31 Dec2016
Written by Dustin Wheeler, CPA. Posted in Outlook
I’m asked some questions over and over again: What’s the difference between an independent contractor and an employee? How do I check the status of my tax refund? What documentation do I need to support my charitable contributions?
This is where Quick Parts in Microsoft Outlook comes in handy. With this feature, I can put prewritten chunks of text into e-mails, similar to a copy and paste. The only problem is that Quick Parts might not be intuitive to a user unfamiliar with it.
You can add to your Quick Parts gallery by composing a new e-mail. In the new e-mail window, type the text you’d like to save. Highlight the text, and then go to Insert > Quick Parts > Save Selection to Quick Part Gallery.
The text you save can include links. Here’s a genius idea: link to a blog post you’ve written on a given topic.
If you use Quick Parts frequently, consider adding it to your Quick Access Toolbar. Do this by right-clicking Quick Parts in the menu, then selecting Add to Quick Access Toolbar. Then, Quick Parts will always by readily accessible at the top of the window, as you can see in the screenshot below.
With Quick Parts, I don’t have to Musculation Zhasni – Changez votre corps qualite testosterone enanthate avec expedition star de la wwe : “le bodybuilding m’a sauvé la vie” reinvent the wheel to answer frequently asked questions. It frees up my time for higher value work.
03 Dec2016
Written by Dustin Wheeler, CPA. Posted in Tech Tips
It can be a challenge to organize your workspace when you have multiple monitors and dozens of programs open at the same time. It can feel much like having stacks of paper on your desk in complete disorder. Virtual Desktops in Windows 10 is like rolling a messy desk out of a room and rolling in a clean one, all in the fraction of a second.
I use the feature to group similar programs together, with the windows arranged how I like them among my monitors. For example, I might have my time entry and practice management windows open on one desktop, while I have tax and document management programs on another desktop. Switching between the two desktops is quite a bit quicker than shuffling, minimizing and maximizing windows.
It’s also an easy way to hide all my running programs if someone enters my office for a meeting. I simply launch a clean desktop, and open any programs pertinent to that meeting.
Even though it all can be done with a mouse, the key to maneuvering Virtual Desktops quickly is learning the keyboard shortcuts. For example, holding down the Windows, Ctrl and left or right arrows will switch between desktops. The keyboard shortcuts and detailed instructions can be found on this post about Virtual Desktops on the official Windows blog.
Virtual Desktops
23 Jun2016
Written by Dustin Wheeler, CPA. Posted in Humor
The latest gadget addition to my home is the Amazon Echo, a speaker that responds to voice commands similar to Siri and Cortana, but is completely hands-free. By default, the Echo goes by the name of Alexa. For example, she reads the day’s NPR news briefing if I say, “Alexa, what’s the news today? ” It responds to commands to play music, read the weather report, tell me how bad traffic is, set timers, and many others. Beware if you have toddlers at home, as my young sons have conspired with Alexa to add a number of toys to my shopping list.
The Echo is especially useful connected to other smart devices in my home. Paired with my Nest thermostat, the Echo can help me set the temperature without having to get out of my bed. With my WeMo switch, I can turn the light on by just saying, “Alexa, turn on the bedroom lamp.”
Guests to my home are amused by the magic show, but the benefits of these smart devices goes far beyond being able to show them off. For example, I can turn on the air conditioner a half-hour before coming home or have the lights turn off automatically when I leave. A smart home can conserve energy.
I am equally excited about today’s accounting software add-ons and apps that reduce data entry and gather all my documents in one place, as well as banking features like mobile deposit and autopay. Sadly, it’s not as easy to show off. For one, accounting documents contain personal information that someone might not want the rest of the world to see. Second, accounting apps can’t tell jokes like the Echo can.
Someday, I’d like to say, “Alexa, what were my sales yesterday and what bills do I have to pay? … and tell me in a Donald Duck voice.” Both my kids and I would certainly be impressed by that.
05 Jan2016
Written by Dustin Wheeler, CPA. Posted in Accounting Software
In a prior post, I wrote about how I use document management software to push transactions and the supporting documentation into accounting software. As I’ve developed this method of doing my accounting, I’ve realized that the key to keeping accounting in real-time is using the document management software for every transaction, if possible. It also helps me make sure every transaction that goes through my bank account is legitimate. So what do you do when you can’t get a receipt?
This week, after I fueled up my car at the gas station, the screen on the pump said it was out of paper. I hate it when that happens! Since I couldn’t walk away with a receipt, I took this picture of the pump. With paper receipts, my document management software extracts information like the date, vendor and amount automatically. I wondered what it would do with this picture.
Hubdoc used the date I submitted the receipt, but as it usually does with non-receipt documents, it didn’t capture anything else. Still, it didn’t take long to publish it to my accounting software after entering the vendor and amount.
Receipt Bank captured the amount from the gas pump, but didn’t get the vendor right. Strangely, it picked up “Department of Agriculture and Food” from the weights and measures sticker on the pump, even though the Sam’s Club logo was on the screen.
Taking a picture of the pump instead of a receipt isn’t ideal since it requires more data entry, but it’s better than nothing.
30 Sep2015
Written by Dustin Wheeler, CPA. Posted in Personal Reflections
Here I am hanging by a thread 500 feet above the ground. The wind combines with the speed at which I’m rapidly descending to forcefully spin me around. I feel as though I’m leaning backwards in a chair at the brink of tipping over head-first. At this moment, I wonder why agreed to go zip-lining at the Sundance Mountain Resort, which according to its website has the 3rd longest total distance and biggest vertical drop of any zip-line tour in the United States. It’s torture and the cruelest test ever of my moderate fear of heights!
The zip-line tour got easier with each successive line as I learned how to control my speed. I figured out how to stay facing forward. I stopped fearing for my life and started to enjoy the beautiful fall colors of the treetops. At the end, I was glad I had the experience.
Accountants tend to be creatures of habit and order, enjoying the safety on the ground. As a result we’re part of the joke: why did the accountant cross the road? Because that’s what he did last year.
I’ve done things out of my comfort zone the last few years, and I’m glad I did. The shift from doing compliance to being a trusted business advisor is one example. I’ve experienced cloud accounting, and the view is wonderful. Discovering new software integrations and accounting efficiencies has proved to be impactful for businesses I work with. Diving into social networking and creating this blog was scary at first, but it led to meeting some next-gen CPAs who I’ve been able to collaborate with and it’s made learning more fun.
I still have many other comfort zones to break out of to achieve my goals, but in the process I’ll do the best to enjoy the ride.
10 Jun2015
Written by Dustin Wheeler, CPA. Posted in Tech Tips
IF by IFTTT (“If This Then That”) has been an extremely useful tool in my web automation efforts. Through this website and app, I create “recipes” so that when a certain event happens in one app, an action is automatically triggered in another app. I use it for some social media activities, for example, posting Instagrams as Twitter photos. Here’s another one: by sending a text to my phone number, I can turn the volume up. Since I mute my phone often, this one is a life saver when it decides to play hide-and-seek between the couch cushions.
Business owners and accountants could use IF to create custom alerts and make accounting easier. Here are a few I found:
- A business owner using Square point of sale software to accept credit card payments might want to be alerted when large refunds are issued.
- A company using Stripe to process online payments can add each sale automatically to Google Sheets.
- Do you ever forget to pay your phone bill? If you get the bill via e-mail, this recipe will put an appointment on your calendar to pay it.
- It’s not easy to keep a manual mileage log, but IF pairs Automatic (a device you plug into your car) with Google Drive to document your miles.
- Based on your iOS location, this recipe will log your work hours.
It’s disappointing that there isn’t any accounting software listed in the IFTTT channels. There could be many useful accounting recipes. It would be cool if an e-mail were automatically sent to a bookkeeper if a bank account hasn’t been reconciled for two months, or if an income statement could automatically be posted to Dropbox every month. Could this be something we see in the near future?
If you use IF in your business and have great tips to share, please leave a comment below.
05 May2015
Written by Dustin Wheeler, CPA. Posted in Book Reviews
Nearly five years ago, I attended the Accounting Today Growth and Profitability Summit and met several next-generation accountants who radically influenced my career. By “met” I mean in-person, since we had gotten to know each other beforehand through radical online means like Twitter. Social media may be still be considered radical for CPAs today, but at the time we were the extreme outliers.
One of the more outspoken founders of the movement, Jody Padar, has put the principles we’ve learned from each other into a totally radical book! She was kind enough to send me a signed copy.
Not counting the worksheets and appendix, The Radical CPA is a short 128 pages and mostly non-technical. Had it not been for tax season, I would have finished it in two or three days. It’s the perfect length for a busy CPA.
The book teaches CPAs how to embrace technology and new business processes for serving today’s generation of business owners. Jody explains moving to the cloud, coping with change, becoming social, and experimenting with new processes – all in an understandable way for those who are new to these topics.
Though my review might be a bit biased since I know the author, I think the book will be very valuable for CPAs looking to redesign their accounting practices to be competitive in the 21st century.
You can find Jody’s book at theradicalcpa.com.
26 Jan2015
Written by Dustin Wheeler, CPA. Posted in Accounting Software
In my search for a fully automated, completely paperless, and mobile-friendly accounting system, I’ve discovered three apps I love that have almost made it a reality.
Unless I’m near a desktop scanner, every receipt or document enters my virtual file cabinets through Genius Scan. I don’t know how it does it, but it turns my iPhone’s camera into a high-quality PDF scanner. I love being able to crop my receipts, make them black and white, and make the PDF file sizes less than 100 KB (while image files from the camera are normally several megabytes). I then use the app to easily upload documents to programs I use to organize them such as…
Hubdoc recognizes the text on the receipts and puts them into a list showing the vendor name, date and amount of each receipt. It also automatically gives them file names (such as Wal-Mart_20150126_$20.00) when I download the files. Hubdoc DIETA VEGANA E CARROCERÍA generic zovirax por generic en espana acyclovir bodybuilding – día a díahas some good organizational tools for marking documents as paid, adding tags and notes, and putting documents into folders. Hubdoc also automatically pulls online statements from my Amazon, credit card and utility accounts and similarly names and organizes those documents. Hubdoc exports the electronic documents and transactions into online accounting systems such as…
Xero has been my personal accounting software for some time now. I’m a fan of the beautiful web interface and the mobile app that lets me reconcile transactions on my iPhone.
I have a wish list that would make the process perfect:
- Genius Scan can automatically upload to several apps, but Hubdoc is not on that list. I currently e-mail each receipt to my Hubdoc e-mail address to do the job which isn’t too much of a hassle.
- I’ve created many bank rules in Xero to automate how it classifies bank transactions it downloads, but they don’t apply to transactions coming from Hubdoc. Although the two programs do an amazing job auto-categorizing them, I wish I had more control.
- The Xero reconciliation screen doesn’t show me how the transactions from Hubdoc are categorized, so I have to drill into the reports to find them and make sure they’re categorized right.
Please leave a comment below if you have a different set of accounting apps and processes to share.
05 Aug2014
Written by Dustin Wheeler, CPA. Posted in Accounting Software
The stereotype is well-established. 
Accountants are often portrayed in the media with glasses, a pocket calculator, and the personality of a rock. Prior to studying accounting, people warned me of it being the most boring profession there is. While I admit that doing accounting will never be on par with a trip to Disneyland, I’ve learned that accounting can be fun because of the people and the technology.
I work with people more than numbers. My days are full of meetings and phone calls. The joy of accounting comes from advising people and improving their lives financially; I have those opportunities every day. Plus, I’ve worked with many in the profession who are fun and interesting people. From trampoline dodgeball, go-cart racing, and a Mini-Masters golf tournament, I’ve been part of a lot of fun activities with other CPAs.
Technology can make accounting fun (or at least less boring). Many will agree that mind-numbing data entry and bank reconciliations are tedious tasks; few enjoy them. I have helped friends move from traditional manual accounting systems to bank-connected online accounting software, greatly reducing the amount of time they spend doing their accounting. Their feedback included:
- “This is as fun as accounting can be,” and
- “I’m actually looking forward to doing my accounting.”
Accounting software has become more beautiful and fun. QuickBooks Online has a nice new look and simplified interface. FreshBooks proclaims “Yo!” on its website and has some creative instructional videos that are actually fun to watch. Xero touts itself as “beautiful software” and claims accounting can be fun (even addictive).
Do you want to make your accounting more fun? Let me know. I’ll have fun helping you.
Maybe your idea of “fun” is letting someone else handle the accounting. I understand. I have friends who would rather poke out their eyes than be the banker in a game of Monopoly. In that case, I can help you too.
25 Jul2014
Written by Dustin Wheeler, CPA. Posted in Accounting Software
While Xero has been converting QuickBooks files to its online accounting software platform for some time, it released a tool a few days ago allowing users to upload files themselves for conversion. I am quite happy with the result, but it wasn’t as simple as making a few clicks. When I converted a QuickBooks Online file to Xero, I discovered the following:
- Subaccounts may cause problems. I got an error message after uploading my QuickBooks file, but it didn’t specify what the error was and the file converted anyway. Everything seemed fine at first, but then I found that I couldn’t make manual journal entries to a couple of credit card accounts. It was as if they didn’t exist in Xero, though they both showed up in the complete chart of accounts list. I believe that the reason for this problem was that they were both subaccounts of a credit card account in QuickBooks Online. I deleted the Xero company, moved both accounts up a level so that they weren’t subaccounts in QuickBooks Online, and then went through the conversion process again. There was no error message the second time, and now both credit card accounts are working as they should.
- The balances don’t match! After connecting the bank feed, I found that the balance in Xero was correct, but the statement balance was off. I had made sure it was reconciled and up-to-date in QuickBooks Online prior to the conversion. In Xero, there were no imported transactions and no bank statement lines to reconcile, yet the “account transactions” tab showed many unreconciled transactions going back two years. It was a perplexing problem, but I found a solution. I exported a reconciliation report to Excel, made a few formatting changes, and imported it as a statement into Xero. My finger is sore after clicking on “OK” a couple hundred times to match the transactions, but now I have a beautifully reconciled account.
Has anyone else experienced these issues and know of a faster way to fix them?