small business – Page 14 – Cooper Mann Consulting

July 27, 2016December 15, 2017

The Cloud and the Business Desktop

Cloud computing is here – no longer is it considered to be temporary or just a fad. Even though there are many businesses in the country without access to high quality high-speed Internet connectivity, the levels of investment and revenue surrounding cloud and mobile computing solutions and technologies has proven that mobility and managed service matter to those who are connected. What’s interesting is that the popularity of the cloud and the emergence of cloud-based applications and services haven’t really put much of a dent in the need for the desktop, which remains as the business workhorse and – connected or not – represents the foundation for business productivity and getting work done.

Some years ago, business applications began to emerge in SaaS (software-as-a-service) format, meaning a customer could simply subscribe to an application on the web rather than purchasing and installing software. This option clearly resounded with many business customers and ushered in an era of online application services oriented specifically toward mobile users. Yet the desktop remains as the place where online solutions meet productivity (export any online data to an Excel spreadsheet recently?) and where accounting and finance connect with the rest of the operation.

Believing too much of the marketing-speak around cloud computing, many business users believe that they can only remotely access business software solutions if they are “cloud” and subscription model applications, and that the desktop products they know and have invested in cannot be available to them in a fully managed online model. In fact, a large number of the business owners I speak with that actually use hosted desktop services somehow believe that the software they are using is something special and different from that which would be installed to their PCs. The fact is that the software is not different, regardless of what they may think. More often than not, the hosted applications are EXACTLY what the customer had previously installed (or would have installed) to their own computers had they not been working with a hosting provider. Whether they are hosted or not… the desktop products generally function with all the features and capability designed into them because they are hosted on platforms they were designed to run on (like Microsoft Windows, for example).

Customers of the QuickBooks hosting companies often refer to their systems as “QuickBooks cloud, but not the online one”, not really understanding that it is simply the full desktop application that is being hosted for them.

Regardless of how many online application services emerge, and even if (IF) web-based versions of our favorite word processing and spreadsheet software become as useful as the installed kind, there will still be a need for the desktop if for no other reason than to make it easier to use and work with a variety of solutions at the same time. Perhaps this is why remote desktop computing and hosted application services are becoming increasingly popular approaches to cloud and managed computing services. The user benefits from having the feature-rich applications they need and a single place to access them and make them work together (the desktop value proposition), yet is able to have remote and mobile access, comprehensive system management and maintenance, data protection, helpdesk support and affordable monthly payments (the cloud value proposition). In many ways, application hosting models represent the best of both worlds for the business.

J Joanie Mann Bunny Feet

Make Sense?

Consider how beneficial it would be to businesses who want the advantage of remote desktop and mobile access to applications to be able to run their QuickBooks (feature-rich desktop QuickBooks) and/or other business applications in an anytime, anywhere sort of environment. Businesses can obtain hosting services for QuickBooks Pro, Premier, and Enterprise – allowing organizations to have their QuickBooks financial applications managed, protected, secured, and made available to users all the time and from any location. Some hosting services may also support integrations and extensions for QuickBooks – for both desktop and Web-based applications and services. When the host can provide authorized subscription licensing for Microsoft Office, a business can have a complete, outsourced IT solution and pay only monthly service fees to get it. No installation or system management to worry about: the QuickBooks financials, the productivity, the operational systems and plugged-in applications can all be hosted in the cloud.

May 23, 2016

Taking Action to Expand Overtime Protections | whitehouse.gov

The Department of Labor is finalizing a rule to update overtime protections for workers. “In total, the new rule is expected to extend overtime protections to 4.2 million more Americans who are not currently eligible under federal law, and it is expected to boost wages for workers by $12 billion over the next 10 years.”

Source: Taking Action to Expand Overtime Protections | whitehouse.gov

This is a difficult subject for everyone involved – workers and business owners alike. Increases in minimum wage, increases in employee health care costs, and adjustments to wage and hour regulations all serve complicate and cost businesses more. Fair payment for time worked, a living wage, and protections for workers from employer abuse are things that are expected – deservedly so – by employees. Definitions vary, as do circumstances, so a one-size rule never really fits all and someone, somewhere, feels the burn.

A USA Today article on the subject describes Labor Secretary Thomas Perez as saying “the salary threshold was originally intended to exempt high-paid executives but instead has denied overtime to low-level retail supervisors and entry-level office workers who often toil 50 to 70 hours a week.”

On the other hand Dan Bosch, head of regulatory policy for the National Federation of Independent Business, was described as saying that “many small businesses can’t absorb the added cost and will instruct employees to work no more than 40 hours a week, bringing on part-time workers to pick up the slack”. From Trey Kovacs, policy analyst with the Competitive Enterprise Institute: “The Obama rule puts a huge cost and regulatory burden on employers, who will face pressure to cut back on benefits and full-time employees”.

A bill was introduced on Thursday by Republican congressional leadership hoping to block the proposed overtime rule. The proposed legislation, Protecting Workplace Advancement and Opportunity Act, is intended to ensure that the Department of Labor takes a “balanced and responsible approach to updating federal overtime rules.” Sponsors of the legislation include members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions and the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Part of the bill’s consideration may be the burden of record keeping and information management that just keeps growing ever larger. The current DOL changes, for example, now suggest that businesses must keep time and attendance records in detail for their salaried employees who might qualify for overtime compensation. Getting employees to keep time cards or complete timesheets may not be an easy thing to do, yet punching a timeclock and tracking their hours may become their new normal. Some employers, on the other hand, will elect to simply raise workers’ base pay to the new threshold, avoiding paying the overtime and skirting the need to keep detailed time records.

The extension of overtime protection to another 4.2 million Americans, and boosting wages by $12 billion over the next 10 years is the expectation for the new rule’s impact, although opponents suggest that employment (and employers) will suffer, reducing their workforces while absorbing costly HR management processes just in order to comply.

The rule is likely to touch nearly every sector of the U.S. economy, with the most notable adjustments occurring with nonprofits, retailers and hospitality (hotel and restaurants), as these are the industries generally having management-level workers whose salaries are at or below the new threshold. Whether the outcomes of the rule will be as expected remains to be seen, but it is certain that many businesses must now put in place software, systems and processes which will help not just help them comply with new wage and hour rules, but deliver enough intelligence to support better personnel management, employee scheduling and labor cost containment.

Make Sense?

April 25, 2016March 31, 2017

Run Your [New, Small, Growing] Business from Anywhere

The office for a small business used to be where all the work got done. The hub of activity and productivity for a small business, the office was where you could connect with team members and co-workers and generally keep on the same page with what was going on in the business. Customer orders are taken, those orders are fulfilled, and bills are paid – all from the small business office. Yet today’s small business isn’t tied to the office location any longer.

Mobility and the cloud now provide businesses with mobile office options that allow users to get their jobs done no matter where they happen to be. Business moves at a fast pace, and mobility and remote access solutions help companies be more nimble. Collaborating while on the go and exchanging ideas and concepts quickly helps businesses be more agile and better-able to meet changing customer needs. Successful small business owners leverage mobility and action to beat the competition.

The cloud and Internet-based computing lets small businesses access and benefit from IT solutions that were previously only available to enterprise organizations. Better IT means being more competitive, giving smaller businesses a leg up and positioning them among even the largest of competitors. For the business owner, the freedom of being able to manage the entire business from anywhere delivers a freedom and flexibility previously unimagined.

Here are some ways hosted and cloud-based IT can help small businesses overcome everyday business challenges:

Reduce or Eliminate the Need for a Physical Office

Starting a business is tough, and many small business owners decide to use their own homes as a business location rather than forking over a bunch of lease money to a commercial realtor. Using hosting application services and cloud technologies can help keep team members and co-workers working together, no matter where they are located. Many businesses are able to get off the ground and operating successfully without ever having an established office.

Work when it Works for You

Remote desktops and hosted applications deliver functionality to users no matter where or when they need to work. With ready access to everything needed to get the job done, workers are able to be productive even when they’re not at a desk (or even a computer!). Smartphone and tablet apps can make working from a mobile device highly effective, extending productivity and capability to workers whenever and wherever it is required.

Keep Everyone on the Same Page

When systems are centrally located and accessed, it is easy to keep everyone on the same version, the same edition, and the same page. No matter where users are located, documents and application data are kept in sync, ensuring that everyone is working on the most current information available. Mobile access to applications and data keeps information from being distributed to various devices, making revision control easier and providing better protection for valuable business information.

Mobile computing and the cloud make it easy for small businesses to have better IT that enhances productivity and supports growth. Reducing capital costs and exchanging large technology investments with affordable monthly subscription service gives small businesses the boost they need to implement the solutions and services which will develop and improve collaboration, streamline workflows, and reduce overhead costs while enabling a fast-paced and agile business ready to meet any challenge.

Make Sense?

March 23, 2016May 18, 2017

Securing Business Data When Mobility is the Target

driving1-ANIMATION Today’s workforce is a mobile workforce. Technology has enabled businesses to allow their employees to reach beyond the office walls, doing business and operating effectively from just about any location. SaaS, online access to business data, and smart phone technologies have brought flexibility in working models previously only imagined by the workforce tethered to business locations and office computers. Yet this flexibility comes at a price if the business is to keep up with securing and protecting data assets as readily as it extends access to them. The bad guys are well aware that mobile computing and remote access working models are growing in adoption with businesses, and are finding ways to take ever-greater advantage of the situation.

Teleworking, which is not quite the same thing as telecommuting, is on the rise and it doesn’t look to be a trend that will slow down any time soon. According to GlobalWorkplaceanalytics.com, “telework is defined as the substitution of technology for travel”. Those who work sometimes from an office, but sometimes not, are teleworkers. Working at the office during the day and then taking work home at night makes you a teleworker. The primary tool of the teleworkforce is the smart phone – the mobile computer with built-in connectivity and enough processing power to handle many basic office workloads.

50% of the US workforce holds a job that is compatible with at least partial telework and approximately 20-25% of the workforce teleworks at some frequency
80% to 90% of the US workforce says they would like to telework at least part-time. Two to three days a week seems to be the sweet spot that allows for a balance of concentrative work (at home) and collaborative work (at the office).
Fortune 1000 companies around the globe are entirely revamping their space around the fact that employees are already mobile. Studies repeatedly show they are not at their desk 50-60% of the time. http://globalworkplaceanalytics.com/telecommuting-statistics

The number of teleworking employees is on the rise, and so is the variety of devices used to facilitate mobile working. Smartphones, tablets and phablets and, of course, laptop computers are used by mobile workers – often in addition to the company-supplied desktop in the office. The variety and number of computing devices per user is growing. Knowing this, businesses must take increasingly expansive steps to strengthen and secure remote access systems and business data, yet many organizations are just beginning to fully realize that the mobility they extend to their users is part of the reason for the increasing number of data breaches and attacks against business information systems.

Cybercriminals and their crafty programs are often able to steal important information or access a network by first infecting computers and devices used for telework. Many of the devices available to the attackers are not company-owned, but are introduced to the system by contractors, vendors and employees (BYOD or bring-your-own-device users).

Even if the device isn’t a vehicle delivering a nasty payload into the network, data breaches may still occur when business information is stored on an improperly secured device. Most people who work with computers have some recognition of the potential for virus attacks and malware, but far fewer recognize the threat potential of attacks against mobile devices such as phones and tablets, and even fewer may implement meaningful protections on those devices.

“To prevent breaches when people are teleworking, organizations need to have stronger control over their sensitive data that can be accessed by, or stored on, telework devices,” said Murugiah Souppaya, a NIST computer scientist. [1]

Providing guidance and information to the public on such topics, NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) is revising its publications on telework to cover growing use of BYOD and how contractor and vendor devices are increasingly used to access company information resources. Two new publications – one for organizations and one for users – are now available for review and comment. You can find them here.

“As one of the major research components of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) has the broad mission to promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and technology through research and development in information technology, mathematics, and statistics.” [NIST Information Technology Laboratory Mission]

The rising number of threats, attacks and breaches caused by compromised devices used for teleworking is nothing to take lightly, and protecting against them shouldn’t be approached as a merely perfunctory obligation. Organizations must create and consistently update policies and requirements relating to protecting information accessible by remote workers if they intend to reduce business risk and provide assurances to stakeholders and customers that the information is adequately guarded. But it doesn’t stop with the policy; businesses must also make an effort to properly educate their users (employees, contractors, vendors, etc.) on those policies, ensuring that all parties involved understand the responsibilities and requirements and strictly adhere to them.

jmbunnyfeet Make Sense?

[1] http://www.nist.gov/itl/csd/attackers-honing-in-on-teleworkers-how-organizations-can-secure-their-datata.cfm

February 19, 2016February 19, 2016

Is this email legitimate? QuickBooks Payroll ACH ID Changes go live on the 22nd!

Trusted QuickBooks Advisors – here’s another thing for you to help your clients with

Intuit recently sent an e-mail to QuickBooks Online Payroll (QBOP) and QuickBooks Full Service Payroll (QBFSP) customers about an ACH ID change. It kind of looks like a phishing thing, but it is really a legitimate email from Intuit, and it is important to pay attention if your company uses the impacted services and a banking feature called “debit filtering”. There isn’t much time to act, either, because the changes go live in 3 days (February 22, 2016).

Impacted services are QuickBooks Online Payroll and QuickBooks Full Service Payroll, so it is pretty important to address. Nobody wants their business payroll processes interrupted, and this could easily do just that.

Intuit has added some new ACH ID numbers for use with direct deposit and other processes which work with the bank, so customers using a fraud-prevention method known as “debit filtering” will need to contact their banks to add the new IDs or their bank transactions will fail.

Debit filtering allows customers to tell their banks which ACH IDs are allowed to perform transactions with the bank account, like removing or depositing funds. It is an extra level of fraud security that protects the bank account from unauthorized access, but it is also something that can work against the business if it is not managed. In this case, contacting the bank to add the new IDs is critical to keeping things processing and flowing smoothly. It is also important that the old IDs not be removed yet, as they may be tied to historic transactions that must be tracked and reported on for tax and other purposes.

“Is this really from Intuit? It seems like Intuit would have a better way to make such changes than to ask millions of subscribers to contact their bank”

Source: Is this email legitimate? ACH ID Changes; – QuickBooks Learn & Support

QuickBooks users don’t have much time to reach their banks and supply the new IDs, so pull the email out of the SPAM folder and call the bank right away. Intuit won’t be sending notices to the banks, and they have no authority to add different IDs to your approved list, anyway… which is a good thing. If just anyone could add an approved ACH ID on your account, then just anyone could get to your funds. Better to make the phone call yourself.

jmbunnyfeet Make Sense?

January 26, 2016February 3, 2016

No REST for QuickBooks Desktop Integration Developers

Intuit, the maker of QuickBooks small business accounting software (among other things), is discontinuing service for the REST API and the Sync Manager on March 1, 2016 [1]. Developers with applications which integrate with the desktop editions of QuickBooks using this method must change their approach right away or risk having their integrations simply stop functioning. It’s not that Intuit will DO something on March 1^st. Rather, they’ll stop doing something – like handling Sync Manager integrations.

There are a lot of different types of businesses in the world, and each of them produces and consumes a lot of information. From sales to human resources; from operations to finance – every business generates and manages information to support the various processes which make up the business activities. Computer systems and software represent the tools businesses use to develop and manage information, and often become foundations for structuring the information which flows through the organization. Just as there may be different people in the business, each with their own responsibilities and job functions, there are likely software applications which are similarly oriented to support different processes within the business. Integrating or connecting different applications and processes within the business helps the organization be more efficient with information usage, generally increasing the quality of access and reporting throughout the business while at the same time reducing or eliminating redundant data entry and the potential for errors. Software integrations are a big thing to many businesses, which is why the discontinuation of Intuit’s Sync Manager for QuickBooks Desktop editions is a big deal.

Intuit’s Sync Manager was the big thing just a few short years ago. Providing developers with a seamless method for accessing QuickBooks company data and passing it to/from web-based and other applications was a boon to the online application model and paved the way for many disk-based integrated solutions to migrate to SaaS offerings instead. Developers who saw success operating in Intuit’s QuickBooks marketplace as recognized add-ons were encouraged to use Sync Manager so that they would be able to seamlessly market to, subscribe and onboard new users who purchased QuickBooks products. Whether or not the developer participated in Intuit’s application marketplace, the Sync Manager and the REST API provided them with some very important capabilities and supported new methods now recognized as “standards” for development of web-based solutions and services.

The World Wide Web has succeeded in large part because its software architecture has been designed to meet the needs of an Internet-scale distributed hypermedia system. The modern Web architecture emphasizes scalability of component interactions, generality of interfaces, independent deployment of components, and intermediary components to reduce interaction latency, enforce security, and encapsulate legacy systems. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=337180.337228

In order to integrate a solution with QuickBooks desktop products, there are two essential problems to solve. First, there must be access to the QuickBooks data. Few products are able to directly access the data in a QuickBooks data file; generally, the QuickBooks program itself is used to ‘broker’ access to the company file. So, developers need a way to work inside of QuickBooks to use it to access the data their applications need. Second, the data must be transported (via the Internet) to allow for data to come from QuickBooks into another app, or to allow data from the other app to come to QuickBooks. The REST API and the Sync Manager addressed both of those problems and provided developers with the mechanisms required to facilitate the data integration as well as transport the data.

REST (representational state transfer) is “the software architectural style of the World Wide Web [2]” and represents a standard for creating scalable, distributed system interactions. Using this method, developers were able to make their online solutions access, read and write data in QuickBooks desktop products because Intuit had first sync’d the data to its servers, so developers needed only to reach the Intuit servers to reach the data. The Sync Manager provided the transport, carrying the data to/from the desktop installation where the Sync Manager service was running. And, because the Sync Manager was basically built-in to QuickBooks, there was no additional software to install and maintain on the computer because it was all part of the QuickBooks installation.

Intuit did a fantastic job of getting developers to move to the API integration method, positioning all those lovely 3^rd party solutions for linkage via an Intuit.com account and, now, to QuickBooks Online. Intuit is clearly favoring the QuickBooks Online edition and the API integration method available with that platform, and is telling developers that they must convert their customers to QBO in order to retain the easy connective ability they had with the desktop editions via Sync Manager.

Now that Intuit has announced the discontinuation of the REST API and the Sync Manager, what options do QuickBooks integration developers have, and how can customers using 3^rd party integrations keep using them? Options do remain, and they aren’t all that bad. In fact, the options which remain continue to be the methods of choice for certain developers. These developers recognized early on that Intuit’s somewhat “lightweight” methods couldn’t handle the complexity or full functionality of their integrations facilitated their solutions using the SDK and never looked back (and still don’t). For this community of developers – many of whom likely never considered trying to market their solutions in the Intuit app marketplace – the elimination of the REST API and Sync Manager don’t really matter. They didn’t bother with them in the first place, just as they aren’t bothering with QBO. Those solutions don’t fit their customers, anyway.

The QuickBooks desktop SDK (Software Development Kit) has been around for years, and using the SDK developers have been able to craft tight integrations between their solutions and the QuickBooks desktop products. From payment plug-ins to fully integrated sales, customer relationship, inventory and manufacturing solutions – a broad range of integrated applications built with the SDK have been successfully deployed to QuickBooks customers all over the world. Many applications which integrate with QuickBooks desktop solutions are desktop products themselves and are designed to work within the same desktop and network environment as QuickBooks, so there is no need to worry about “transport” of the data over the Internet.

For other solutions, such as online applications and services, there may be a need to exchange data via the Web. The QuickBooks Web Connector has also been a very popular solution for developers of applications that integrate data with QuickBooks. The Web Connector is just what its name implies: it is a way to connect QuickBooks to the web and vice versa. With the Web Connector application and a web connector configuration file, developers could provide a method of exchanging data between QuickBooks desktop and another solution fairly simply. While the Web Connector is quite useful in providing a means to transport integrated data to/from the QuickBooks desktop to an external system (like an online application), it only allows access to whatever data Intuit decides. For this reason, many developers use both an SDK application and the Web Connector so their applications can access all data required and also have a web service available to transport it.

There are numerous implications relating to the sunset of QuickBooks REST API and Sync Manager, and another among them is the impact in hosted environments. For customers who are (or might) benefit from hosted QuickBooks delivery models, what does the end-of-life of the Sync Manager mean? Since the Sync Manager was basically built into QuickBooks desktop editions, it meant that there wasn’t any extra software to install or manage when a company wanted to adopt a Sync Manager-based 3^rd party integrated solution. In a hosting environment, this means that the customer could easily add integrated applications to work with their hosted QuickBooks and the service provider might never even know it was being done. There would be no additional software to install on the host servers; so many providers would simply be unaware that their customers were using these other solutions.

As developers return to SDK and Web Connector implementations in order to integrate with QuickBooks desktop, customers will ask their hosting providers to install the QWC (QuickBooks Web Connector) and/or integration software in their service. In shared service delivery models, this may be virtually impossible to do without potential compromise to existing customers using those servers or other applications resident on the systems. Hosting customers will not always understand that a “simple plug-in” actually represents installable software that must be secured, maintained, managed, and kept from improperly interacting with other software in the environment. Some providers may not even be willing to work with the new integration software, while others may allow it but will not take adequate precautions to ensure proper and secure function.

Intuit has said to many constituent groups that its focus on desktop editions of QuickBooks will continue, and new certifications and benefits for desktop ProAdvisors (and continued development of interoperability with other solutions, like the Revel POS integration for QuickBooks desktop) give support to those statements. Yet developers who support integrations with QuickBooks desktop are once again adjusting to the not infrequent changes Intuit makes to developer programs and philosophies. The push to QBO and connected apps may be the focus for QuickBooks marketing dollars, but there are still quite a number of (very busy!) developers supplying solutions to businesses who don’t shop inside their QuickBooks software.

Joanie Mann Bunny Feet Make Sense?

[1] https://developer.intuit.com/blog/2014/09/08/timeline-to-discontinue-the-quickbooks-desktop-rest-api

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_state_transfer