QB Add-on Gives eBay Sellers New, Faster Way to Track Sales, Fees and Profits
Intuit Inc. says eBay has used the QuickBooks Software Development Kit to develop the eBay Accounting Assistant. This free application automatically downloads eBay transactions into QuickBooks, enabling eBay sellers to easily track their sales, fees and profits, according to Intuit. With an accurate and complete view of their finances, small business owners can make faster, more informed business decisions, the company says. Accounting Assistant was developed by eBay to allow its sellers, including approximately 430,000 people in the United States who run all or some of their business on eBay, to easily import eBay and PayPal transactions directly into QuickBooks, the company said. Before Accounting Assistant, sellers who wanted to track how they are making and spending money had to either manually enter transactions into QuickBooks or lump a batch of transactions together and track them as a single line item, Intuit said. Manually entering individual transactions can take hours and entering lump sums can lead to mistakes in the books, the company said. With Accounting Assistant, eBay sellers eliminate these problems and have an accurate easy way to manage their business, Intuit said.
Source: Intuit.com READ MORE →
CPAs worry most about privacy and security issues in technology.
Only 15% are concerned with loose password policies. The study doesn’t say how many CPAs are unworried because they already have tough policies in place. But most experts say the biggest security and pivacy threats come from loose policies on password control, or lost laptops or PDAs.
But what are they doing about it? Which issues are they most concerned with? And what are they actually going to be investing in?
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New York and California are considering asking private companies to comply with SarbOx-type regulations, according to businessweek.com. California has began requiring nonprofits with more than $2 million a year in receipts to undergo audits. Colleen Cunningham, CEO of Financial Executives International, says compliance is not a matter of if, but when. “Private companies have the advantage of doing it right now at their own pace,” says Cunningham. However painful that may be.
“Sarbanes-Oxley doesn’t apply to nonprofits, but like ink in water it’s changing the way they operate,” says Charles Elson, director of the University of Delaware’s Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance, according to WSJ.com. “Suddenly you’ve got accounting firms that audit nonprofits clamoring for the same financial controls now in place at for-profits.” And nonprofit trustees want more transparency. Although they’re exempt from financial liability in most states except in cases of fraud, they worry that in this climate their reputations could be hurt if money is misused or the organization falters.
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Wireless networking is too critical to ignore for long.
By Rick Telberg
[Special for HP]
Imagine trying to operate a competitive business without a telephone. Obviously, that would have been impossible for the last 100 years.
American business is now waking up to the reality that being competitive without wireless technology will be equally impossible in the new century. Wireless by all accounts is fast becoming the dominant force in communicating with employees, increasing their job satisfaction and helping them produce the best results. Companies, particularly small and midsize businesses that wait too long to go wireless, risk falling far behind in all of those categories.
Businesses of all sizes are rushing toward wireless system implementation almost as quickly as they adopted personal computers in the early 1980s. More than 77 percent of North American organizations will have adopted wireless technology systems by mid-2005, with most of the implementations occurring at mid-sized businesses, according to IDC, while another research firm, Allied Business Intelligence, projects that wireless local area network equipment sales revenue will reach $4.5 billion in 2006, up from $969 million in 2000. READ MORE →
The U.S. and global economies are slowing, but there has been little negative affect, according to an analysis by The Conference Board, a non-partisan business research organization in New York City.
?While it is easy to attribute the slowdown either to Federal Reserve Board rate hikes or to high oil prices, it is likely that both have had a rather modest effect up to this point,? says Gail D. Fosler, evp and chief economist of the group, in a press statement. She cites the liquidity of American funds, the growth in personal income and a strong housing market as factors that have helped keep the slowdown below the media?s radar. The analysis revealed that domestic consumer demand is growing at a solid 3.5 percent annually, but imports are growing at a far greater pace due to growth in nearly every product category.
The board warned about the United States? ?inability to sustain? its current trade deficits. ?Even the U.S. cannot absorb both its own productive capacity and the rapidly growing excess productive capacity of the rest of the world,? the board said.
On the other hand, a Grant Thornton survey of CEOs says:
…The large majority of executives (68 percent) expect the economy will improve in the next six months. This optimism, however, is more tempered than six months ago when 73 percent predicted economic improvement, and down significantly from a three-year high of 83 percent one year ago. It is interesting to note that there was a jump in optimism after the U.S. presidential election. Sixty-three percent of business leaders surveyed before Nov. 2, 2004, believed the economy would improve, compared with 73 percent of those surveyed after the election.
WHAT DO YOU THINK? Cast Your Ballot Here, and Get the Results Early: http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?p=WEB224DBJ3PZRM
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Profession strives for faster, smoother, more profitable practices.
by Rick Telberg
At Large
Accounting practitioners face a host of operations problems these days. You could call it “task saturation.” But most people just say there’s too much work and too few people to do it.
Fortunately, accounting practices are actually getting more efficient. Consider the 10-person firm 10 years ago which focused on write-up. That same firm today may have distributed write-up software to its clients and can effectively handle the same number of clients with more revenue and maybe as few as two people in the office. That’s progress. And that kind of progress means profits.
Much of the gain in productivity has come with the help of new technologies – technologies that will be on display at the Tech 2005 AICPA Information Technology Conference next week in Las Vegas. We already reported on the perspectives of the meeting’s organizers in “CPA Tech: Ya Gotta Deal With It.”
Now it’s the vendors’ turn. READ MORE →
Profession strives for faster, smoother, more profitable practices.
Rick Telberg
[from the AICPA's cpa2biz.com]
Accounting practitioners face a host of operations problems these days. You could call it “task saturation.” But most people just say there’s too much work and too few people to do it.
Fortunately, accounting practices are actually getting more efficient. Consider the 10-person firm 10 years ago which focused on write-up. That same firm today may have distributed write-up software to its clients and can effectively handle the same number of clients with more revenue and maybe as few as two people in the office. That’s progress. And that kind of progress means profits.
Much of the gain in productivity has come with the help of new technologies – technologies that will be on display at the Tech 2005 AICPA Information Technology Conference next week in Las Vegas. We already reported on the perspectives of the meeting’s organizers in “CPA Tech: Ya Gotta Deal With It.”
READ MORE →
Going on vacation? Ponder these vexing issues for the profession.
by Rick Telberg
(First appeared at the AICPA’s cpa2biz.com)
With the dog days of summer fast approaching, many CPAs and financial executives will be taking a well-deserved breather.
For some, just thinking about work could take their breath away. The reason is that the profession, for all its strength in rebounding from adversity, faces a bevy of vexing issues.
Here are five of the most important issues, as gleaned from the reports of several of the profession’s savviest people.
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Here are the top-line results from study launched with “CPA Marketing Goes Ballistic.”
by Rick Telberg
Marketing has come a long way in CPA firms. It’s no longer a matter of talking up neighbors at cocktail parties, buying someone lunch, and/or even offering new services to existing clients – although all those things still happen and remain essential ingredients to practice growth.
KEY FINDINGS:
1) The vast majority of firms are planning MORE AGGRESSIVE marketing.
2) BROCHURES, ENTERTAINMENT AND SEMINARS will be the tactics of choice.
3) NEW TRENDS: Half will use email newsletters. One in five will use telemarketers.
4) Seven in 10 respondents are PARTNERS, indicating top-level involvement in business development.
5) Most of the rest of respondents are MARKETING DIRECTORS, suggesting continuing professionalization.
READ MORE →
New accounting grads enjoy a hot job market. Can you offer what it takes to land the best and brightest?
by Rick Telberg
(For AICPA/CPA2Biz)
If you’re looking to new college graduates to ease the CPA staff shortage, you may need to up the ante a bit.
Overall, hiring for new graduates is up 13 percent over last year. And, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, accounting majors are in hot demand. In fact, four of the top 10 most sought-after majors are in accounting, finance or consulting. READ MORE →
