Blog Archives
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Blog: Which Browser is the Safest?
By Dave McClure, Contributing Writer/Columnist - Tuesday June 18, 2013From the Bleeding Edge blog . If you are still relying on a firewall and anti-virus programs to protect your computer from malware and other problems, your security is about 10 years behind the bad guys. Today, the battlefield is no longer email (though there are still lower-level bad guys pushing their phishing schemes, spam and infectious viruses through emails). The real threat is through your browser, and in particular the add-ons that you use to enhance your browsing experience. If you are looking for the browser that does the best job of keeping you safe, though, you may be shocked. One of the leading culprits today, when it comes to making your computer vulnerable, is the suite of Java scripting add-ons from Oracle. Java is... -
The New Controller Checklist
By Bethany O'Hoyt, - Tuesday June 18, 2013Anyone who has been hired into the controller position for the first time may feel overwhelmed, since the job description involves an enormous range of responsibilities. Where to begin? The answer is simpler than you may think. Always focus on the ability of the business to survive. Thus, if there is not enough cash on hand to pay the short-term obligations of the business, all other controller responsibilities are insignificant, because the company will no longer be in business. Thus, you should address the following issues first, and in the order presented: 1. Create a short-term cash forecast. Develop a simple cash forecasting model on an electronic spreadsheet that tells you the expected cash balance at the end of each week... -
The Rise of Practice Management
By Dave McClure, Contributing Writer/Columnist - Thursday June 13, 2013From the Bleeding Edge blog If there were ever a Hall of Fame for accounting software executives, I would not be inducted. That honor will be reserved for guys like Scott Cook of Intuit, Clyde Drake, René Lacerte and executives of a dozen other software companies.[Editor's note: CPA Practice Advisor has a Tax & Accounting Hall of Fame for practitioners and thoughtleaders affecting the profession.] But I can tell you that I have been in this business for a very long time, and seen the shifts of time, development and trends among CPA firms and their software vendors. Which is why I can tell you that the growing emphasis on practice management is a big thing. Back when people started using the term, it seemed like just another... -
Are Millions of Americans Tax Cheats? Most Who Buy Online Probably Are
By Isaac M. O'Bannon, Editor - Tuesday June 11, 2013Are you paying all of your taxes? There's a good chance you're not. Tax professionals know it. Most accounting professionals know it. When it comes to businesses, most follow at least the letter, if not the spirit, of the law. But most other Americans still don’t seem to understand that they are probably a tax cheat. I’m not talking about 1040 returns and April 15. This isn’t about federal income taxes… it’s about sales taxes . Which actually still has something to do with April 15. [Opposing view: Taxing Internet Sales is Wrong and Doesn't Help Main Street ] More than 60 percent of Americans have, at some time, made a purchase online, according to data from the Pew Research Center and other organizations. More than 20... -
Firm Staffing - Is the term "Best and Brightest" just an illusion?
By Sandra Wiley, COO, Boomer Consulting - Friday June 7, 2013From the Bridging the Gap blog. In recent conversations about leadership training the words “best and brightest” slip off the tongue of firm leaders like a battle cry. We want to teach and motivate our best people to the highest level in the firm and we do not want to lose them to other firms or companies. We want to develop our identified super stars by teaching them, mentoring them and fast tracking them to higher levels of responsibility at a more rapid rate than has been the case in past experience. The problem I see with our theory is that we do not analyze who the “best and brightest” really are. We currently identify by looking through the lens that has been formed in our eyes, through our experiences and by the... -
Hard Times For The GPS Market
By Dave McClure, Contributing Writer/Columnist - Friday June 7, 2013
From the Bleeding Edge blog . These are not easy times for the commercial GPS marketplace. That may seem peculiar to those who have grown up with these devices. In just a little over a decade GPS receivers have become standard equipment in telephones and automobiles, and GPS inventor Bradford Parkinson predicts that they will soon be used to navigate driverless cars. Consumer Reports has released its latest list of the best GPS units. Nonetheless, the market for these and other stand-alone GPS navigation devices is slowly eroding, due to three factors: GPS devices built into the dashes of automobiles, and even more so the GPS systems offered in smartphones is eliminating the need to buy a dedicated device. This leaves... -
IRS Alert: IRS retiring two e-Services incentive products on Aug. 11
By Jim Buttonow, CPA; CoFounder and VP New River Innovation - Thursday June 6, 2013UPDATED: The IRS announced late last week that it plans to retire two major e-Services incentive products used by CPAs, attorneys and enrolled agents to file authorizations and resolve IRS account problems. The Disclosure Authorization (DA) and Electronic Account Resolution (EAR) products will be retired on Aug. 11, according to information received from IRS e-help desk representatives. The IRS posted an announcement on IRS.gov earlier today indicating that the products are being retired “primarily due to low usage.” The announcement has since been removed. As a general alternative to support functions previously available in DA and EAR, the IRS website offered phone support through the IRS Practitioner Priority Service (PPS... -
How Distributed Scanning Helps Streamline Accounting Workflow
By Dave McClure, Contributing Writer/Columnist - Tuesday June 4, 2013From the Bleeding Edge blog : I’ve been doing a lot of work writing and consulting on the topics of document management and workflow, and had seriously written off the hardware side of those critical accounting functions. After all, what more could be said about buying printers and scanners. Mike O’Leary at Ambir Technologies changed my mind. Ambir makes scanners and software for document management and workflow, and he took strong exception to the idea that you simply buy a big, auto-feed scanner and put it somewhere in the office. Instead, he presented a concept of distributed scanning by accounting professionals that made strong economic sense. To be fair, Fujitsu , arguably the leader in the scanner market for... -
Hey IRS, get off my cloud
By Rob DelGenio, - Thursday May 30, 2013In the wake of the resignation of the IRS Commissioner for the agency’s alleged targeting of conservative organizations, there is this chilling IRS policy position that the ACLU recently discovered : “The government may obtain the contents of electronic communication that has been in storage more than 180 days without a warrant.” We already know that the government isn’t supposed to tap our phone lines without a search warrant or read our mail or walk into our homes and rummage through our documents stored in file cabinets, no matter how long we’ve kept them there. So why does the IRS believe it can look at anything we keep in online cloud storage after it’s been there for six months? The answer may shock you: Because a... -
The Disadvantages of Budgeting
By Bethany O'Hoyt, - Wednesday May 29, 2013On the CPE Link Blog, we’ve discussed the Advantages of Budgeting , yet we did not discuss the number of serious disadvantages. This article gives an overview of the general issues, while the following sections address the particular problems associated with capital budgeting, as well as the use of budgets within a command and control management system. Inaccuracy . A budget is based on a set of assumptions that are generally not too far distant from the operating conditions under which it was formulated. If the business environment changes to any significant degree, then the company’s revenues or cost structure may change so radically that actual results will rapidly depart from the expectations delineated in...
