Tips and Tricks to Grow Your Business

I grew up along the Maine - New Brunswick border. Travel was a quaint and simple thing. US and Canadian border guards often knew people by first name. My grandfather once brought a puppy into Maine by holding it on his lap with a hat over it. The movie theater and better grocery prices were all on the Canadian side, now a distant memory.

One thing will undoubtedly cause you trouble: taking your laptop across borders, any borders. You may well have your laptop seized for hours or days as agents search through data looking for everything from terrorist/drug info to child porn to pirated software. Your sensitive files (company data to confidential legal notes communicating with clients) are going to be thoroughly examined or according to some reports, copied for further review. As you can imagine, this is turning into a scorching political and legal hot potato.

Some of the ways I've seen proposed (be sure to follow some of the links) to deal with this involve data work arounds such as carrying sensitive data on camera data cards. The problem with this is it has the feel of quasi-legal and you could wind up leaving your camera as well. Not a good solution.

One option still remains, one that I use frequently when I'm traveling anyway. I like to work remotely on my home desktop, which is a more powerful machine anyway. I prefer to use a program called Remote Administrator but there are others.

At any rate, our world has clearly changed and short of a change in law, international business people will need to find a new way to adjust.

Dennis

Technorati tags: Small Business, Business Law, Intuit

I've been traveling a lot this summer which took me into the Southwest (Tucson) to the Intuit campus. I got to meet a lot of the people I work with face to face (a big deal when you work remotely). I was a bit concerned about fitting in with the business culture, being that I tend to be a wee bit informal with my Willie Nelson ponytail. I shouldn’t have been. Not with the shorts and sandals and the like that I saw.

Now it was hot. I hadn't been in the Southwest this time of year for years and it was truly hot, 105 in Phoenix in the evening hot. The shorts reminded me of working in the Virgin Islands years ago. Shorts, t-shirts, sandals - everything that I could never get away with here in Minnesota. Heat and culture drive a lot of stuff, including how we dress.

But I draw the line with suit shorts (not that I saw any in Tucson). I can do without the shorts with a suit jacket and tie. Isn't going to happen. I may not be on the cutting edge of fashion; such is life. My advice? Dress with the surrounding culture with respect to the time of year. Don't dress in ways that call attention to how you are dressed at the expense of what you know and what you can do. Observe, use some common sense, and you'll do just fine.

Dennis

Technorati tags: Quickbooks, Small Business

PS: There is nothing casual about the way the Intuit team produces quality work. This team carries high professional standards, yet remembers to play as well. They treated me to some of their best Mexican cuisine; I'd repay the favor but nobody wants to come to Minnesota in February, especially with shorts.

At first glance I was a bit disappointed in Tanya Ha - The Green Office and Jon Clift & Amanda Cuthbert - Greening Your Office. At 5.95 for the first and 7.95 for the second, I expected more (although I have to admit, that is well below some prices I've paid for trade paperbacks lately).

The Green Office is published in Melbourne, a great asset for our friends down under, but the web resources in Further Information are all Australian, about as helpful for me here in Minnesota as the address for the county recycling center would be to somebody in Alice Springs.  This pamphlet is for our Aussie friends.

Greening Your Office is an A-Z dictionary of ecological terms that apply to office life. These terms are helpful but with a little diligent effort, you can find the same info for free all across the 'net.

Chapter 2 - Getting People on Board first suggests a staff suggestion box. Really?

You might glean a tip or two from either book. The information is right although basic. But 1. be careful what you buy online, make sure you understand what you are getting (note to myself, the Amazon descriptions now seem more complete than when I purchased) and 2. web surf for something else besides ball scores (the Twins are getting depressing).

A great green business to you,

Dennis

Now that I am back off the road (more about that to come), I've had a chance to check out what has happened to my favorite non-profit internet broadcaster. The station made an emergency appeal and has been able to restore all the high speed streams. At the same time they also eliminated all dialup connections as both impractical and sharply reduced in demand.

. Dennis

Technorati tags: Small Business, Quickbooks

Now you know you really do need to document what happens in your office. How do you go about it?

1. Start with the person responsible. It helps if this person has a determined bent to managing the details. Not everybody does and that contributes to ongoing failure in documentation. I know of one large organization where individual experts are responsible for their own contributions to documentation. There seems to be at least one most of the time who frustrates the best efforts of the documentation coordinator. Plan for success; get the right person.

2. Use your tools effectively. Using a fairly small percentage of your technology/software resources seems to be an axiom. If the key person is not adept at the outlining functions of Word, then get there. Find documentation that makes sense to you and borrow that outlining system.

You also need Visio or an independent contractor who can work in Visio. Visio is a package that allows you to build flowcharts and other devices that demonstrate work flows, building plans and organizational charts. If you don't have Visio yourself, you can get a free Visio reader to access the file.

3. The worst thing you can do next to doing nothing is to never update. Every time the file is updated, a revision number/date and initials need to go at the bottom of every page, an easy setting in Word. Print it out; put it in a bright fluorescent binder that nobody could miss. (If you have the tech savvy, you can even create an intra-company wiki to store your info.) Somebody has a question, that binder becomes the bible.

When office documentation becomes a habit, you will save on time and interruptions and improve your customer service and employee morale. Sounds like a win-win to me.

Dennis

Technorati tags: Small Business, Office Management

The rationale for documenting the who, what, when, where and how of what happens in your office:

1. Say you are out sick, maybe an extended leave of absence and without a lot of warning. Your replacement, temporary or otherwise, maybe a temp agency employee, sits down at your desk and says, "Now what?"

2. You are a volunteer treasurer in a non-profit agency or church. You walked into the job without much of any guidance. Now you're moving and you've given your resignation (or maybe the job got to be too much with the rest of life). The new treasurer stops by your office and starts to ask questions about how to do things and you think I can't really tell you because it's all up in my head.

3. Your business is involved in legal action over whether or not something was done that was supposed to be done. Can you demonstrate that you have a process?

4. You have an employee who is not measuring up. You've done everything you could (we're hoping) to move that employee ahead, but it's not happening. The employee files a complaint after being fired and states "didn't know that I was supposed to be doing that."

And you thought that 3-ring binder with all those loose papers stuffed into it was just collecting dust on the shelf. Any of the above scenarios could cause you some serious heartburn, aggravation that you can avoid with a plan. Now the question - how do you put that plan together?

Check tomorrow for part 2 about where to go from here.

Dennis

Technorati tags: Small Business, Office Management

If your business is heavily focused on retail customers, such as restaurants, you need to check out Yelp to find out more about what they are saying about you.

I found out about Yelp at Time: 10 Essential Sites. I especially like the ability of small business owners to directly email reviewers. We all know that word of mouth can get wildly skewed (unfortunately, nobody's customer base is 100% altogether…such is humanity). What business owners could really use is accurate feedback sans trash talk. Here is a better way to get it.

I like the city options, reminds me of Craigslist. These aren't all huge metro areas either. For instance, you can find a recent review of the Cazba-Downtown Mediterranean & Greek Food restaurant in Boise, ID.

How about promoting the use of Yelp with your customers? You get to keep your finger on the pulse (you never know what people are saying in their water cooler conversations). Your customer knows that any review isn't going to get buried in some data bank. You may even find that going out of your way to encourage public feedback will get you some positive feedback.

It's worth thinking about.

Dennis

Technorati tagsSmall Business

Since I've been associated with the QuickBooks community, I've known Laura Madeira as a community Allstar and QB Pro Advisor and as one of a handful of knowledgeable construction industry experts. She has always been approachable, even when she's on of her frequent business trips. The only difference between us is I think she functions better in the late evening when I have gone kaput!

So I was looking forward to the release of her new book Quickbooks 2008: Solutions Guide.

This book represents a great "marriage" of a top-notch tech publisher with an author with practical experience. I am a strong believer in self-education and have found Que Publishing to be consistently high-quality.

I just recently started on a QB Pro Advisor certification and I picked up Laura's book to help out. It fills out the rough bumps for anybody who advises QB users or anybody who is determined to find out for themselves how something is supposed to be working even when it's not (Solutions Guide is not construction industry specific). For instance, I've seen a number of questions about setting up for cash vs. accrual accounting. Turn to page 21. You can find not only the rationale but how to do it in various scenarios.

This book isn't for reading cover to cover unless you are a certified QB diehard. But it does belong on your shelf to augment the time you spend on quickbooksgroup.com. You may forget something if you haven't used it in a while. You can get back to speed in a real hurry with Solutions Guide.

Dennis

Technorati tags: Small Business, Quickbooks

Most of us who collect sales taxes have enough sense to pass through the funds collected to the appropriate agency. Sales tax questions in the QB forums are evidence of the struggle to make sure somebody does the right thing. Wish I could say the same of everybody, at least here in Minnesota. How in the world can somebody ring up hundreds of thousands of dollars in unreported sales tax, much less stay in business? Outside of the question about where it was really going (I can think of several interesting possibilities), I would think that would eat somebody from the inside out.

Minnesota has to display considerable due diligence before it prosecutes somebody on this score (based on Startribune: Sandwich shop owes $80k…). The sales tax, according to this report, is a "trust tax", your customers trust you to pay the tax on their behalf to the appropriate state agency. Here is where it gets really interesting.

Three months ago Minnesota became the first state to post the names, etc., of these tax evaders on the web. So far, the jury is out about how much this will improve compliance, but the consensus is that consumers might think twice about patronizing such a business. Sounds like a heck of an idea to me.

Dennis

Technorati tags:Small Business

My response to The App Gap - Is the Paperless Office Possible?:

Celine Roque accurately portrays the futurist desire for a paperless society. Granted, I read a lot of science fiction. The concept of a paperless society feels natural to me and I'm not the first person to observe that the growth of ebooks has been at least in the beginning dependent on science fiction geeks. I can live with that.

The obstacles to a paperless office can't be ignored and I have admitted their reality. Business procedures and government restrictions have promoted paper archiving despite the obvious financial, storage and environmental costs. But the argument can be made that government in particular is strikingly behind the technological eight ball in communication. Just spend some time trying to ferret out info on almost any .gov site. But because bureaucracy is inherently sluggish to respond doesn’t mean that "paperless" is any less valuable or worthy a goal.

I don't think technological incompatibility (i.e., sending a Word 2007 file to a Word 2003 user, a definite no-no) is the driving issue. We all could find ways to work around that.

The most telling part of her assessment is "we’re just more used to paper compared to computers (and other devices) for certain activities." I believe a very large percentage of people feel more confident if they have a piece of paper in hand or in file. It's all related to a basic human desire for tactile stimulation, something concrete. So far, devices have fallen short, just as she says.

Case in point - I am in the middle of working on a QB Pro Advisor certification. The work is all online. In the lessons are several "flip books" related to QB and accounting issues. Sometimes I'm on unfamiliar ground, so Saturday last I printed every flip book in Segment 2 of the course. I couldn't make my mind wrap around the content any other way. I spent $21 on a printer cartridge and filled a three-ring binder. Sometimes you just have to have something in your hand.

Dennis

Technorati tags: Small Business, Quickbooks/a>