Posts Tagged ‘Get organized’

Spending less time searching for what’s lost

Misplaced items produce negative emotions like nothing else. I’ve felt the frustration of not being able to find matches when it’s time to light the birthday cake candles, the anxiety of my eyeglasses falling behind the dresser, and the panic of not knowing where my phone is when it’s time to leave for work (only to realize it was in my pocket the whole time). Over the last few years, technology has helped me quickly and calmly find those things that commonly vanish:
  • For a lost phone that’s nearby, nothing is easier than making it sound right from your wrist. I’ve used my Apple Watch to ping my iPhone countless times. Another trick is to use a skill with an Amazon Echo to call a phone with simply, “Alexa, find my phone.”
    Tiles for finding lost things

    Tiles

  • I have several Tiles (see picture above) I can slip on a key ring to sound upon command from the Tile app on my phone. If a Tile is within Bluetooth range, it will play a tune until I find my keys, wallet, or whatever I’ve tied to the Tile. If the Tile isn’t within Bluetooth range, the app will tell me where it last had contact with the object (for example, that I left my briefcase at the office). Now, if I could just figure out a way to attach a Tile to my TV remote without duct tape…
  • I know people who are constantly forgetting their passwords, or writing them down and losing them. Stop those bad habits and use a secure password manager like LastPass.
  • Receipts are easy to lose, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Since I’m an accountant, it should come as no surprise that I’m ultra-organized and completely digital with my personal finances. This comes in handy when I’m at the auto repair shop and asked when I last replaced the tires. Hubdoc has helped to automatically organize my financial documents, and one of its best features is recognizing the text within receipts. So all I have to do is search my Hubdoc account for “tires” and wallah!
With these tools, I can confidently say with my best Liam Neeson impression, “I will find you.”

Priorities

This month, I’ve pulled The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey off my bookshelf.  Though I’ve read it a few times, each time I re-read it, I discover something new that inspires me.  This time, I’ve given a lot of thought to the time management matrix which classifies activities by urgency and importance.  Like many people, my time is consumed by urgent tasks, though not all may be important.  Often neglected are less urgent, but deeply important activities that move me toward accomplishing my long-term goals. In a deadline-driven profession like accounting, it is easy fall into the mode of “putting out fires” with tasks that require immediate attention.  How do I make sure I get around to doing the less urgent, yet extremely important, activities of personal development and relationship building?  I found the answer in the book:
The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.

Cool feature alert – attach receipts in FreshBooks

A couple months ago, FreshBooks added an awesome feature to its online billing and accounting software: attaching expense receipts to invoices.  I am a big fan of the integrated document management, which makes digital documents always available for quick and easy retrieval.  Plus, receipts can be attached in several file formats from whatever device is convenient.  Check out this video from FreshBooks showing users taking pictures of receipts with smartphones and tablets.
Since it looks so easy in the video, I tested attaching receipts from each of my devices. On my desktop computer, I clicked on the “attach image of receipt” link while adding a new expense.  A “choose file” button appeared below the link, and after I clicked on it, a file explorer window opened.  I navigated to the file’s location on my computer and double-clicked it.  That was easy enough to meet my expectations. After tapping my finger on the “attach image of receipt” and “choose file” buttons on my tablet (a 10.1″ Samsung Galaxy Tab 2), it prompted me to select an action from several options as shown in the screenshot below.  I chose the camera function.  After I took a picture of the receipt, it was automatically uploaded and attached to the expense in FreshBooks.  I don’t think it can get any easier than that! FreshBooks attach receipt tablet My smartphone, which runs on Android, is capable of doing the same thing as my tablet.  However, I can’t quickly launch FreshBooks, enter the details for a new expense and attach a receipt with my smartphone’s small screen and cellular connection.  My solution is to use Evernote, one of my favorite mobile apps for taking digital notes.  The Evernote widget includes a camera button for quickly uploading pictures.  I uploaded a picture of the receipt with the Evernote app on my smartphone, and when I was later on my desktop computer, I downloaded the image from Evernote’s web application.  I then went to FreshBooks, added a new expense and attached the receipt image. If you have questions or are seeking the help of a FreshBooks Certified Beancounter and CPA in Las Vegas, please feel free to contact me.

A Refund from my Overfunded Escrow Account

Assorted international currency notes.
Image via Wikipedia
As I wrote in an earlier post, I use QuickBooks to organize my household finances.  Like every good accountant, I am detail oriented and keep meticulous records.  I keep every receipt, reconcile each of my accounts monthly, and split the expense categorization of grocery bills between food, cleaning and baby products (OK, just kidding on the last one). One transaction that I do split out every month is my mortgage payment.  My mortgage payments are made up of three parts: loan principal, interest, and escrow.  In case you don’t know what an escrow account is, it’s a cash account that the lender holds and maintains to pay property taxes and hazard insurance. To keep track of my escrow account balance, I created an account in QuickBooks for it under other current assets.  When taxes and insurance payments are made by the bank, I enter those in QuickBooks as expenses out of the escrow account.  I frequently tie out my escrow account balance in QuickBooks to the loan statements. Lenders usually do an escrow analysis every year to adjust the amount of the escrow payment so the balance in the account is sufficient to cover the expenses.  Usually, the amount of the mortgage payment goes up as tax and insurance rates increase.  However, in my case, I significantly decreased my insurance payments (a good subject for another blog post) and my property tax payments have also decreased due to the crash of the Las Vegas real estate market. Recently, I noticed that my escrow account had a large balance despite barely having made payments for taxes and insurance.  I sent the following e-mail to the bank:
I think our escrow account is overfunded. I’d like to request an analysis and receive a refund of any overfunded amount.
The next morning, I was delighted to receive the following e-mail from the bank:
Per your request, we have analyzed your escrow account based on the current escrow balance. Your new mortgage payment is $X effective September 01, 2010. Also, an overage amount of $X has been mailed to your mailing address.
Sometimes having organized financial records pays off.  I’ve got the check to prove it.
Enhanced by Zemanta

The Importance of Accountability in a Personal Budget

Many years ago, I was involved in an organization in which I and other volunteers received a weekly allowance to cover various expenses such as transportation and meals.  In one of our meetings, the president of the organization announced that some of the volunteers had come to him and complained that the allowance wasn’t sufficient to cover the expenses (I was not one of them).  He told us that he would consider increasing the amount of the allowance for those who would provide a detailed accounting of their expenses proving a need for a higher allowance.
At our next meeting about a month later, the president said that nobody had presented a list of expenses, so he assumed our allowances must have been sufficient. I could see the embarrassment in the faces of the others in the room.  With the task of keeping track of their expenses, those people probably paid more attention to what they were spending money on and realized that many of those expenses weren’t really necessary. I’ve been to many seminars and seen TV shows about making a personal budget, and while they may offer some good money saving tips and show how to make a fancy budget spreadsheet, I’ve found many of them lacking in the emphasis of accountability.  An ideal spending and saving plan doesn’t provide much of a benefit without the ability to compare actual expenses to budgeted amounts. Without organized financial records in place, people are left wondering, “where did all the money go?”  They might make a guess on how much they spent during the past year on clothing, gasoline, or food; but from personal experience, I know those estimates are usually way off.  By the way, I don’t think having a year-end spending statement from a credit card company counts as being financially organized. The best way to organize personal finances is to use a good computer program (I use QuickBooks, and here’s why) that puts together all of a person’s financial information, including  bank, investment, loan, and credit card accounts.  I began doing this a few years ago, and since then, I’ve been able to solve the riddle of “where all the money goes.”