One of the most important tasks for a business that uses computers is backing up your accounting data. Everyone knows that, right?  Yet, few businesses do a proper job. In this article we’ll discuss how you should be handling backups.

Why You Need a Backup Plan for QuickBooks

Backups are boring, time consuming, and almost always put off until later. Many business people don’t understand what needs to be done – they treat their computer like a file cabinet that is holding all their papers safely and don’t do backups. Others will tell you that they DO take care of backups and do it often! In BOTH cases there is still risk. Consider the following points:

• Computers are not failsafe – they CAN lose information.
• People are not failsafe – they CAN accidentally erase files.
• People are not always honest, they CAN erase files (see this CNN video for an example).
• Disasters can happen – fires, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, even power failures can destroy your files in a moment.
• Backup programs and hardware are not failsafe – backups are WORTHLESS unless you test them periodically.

QuickBooks Backup Philosophy

There are many ways that we can talk about this topic. This article is not going to get into the mechanical details of how to make backups at this time. Right now we want to talk philosophy. The key elements are:

1. Make backups often enough so that it isn’t painful to recreate lost work if you have a problem. If you enter a few transactions a day and then lose a week’s worth of work, it could be easy to recreate that in a short time so make weekly backups. If you enter several hundred transactions a day, losing even one day’s worth of work is a problem, so make backups daily.
2. Layer your backups. Have causal backups that are easy to make and are used often, intermediate backups that are more formal and are marked in a log, archival backups that mark major events (new month, end of fiscal year). You can add more layers than this depending on your situation.
3. Vary your backup methods. Don’t rely on just one backup method, such as copying to a CD. Use local backups with removable media or on-line backups to the Internet. If one method fails for some reason, you have other methods.
4. Test your backup procedures. This is the concept that is missed most often. How do you know if your backups are any good? Don’t wait until a disaster to find out…

A QuickBooks Backup Plan

Examine the way your computers are set up, the kind of work you do, the volume of transactions you are entering, the number of people involved, and so forth. A custom backup plan would be implemented to fit your business needs. I know that backups are a pain to do so we have to find a balance between security and convenience – the most comprehensive backup plan won’t work if it is too much trouble to implement!

Here is a basic plan to start with:

1. Use the Save Copy or Backup feature in QuickBooks (in the “file” menu) to make a backup copy (not a portable company file) at least once a month. This backup file (QBB) should be saved to removable media, NAS device, or offsite internet location. This is a very important process that many QuickBooks users miss. People who make backup snapshots of their file system or file server tend to ignore this, thinking that they have taken care of making a backup, but there are other good reasons for doing this. Without going into a lot of detail, your QuickBooks database needs some “house cleaning” periodically. If you don’t do this, performance starts to suffer. QuickBooks is keeping a transaction log (a “TLG” file) which continues to grow as you use the program. If this gets too big your system starts to slow down. The only good way to handle this file is to run the QuickBooks backup procedure, which reconciles and reduces that file. If you have a multi user system you must run this backup from the same computer that is hosting the database.
2. Test your backups periodically. This is a critical procedure. If you are making backups it is because you may someday need to restore those backups. If a disaster happens and you need to restore, that is a terrible time to find out that you either don’t know how to restore, or that your backups weren’t working and you have bad data backed up. You must test your ability to restore a backup from each of the methods you are using, and you must validate that the backed up data is good. It is not uncommon to hear a backup was being made to a tape drive, with no errors being generated, but when someone tried to restore from the backup tape the data was found to be scrambled due to a hardware problem. Testing restore procedures is complicated, and very time consuming, but you should do it on a regular basis.

If you have taken the time to get this far in this article you deserve a pat on the back! It isn’t a fun topic to read, and it is a lot of work to follow through with, but it is critical to any business. Good backups are like insurance, you don’t want to have to use it but you absolutely need that protection. This is one of the cheapest kinds of insurance you can buy for your business.

Article courtesy of ebsAssociates, Inc–Dawn Ashpole, Vice President www.teachmequickbooks.com

In clinics, assisted living facilities, and hospitals everywhere, patient information that once was filed in folders and stored in massive document filing systems, is now managed electronically. Pen and paper have been replaced with precise databases designed for patient data to be saved, sorted, and parsed.

The problem is, at most facilities there remains an inevitable stream of paper documents that defy conversion to digital. The contents of these paper files have not yet found a home in a database field.

These might be paper documents originating outside the facility, like with lab reports, prescriptions, and patient supplied files. Or, they can be paper files generated by internal legacy processes, such as with hand-written notes. Added to this inescapable flow of paper are the typical non-patient paper files common to every business, like invoices, contracts, and office files.

How to effectively digitize these remaining streams of paper documents in healthcare and retirement facilities will be the topic of a special 30-minute Webinar presented by Resource One with ColumbiaSoft at Noon on February 14.

Considerations for managing the privacy of patient related records will be addressed, as well as the advantages of associating digital patient files in an electronic document management system with their data record counterparts in an EMR system. Potential gains in patient care stemming from the automation of document routing and notifications will also be explored.

To register for this informative event, visit:

https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/982135302

Allowing people to access information they need, anytime – anywhere in the world, means they can quite literally self-serve their own needs without having to call on people back in the office to find and send files. What could be smarter.

Imagine employees, vendors, and clients alike all having a safe and convenient way to upload and retrieve files from your office without loading software, hassling with email and file-size-limits, or getting tangled in the chaos of FTP. Putting your office online by hosting your own information system for people to securely access files is easier than you might think. Like all online solutions, people use a Web browser to log-in and access the information. Anyone you authorize can have access.

For many, self-hosting the system on-site is the best of both worlds: you maintain control over the content in your office, while allowing others to gain access only to what they are authorized to from the outside.

Employees who are traveling or working at satellite offices are more productive and no longer need to have documents faxed, emailed, or worse… overnighted; authorized customers get their own project files without consuming employee time; and vendors submit important forms and invoices without files getting lost in an in-box. The possibilities are endless.

The capacity for resources both inside and outside of the company to collaborate with one-another while maintaining internal business controls is invaluable. This kind of collaborative exchange depends upon information management tools to provide a secure, intuitive portal for easily uploading and retrieving documents.

A 3-minute video introduction to such a Web accessible tool, Document Locator, is available here.

Revealing the hidden costs of paper in small business operations

You are invited to join Resource One and ColumbiaSoft for a Lunchtime Webinar on December 14.

Did you know that the average office worker is said to use a sheet of paper every 12 minutes? Although a seemingly mundane fact, the consequences add up.

By some estimates, if businesses in the U.S. were to cut their paper usage by 10%, it could eliminate as much as 1.6 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions – the equivalent of taking 280,000 cars off the road.

Increased environmental awareness is leading many to consider ways to reduce their carbon footprint and go paperless. It’s an aspiring resolution for the New Year. However, paperless for sake of the environment is not what drove most early adopters to electronic document management technology years ago. It is the many lesser-known hidden costs of paper that shifted companies towards paperless business processes long before global warming became a rallying cry.

New technology makes document management software affordable by all, and deployable in nearly any office circumstance. It’s making offices of all kinds not only greener, but also more efficient workplaces.

Whether it’s environmental concerns or business profits, a key to understanding the value of an electronic document management system is identifying all the costs associated with existing paper-based processes. Everything from the obvious storage and mailing, to the less tangible calculations surrounding risk when information is lost or decisions are made in error.

Eat your lunch at the desk and join us, along with document management software experts from ColumbiaSoft, for an online 30-minute lunchtime webinar on December 14. We’ll reveal many of the hidden costs of paper, and how eliminating paper streams in business processes in the coming year will improve productivity and accuracy for years to come. We’ll also take a brief tour of ColumbiaSoft’s Windows-integrated document management system so you can see first-hand how paperless alternatives can have a positive impact on the bottom line.

Register Now

Seven benefits of electronic document workflow for better business process management.

People work in processes. They create, receive, route, review, and approve content, documents and information. Automating the flow of content, and how people interact with each other in processes, streamlines business operations. Errors are reduced, productivity is increased, and the company is rewarded with greater profits.

Smart businesses are deploying Business Process Management tools like electronic document workflow to achieve higher margins from existing operations. Document Locator’s® integrated Document Workflow improves the bottom-line through business process automation… improving the way people, processes and content interact.

Click Here to Watch Video

1 – Consistency and Repeatability

Automating steps in business processes using document workflow ensures that each action will be optimized for consistency and repeatability. Confusion and guessing are eliminated, while trust and accountability among stakeholders and managers is increased. The need for manual intervention or management over individual process steps is diminished.

2 – Employee Efficiency

Paper-based, manual processes have high margins of error caused by delays, interruptions, duplications and user-influenced inaccuracies. These processes are also difficult to manage for accountability and control. Document workflow increases the efficiency of worker productivity by automating processes and improving how people interact with information. Workflow regulates the dynamic and complex flow of information as it is shared among people, reducing operational labor costs, and increasing the quality and accuracy of work.

3 – Eliminate Paper-based Processes and Costs

Pushing paper around the office, and shipping paper among different locations, is an inefficient and costly practice. Beyond the cost of paper itself, the cost of storing, handling, and shipping paper can add a significant burden to a company’s bottom-line. Electronic document workflow eliminates hard-copy costs by managing the flow of documents among people electronically.

• Over a document’s life-cycle, the cost of handling, storing and shipping a single sheet of paper can cost up to $30.
• The average office worker uses a sheet of paper every 12 minutes, over 10,000 sheets of paper a year, and disposes of 100-200 pounds of paper annually.
• 15% of paper files are lost.

4 – Faster Cycle-times

Time is money. Whether measured directly in employee labor cost, or indirectly in time-to- market or time-to-service losses… the amount of time spent on each step in a process builds to a significant cost factor. Electronic document workflow reduces cycle-times by automating steps in business processes so they occur faster and with greater predictability.
Workflow Examples

• Yes / No approvals with conditional branches based on value.
• Time-outs with notifications or reassignments based on schedule.
• Quality control points for review of defined samples of workflow instances.
• Team-based workflows that permit team members to complete steps.
• Custom process actions that integrate and interact with third-party systems.
• Manual process steps for scheduled pauses or non-system actions.
• Role-based workflow security prevents unauthorized access to events.
• Notifications and schedule reminders via email and/or Document Locator.
• Folder level user and group defaults configurable for workflow steps.
• Visual workflow diagrams integrated with Microsoft Visio.
• Notification templates customizable with logos, confidentiality statements, legal messaging, etc.
• Document Locator Workflow Examples

5 – Compliance and Regulatory Requirements

Business records and processes that are governed by regulatory requirements must be properly managed to avoid financial liability and risk. Where processes are regulated, document workflow allows you to define business steps in compliance with rules, laws and internal standards like ISO so that you can avoid the often severe consequences of penalties, fines, or legal actions.

• Automate review and approval steps.
• Record actions and log an audit trail.
• Secure information electronically.

6 – Continuity

A catastrophic loss of information can have a severe impact on a company’s ability to operate. The speed with which a company is able to recover can be the most critical factor determining the business’s ability to resume operations. Recovery of business processes is as critical to a successful re-start of operations as are the recovery of documents and content. Electronic document workflow provides the ability to back-up and retrieve company processes so that your company can quickly recover and return to normal business operations.

• As much as 70% of businesses would fail within three weeks if they suffered a catastrophic loss of paper-based records due to fire or flood.
• Odds of a catastrophic loss are: 1 in 4.

7 – Continuous Improvement

Business processes are not one-time events; they evolve over time. Defining steps in workflows allows you to continually improve operational processes, to optimize them for cost, quality, service, and speed. Continuous improvement is a systematic approach involving feedback, analysis, auditing, and corrective action that makes your business run more efficiently. As demonstrated in the Kaizen, Just-in-Time and Lean manufacturing business methods, it is an approach that allows you to cut the cost of operations, produce higher quality products at a faster rate, reduce waste, and build competitiveness.

Resource One, Inc is an approved reseller and implementation partner of Document Locator. Article and content provided by ColumbiaSoft Corporation.

Ponemon Institute recently surveyed over 4,000 IT security leaders in 12 countries to learn more about social media and its impact on their businesses. The survey provided interesting insights into the real and perceived consequences of social media use in the workplace.

In general, IT cannot (and should not) completely block the social media steamroller. Indeed, most respondents agree that the use of social media in the workplace is important to achieving business objectives. However, left totally open and uncontrolled, the results are increased security risks, higher bandwidth consumption, and lower productivity. Here are the survey highlights:

• The rapid spread of social media may have caught many organizations off guard. 63 percent agree that employee use of social media puts their organizations’ security at risk. In contrast, only 29 percent say that they have the necessary security controls—such as secure web gateways—in place to mitigate or reduce the risk posed by social media.
• Malware attacks have increased because of social media usage, and it’s growing. 52 percent of organizations experienced an increase in malware attacks as a direct result of employee use of social media, and 27 percent say that these attacks recently increased more than 51 percent. The United States, United Kingdom, Brazil, Germany, and Singapore report the highest increases.
• Only one of the three technologies that respondents favor can block advanced malware and data theft attacks. Respondents identified antivirus/antimalware (76 percent), endpoint security (74 percent), and secure web gateways (73 percent) as important protections. But only secure web gateways with real-time content analysis and data loss prevention can block advanced malware and data theft attacks, many of which seek entry through social media.
• Even if they have a policy that addresses the acceptable use of social media in the workplace, 65 percent say that their organizations do not enforce it or they are unsure. The top three reasons for not enforcing these policies are: lack of governance and oversight (44 percent); other security issues are a priority (43 percent); and insufficient resources to monitor policy compliance (41 percent).
• Organizations believe that IT bandwidth has been diminished as a result of social media use. The top two negative consequences of an increase in social media use were diminished productivity (89 percent) and reduced IT bandwidth (77 percent), which increase costs. Just under half (47 percent) believe exposure to inappropriate content is a negative consequence.

The full “Global Survey on Social Media Risks” report is online and can be downloaded here.

We take care of all these security and productivity concerns, “But only secure web gateways with real-time content analysis and data loss prevention can block advanced malware and data theft attacks, many of which seek entry through social media.” Todd Koopman, Territory Account Manager for SonicWALL.

Resource One, Inc is a registered Reseller of SonicWALL security products.

The kind of email system you use makes a difference. Full access and full control of your email account – even when on the go – can be essential tools for people who work in the field. But just the same, you might need a few tweaks to a less fully featured system to keep operations efficient and cost-effective.

Whether you work from an office or are productive while on the go, email most likely plays a big factor in the way you go about your business. Unbeknownst to many, some types of email systems have certain limitations that by extension can also limit the level of productivity of your business, and especially for people in the organization who must also work while out in the field.

One major issue for many people is synchronicity. Many people need their emails to be accessible on their mobile phones, PDAs, or other mobile devices, and they need them to be properly synchronized with their desktop workstations. The need to constantly update conversations and email threads from mobile devices to desktops with certain types of email can prove to be tedious and unproductive– and some email system types don’t include this ability at all.

Depending on the way you use your email, especially when on the go, having full access and full control of your account can define how productive you and others in your organization can be. Besides providing a much better degree of synchronization and integration with mobile devices, certain types of email systems also have features for sharing and collaboration features that allow you to set schedules and share files from your mailbox, as well as central storage for emails that allows you to access your account seamlessly with any mobile device, regardless of where you are located.

Of course, having a full-featured email system might not be best for everyone. The key is to know whether adapting a more bare-bones system is cost-effective for your business (especially in the long run). Sometimes the top of the line may be needed, and sometimes all you need is a bit of tweaking on your less fully featured system. Not sure which is best? Call us and we’ll be glad to sit down with you and assess what kind of email system is best suited for you and your business.

I wanted to reach out to you regarding the recent announcements made by Hewlett-Packard. As a committed HP Partner, Resource One, Inc. is dedicated to helping you understand the meaning and impact of these changes to you, our valued customer.

Included among the announcements was the HP board’s decision to evaluate strategic alternatives for the Personal Systems Group business. Although these may include a range of options, this was not an announcement of a shutdown of the company’s PC business.

Having now heard directly from Todd Bradley and other members of HP’s senior leadership team, I can tell you that HP remains committed – now more than ever – to driving growth of its PC business. A roughly $40 billion business, PSG is the largest PC business in the world with #1 market share and profitability in the PC industry worldwide.

HP is not taking its foot off the pedal now and will continue to drive leading innovation across its PC portfolio moving forward. You also can expect HP to continue the company’s strong and solid history of taking care of you, its valued customer. You should absolutely feel comfortable and confident in buying HP just as you always have, despite the confusion HP’s competitors might be stirring.

While there is uncertainty with change, I can tell you that I remain committed to HP and their products, and look forward to traveling on this journey with them. I also can tell you that I remain committed to you and will continue to keep an open dialogue with you as we identify the best technology solutions to help you run and manage your business. I encourage you to reach out to me with any questions.

Regards,

John Pavlik, President
Resource One, Inc.
2255 NE Cornell Road
Hillsboro, OR 97124
Office 503-640-5100 x 102
jp@roinc.com

Your reputation and your company’s reputation are important. When people talk about you or your company, depending on what’s being said, it can have either a helpful or a damaging effect. In the online world this can be even more challenging, as the proliferation of websites and social media tools make monitoring these comments more difficult to do. Here are some tools to help you make sense out of the sea of information—so you can keep track of and manage what’s being said about you or your business.

Besides your own eyes and ears, there are plenty of tools—for free or for a price—available to help you monitor your presence online. The simplest of these is your familiar search engines such as Google or Bing. By simply searching online, you can find where your name or your company’s name appears in various websites. With Google in particular, you can set up “alerts” which will email you when a specific word or term appears in their website index.

What words or terms should you use? Start with your name, or your company name, then try the name of your products and/or services, and maybe even the names of your employees, directors, and other stakeholders. It might also be helpful to search for the competition as well. As results come in you can refine your search by expanding or narrowing the scope of terms you would like to search or be alerted on. If you want to be able to search across all different search engines and not just one or two, you can use Monitor This.

Next you can use specialized website or social media monitoring tools to search only specific sites or services as opposed to the entire Internet. One example is Greplin, which allows you to search all of your accounts or accounts that you own. This is very helpful to be able to execute highly filtered searches on specific information in your Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn accounts, or your blog. Another option is Rollyo, which allows you to set up your own specialized search engines that cull content from public or open websites of your choosing.

Other more generalized tools include RSS feed readers—which allow you to consume news or information feeds from news sites or blogs. Examples include Newsgator.com, Bloglines.com, Google Reader or Pluck.com. Other generalized tools include those that monitor specific newsgroups or message boards like BoardReader.com, ForumFind.com, Big-Boards.com, BoardTracker.com, iVillage, Yahoo Message Boards, and MSN Money. Still others track changes to content of specific sites (Copernic Tracker, Website Watcher and WatchThatPage.com), as well as their domain information (DomainTools.com and BetterWhois.com).

The really interesting new services actually give you an explicit idea of the status of your reputation—especially if you are a relatively well known name or your business has an established brand. In this category are sites like Amplicate, which monitors general feelings or impressions about brands, businesses, or services; Klout, which tries to measure the influence of individuals based on their social interactions; and SendLove.to, which focuses on celebrities and media personalities.

There are literally dozens more tools you can use to monitor and manage your reputation online. To find out more, a great resource is here at the Duct Tape Marketing blog. If you have any additional suggestions, feel free to let us know!

While the decision to have some of your IT resources “in the cloud” can be a complex one, one area we get asked about often is email and productivity applications. Below is a summary from two industry giants: one from Google and the other from Microsoft, and see how they compare:

Google Apps
Google Apps is a service from Google that started in 2006, with the introduction of Gmail—a hosted email service, and which later incorporated other apps such as Google Calendar, Groups, Talk, Docs and Sites. Google Apps allow customers an independently customizable version of these Google products under their own domain name. The entry level option is free, but the package offered for Businesses is a paid service with an annual fee per user and additional storage space.

1. Storage. Gmail, Google Apps’ email service starts with a sizable 7GB of free storage. Business users get 25GB. Bear in mind however that this storage space is shared with any data you have in other Google properties such as Picasa Web Album and Google Docs. Extra space can be bought however starting with USD $5 per year for an extra 20GB of storage. E-mail attachment sizes are limited to 25MB.
2. Calendaring and Task Management. Gmail can be integrated with the overall excellent Google Calendar application. Google Calendar allows you to easily share personal calendars with colleagues, or create shared calendars used by groups of people (such as a calendar to track meeting room reservations, marketing events and others). Google Calendar also offers a built-in, but somewhat underpowered task management tool. Tasks can readily be added with due dates, but not readily shared or cannot be nested or linked with other tasks.
3. Spam filtering, security and reliability. Gmail’s spam filtering features a community-driven system. Email tagged as spam by users help identifies similar messages as Spam for all other Gmail users. Generally the system works well, although some have complained that it can get over aggressive in its filters. In terms of security and reliability—Gmail has been criticized in the past with showing ads in its free Gmail service that display based on key words in the user’s messages—potentially violating their privacy. Its paid service offers however the option of disable these ads. Reliability is generally good with very few, but widely publicized disruptions in service.
4. Usability. Gmail offers a host of unique usability enhancements that make it different from most other mail services. For one for a web app it loads really fast, as Google has been known to studiously optimize web page loading performance for their products. Another is that it offers a threaded view of messages by default. It also uses a starring/labeling system to tag and segregate messages instead of using folders. Another interesting enhancement done recently is the ability to sort messages by “importance” where it learns based on your usage over time what email messages it thinks you think are important.
5. Mobile access. Gmail offers a version optimized for mobile devices, as well as support for a variety of devices for their native mail applications such as iOS and Android.

Overall Gmail is a solid mature choice if you are thinking of moving email to the cloud and are not afraid of being on the bleeding edge of cloud services and technology.

Microsoft Office 365
Microsoft Office 365, like Google Apps, offers a host of applications such as online versions of productivity tools which we all already know and use such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Most however work best when they are used in conjunction with your desktop-installed Office applications. Focusing on email, Office 365 offers a Hosted Exchange service, which transforms the mature, business-proven on-premise application to an on-demand service. Compared to Google Apps, it is quite new—being introduced only last June this year, although its suite of products in an alternate form has been around for much earlier.

1. Storage. Microsoft’s Hosted Exchange email service gives users 25GB of storage. Attachment file sizes are limited to 35MB. Additional storage can be purchased for $2.5 per GB per user per month.
2. Calendaring and Task Management. Exchange integrates a mature feature set for personal productivity including calendaring, resource management, and task management. As an example tasks can be grouped, color coded and easily sorted. Emails can be converted as tasks and so on.
3. Spam filtering, security and reliability. This is an area where perhaps Microsoft easily outshines Google with Exchange’s roots as an enterprise-class application. It offers spam protection, antivirus and others via Microsoft’s Forefore Online Protection for Exchange technology. It offers other features such as more full features user management, identity access management, mail archiving, etc. If you are in a highly regulated industry like financial services or healthcare these features may be essential for your business.
4. Usability. While the web apps of Office 365 is not as fast loading or as slick as Google, it does offer familiarity. Modeled after their desktop brethren, or directly integrating with them—they offer a smoother migration experience for users specially if they have been weaned on Outlook.
5. Mobile access. Like Gmail Microsoft made sure to support a variety of devices on launch, as well as integration with a variety of devices—specially enterprise stalwarts like Blackberry mobile phones.

Overall Office 365 is a solid choice if you are thinking of moving email to the cloud but may be hesitant with changing the apps your users already know and use. Also if you are a business with strict policies related to security and compliance—this service may be something your auditors and IT people may be more comfortable with.

Interested in learning more? Can’t decide which to try? Let us know and find out how we can help get you the right balance between your existing IT systems and infrastructure and the cloud.