some extra on the end after the video had finished.

And I'd pressed Save before I realised that had happened. There was no unpicking it. Even removing the transitions didn't cure the problem.

Argh!!

But then at 10.45 last night (which is very late for me - I'm a lark not an owl), I had a brainwave.

My computer is set up to run a daily online backup with Depositit.

And it had already run before I started working on the video.

So this morning, I went into Depositit and, for the first time, tried restoring a file from the backup.

It worked!! The old file restored with no problems and I was able to go back to a video with smooth problem-free audio.

The moral of this story is - if you haven't got a backup system in place, GET ONE NOW!! It saved my bacon!

Do I have to be an Entrepreneur?

Back from my Easter break and ready to start posting again.

Dennis Howlett has posted a quote from my ex-employer, Bob Harper at More, about accountants and marketing. Bob is truly passionate about marketing and he and Dennis both agree that often accountants don't do enough to market themselves in the right way.

But where I take issue with both of them is that Bob steers his customers to setting up a business in which they don't do the work, but hire others to do it.

That's the philosophy outlined in Michael Gerber's book, "The E-Myth Revisited". Gerber describes the three elements of everyone's personality - the Technician (who does the work), the Manager (who organises the work) and the Entrepreneur (who builds a business).

I have a one-woman business that builds videos and provides sub-contract accounting services. I actually do all of that. And I have no intention of taking on anyone else to do it. For one thing, employing people these days is a mare. For another, one thing that my paying customers love about my videos is my voice. So how would I replicate that if I didn't make the videos myself?

Besides which, I like doing accounts and making videos!

I also believe (at the risk of sounding like a stuck-up do-gooder) that it's not good for the human soul not to have work to do.

I've read the writing of my fellow Quakers, and am reminded of John Woolman's stand against slavery on the basis that it was not only bad for the slaves, but for the slave-owners, because owning slaves meant they didn't have to work, and nor did their children, and they became lazy and didn't work to their full potential.

So I'm going to keep doing the work myself. I know that means Bob and Dennis probably think I'm a Technician. But if I'm a Technician, I'm a happy one.

And Dennis - watch what you say about Chartered Accountants - we're not all stuffed shirts, you know!!

New video: VLOOKUP in Excel 2007

Excel 2007 is full of formulae. I've only scratched the surface of them. But there are some that can really help make life easier for us accountants.

How many times have you compared one list of info to another and had to spend ages ticking items off on both lists?

If the lists are in Excel, you can combine them easily by using a vlookup formula.

Here's a video that shows how to do a simple vlookup.

The Excel wizard has a new spellbook

When it comes to Excel accounting wizardry, Glen Feechan is Merlin.

Back when I was in full-time employment, he helped me build a management accounting spreadsheet for my boss that produced neat, clean management accounts with just a few clicks of the mouse.

Now he's launching a new service called "Spreadsheets by E-mail".

For a fixed price, he will design and create a spreadsheet to your requirements.

If you're looking for a magic spreadsheet, but feel an inner "Ouch!" at the thought of building it yourself - I'd recommend giving this service a try.

On the road with an old computer

Phew. I am one exhausted screencaster.

I only heard on Monday that there was a place for me on ScotlandIS's SaaS event, taking place in Edinburgh that Thursday afternoon (yesterday).

Quick change of plans for the week to include a trip to Edinburgh, including making sure that Matt didn't need our one and only car.

But then I remembered I'd already booked to attend a Skype conference call demo of Pearl Software at 11am on the Thursday morning.

No problem, I thought. I'll take my laptop and Skype phone, find a hotel near Edinburgh with WiFi access and view the demo there. Then I'll go to the event in the afternoon.

So yesterday morning, I dropped Matt off at work and off I went. Gorgeous drive over the hills to Edinburgh in the sun. I love living in the North.

I got to the hotel, bought a WiFi voucher, set up my laptop in the hotel reception - and could I connect to the Web? Could I heck. When I tried to view the available wireless networks, the computer kept telling me, "An unexpected error has occurred." Reboot x 3. Still no luck. And it didn't tell me what the error was or how to fix it. Oh no. Just that there was one.

It was now 10.50 and I was panicking - and shouting at the computer!

At the reception desk was standing one of the hotel's systems team, whose badge read "David".

Hearing my yells, he came over and tried to get my laptop working, with no more luck than I'd had. So he not only lent me his laptop to attend the demo, but also downloaded Skype on it so I could take the conference call. What a kind man. David, if you're reading this, thanks again, and there's a box of chocs on its way to you.

The demo went really well. I was extremely impressed by the look and feel of Pearl. More on that soon.

Quick nip to the hotel bar for lunch (they burnt my toasted sandwich - black mark).

Then over to the SaaS event. I really enjoyed that (even though it was held in a building with no car parking and I ended up parking in worryingly close proximity to a pile of earth). Lots of friendly people, and some great presenters, including Roan from FreeAgent.

What perplexed some of the people I spoke to was that I'd come to the event when I'm not running a SaaS business myself. My reason was - because several of my customers sell SaaS. I wanted to get a more thorough understanding of their market. And it worked.

5.15 - on my way home in a glorious red sunset over the hills - steadily getting tireder. I stopped in Biggar for a delicious meal at The Elphinstone Hotel and a chat with Dennis Howlett on my mobile. Calling a number in Spain gobbled up my credit and we got cut off. The trials of pay-as-you-go mobiles.

By the time I got home (8.45) I was very sleepy. Almost certainly too sleepy to drive safely. But I got back with both me and the car in one piece.

Lessons learnt from yesterday:

• Invest in either a new laptop or a Palm Treo - sharpish.
• Do not phone abroad with only £10 credit on the mobile.
• Going somewhere that would mean driving > 2 hours each way in one day = go by train!

Is it enough to know how your business is doing?

I'm not one of those people who thinks the current recession is just a state of mind. For me as for thousands of others, like Simon Whalley, it's led to starting my own business. And when your business has to bring in enough money to pay your share of a mortgage, you need a pretty firm grasp on how it's doing.

That means keeping up-to-date accounting records so that you can plan what should happen, or what you want to happen, in the future (and that applies even if your business isn't clairvoyancy).

KashFlow has just released a Health Check report that lets its customers see how their business is doing in itself, with indicators such as money received from customers. I'm not going to repeat the discussions I've had with Dennis Howlett about the validity of this report. I think it's a good idea and that the report does have room for improvement.

This report isn't meant to be benchmarking and it says that quite clearly. But FreshBooks believe that:

Industry benchmarks matter because if you don’t have anything to compare yourself to, you are just shadowboxing. Everyone looks good when they are shadow boxing, but when you step in the ring with your peers, it’s another story! You can learn from seeing how you compare to others in your field.

I'm not sure that "everyone looks good when they're shadow boxing". If a business is not making any sales then its KashFlow Health Check report would look pretty awful :-)

But I have to say that I do very much like FreshBooks' benchmarking reports.

FreshBooks invites their users to say which profession they belong to, and if they choose to do this, their statistics are included in the benchmarking reports and they get a quarterly "report card" showing their business benchmarked against others in the same profession.

And the report is written in plain English, too, with useful statistics like "amount invoiced this quarter", "average time to collect payment", "average amount invoiced per client billed" and percentages of revenue from recurring and non-recurring sources of income.

But what really made me sit up and say "that's good that" was the fact that FreshBooks also supply a benchmarking report to people who don't even use their software, including all the statistics I mentioned above.

FreshBooks users get even more useful information, like percentage of invoices paid online, which, when coupled with the statistic of how quickly your customers pay, gives a real handle on whether your credit control is tight enough.

So - whether industry benchmarking is important or not is a matter for debate, but if you do want to benchmark, then FreshBooks is a good place to do it.

Excel or paper = no system?

Reading back through the Xero blog this morning, I found this post from Vivian Morresey, who says;

It’s amazing how many people have joined Xero recently, that actually come from ‘no system’ at all, ie shoebox, Excel or paper, and I’m sure that once people truly see that it can be done better, the better off we will all be.

By "Excel or paper", I'm guessing Vivian means accounting records kept either on an Excel spreadsheet or a manual cashbook. And I'd take issue with his/her statement that these are "no system".

I agree that spreadsheet records or a manual cashbook would probably only suit the very smallest of businesses. Elizabeth Jackson of Great Guns Marketing says in her book "Start Up!" that when she began her business, it was a one-woman band, and she kept her records on spreadsheets, before upgrading to QuickBooks when the business grew bigger.

For micro businesses, a neat well-kept set of records on Excel or a manual cashbook can be more than adequate. They've certainly done just fine for me in the past when it came to preparing year end accounts for those businesses.

And, I keep my own records on an Excel spreadsheet :-)

In the next paragraph of his/her article, Vivian says;

Generally, it’s at the end of the (financial) year when all the real pain comes to the surface, such as collating all your receipts and trying to remember why you spent that money, and what was it for, do I claim the GST or not? Digging up your bank statements, and realising you’ve lost one, it won’t matter how far back, or how efficient the online bank statement export is, you know it will still miss the thing that you need. Finally, sorting through your invoices and realising that you haven’t been paid or worse, that you still have to pay someone. I could go on, but I think you get the point.

Now there I would say that (s)he is spot on.

Trying to go through your "bag of bits" at year end and remember what every receipt was for is a nightmare. And it's even worse when your poor accountant has to do it because they haven't the foggiest idea why you might have bought a train ticket to London. To visit a customer? To go to the theatre? To go to a lap-dance club? (I did know a client who tried to claim "entertaining" for his visits to an address in Soho...)

So regular record-keeping - yes please. But it depends on the size and complexity of your business whether that should be on Xero or similar, on Excel, or written out by hand. If one of these methods suits you and your accountant - stick with it.


[P.S. My apologies for the use of "his/her" and "(s)he" in this article, but "Vivian" can be either a man's name or a woman's and I don't know whether Vivian at Xero is a man or a woman.]