Category: Weblogs

Tax Haikus

Kelly Phillips Erb (aka @TaxGirl) has a blog post over on Forbes where she is challenging users to create haiku about taxes.  I composed a few, and have posted them here for you, the gentle reader of this blog:

The cloud is coming
to accounting firms today
Is your firm roadkill?

Exhausted Tax Pros
Often collapse with a copy
The Master Tax Guide

Quickbooks and Peachtree
Are your tools to organize
Your client's shoebox

The hours are long
But the work is rewarding
Thank you, Phil Yaeger

Cubicles are full
of toiling staff and interns
burning midnight oil

 

Where in the World is Brian???

 

Dan Meyer has mentioned the CPA Firm Tech Blog in his update to the 12 Blogs of Christmas (see http://tickmarks.blogspot.com/2006/11/revisiting-2005-twelve-blogs-of_29.html). Dan writes a great blog, and is a professor at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, TN.

Sorry the postings have been so thin lately. I just made Platinum Medallion with Delta and Diamond VIP in the Hilton Honors program, so the travel has been nuts. I’m returning from a three day swing through Seattle, Spokane, and am now headed for Nashville, and a much needed office day on Friday.
I’m counting down until the cessation of 2006 travel on December 15th. The next two weeks will see me in Nashville, Knoxville, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, Fargo, Indianapolis, D.C., Greensboro, Louisville, and Milwaukee- definitely a record for me.

I have a forthcoming post on the free accounting software revolution- the war between Peachtree, Office Accounting 2007 (SBA), and QuickBooks has heated up to the point that there are free versions of all three products targeted at new businesses. Smart CPA firms may make the decision to favor one or two of the products over another, but you should be thinking now about what your strategy is going to be for dealing with each of the ‘Big Three’ small business financial management applications.

I am also working on a comparison of the big three partner programs. Each has strengths and weaknesses, and I’ll be discussing how you can use these programs to reduce your total cost of application software. Sage, Microsoft, and Intuit all throw huge benefits to members of their partner programs, which are priced comparably to retail versions of software, and include training materials, technical support, reference materials, and copies of software for your firm’s internal use. Good stuff, Maynard.

 

Now where are Mr. Peabody and Sherman????

The lovely and talented Eva Lang of Memphis blogged the following entry in her blog about six weeks ago…. interesting to say the least.  BFT

Lawyers go “Wayback”

The article “Lawyers’ Delight: Old Web Material Doesn’t Disappear” in today’s Wall Street Journal, points to the fact that internet archives like the Wayback Machine allow discovery of web pages that have been deleted or updated, which can be a nasty surprise in court.   The article refers to a Canadian case where the prosecutors had used the Wayback machine to pull incriminating discussion group postings made by the defendant. The defense was “completely taken aback” by the postings because they had researched online using only the Yahoo search engine and didn’t know of the archives’ existence.  The case “is a warning shot” for all lawyers.

 

CPA Tech Blog mentioned in the Journal of Accountancy!!!

Eva Lang’s article, “Would You, Could You, Should You Blog?in the June 2005 Journal of Accountancy has been posted on the www.aicpa.org site.

The article mentions THIS BLOG in its discussion of accounting blogs.  Wow.

Eva, I’ll look you up next time I’m in Memphis.  I want to thank you in person for the publicity….