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 March 2009
Inside this Issue
I hope all of you are doing well during this busy time of year. Those Going paperless is a really a prerequisite to working online. The goal is to Start Digital and Stay Digital. For example, if you start with a Word document, email a PDF version of the document instead of printing and mailing. That’s just a simple idea, but a good example of small things you can do to get closer to the goal of digital documents. There are several vendors we have identified that integrate well with QuickBooks and I encourage you to check these products out.
I will be presenting on this topic at the 2009 AICPA Practitioners Symposium on May 4-6, 2009 at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. As an AICPA speaker, we are able to offer our clients a conference registration discount. Visit the conference website: AICPA Practitioners Symposium or call 888.777.7077 (Discount Code: "PEER"). Offer valid through April 1, 2009 Click here for Conference Brochure (PDF).
The CPE Link is a provider of online continuing professional education (CPE) for accounting professionals, firms, and associations in over 30 states. Accounting professionals can choose from a multitude of live, scheduled Webinars, plus over 150 hours of online self-study courses and on-demand Webinars available anytime for the professional facing license renewal deadlines. Individuals can save up to 20% on Webinars with the CPE Link Season Pass. CPE Link has been approved by the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA) to provide CPE for CPAs. They are also a qualified sponsor of continuing education for Enrolled Agents and Certified Financial Planners. Members of the Sleeter Group Consultants Network continue to receive 20% off Webinars where The Sleeter Group is the content provider. Additional benefits to this partnership are the accessibility of additional topics to Sleeter Group Consultants Network members and other customers of The Sleeter Group, as well as the broadening of the audience of our QuickBooks and practice management content to over 30,000 CPE Link customers. Here are some samplings from our current schedule. Internal Control and Fraud Reduction QuickBooks File Conversion: In Depth QuickBooks Accounting for Nonprofits QuickBooks Accounting for Houses of Worship For more information and to sign up for CPE Link Webinars, please visit www.sleeter.com/webinar.
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Greetings! As we’re all in the thick of tax season, I’ll keep my comments short this month. We do hope that the season is going well for you!
We’ve begun our planning for the 2009 annual conference, and are excited about how things are taking shape. We’ll have new information posted as it comes up at www.sleeter.com/conferences, so be sure to take a look. We’ve set new a training system for Sleeter Group Consultant Network (SGCN) members who are participating in the VAR Programs. As you may know, we have VAR relationships on the following products: Fishbowl Inventory, MISys SBM, and BillQuick. Our training for each solution involves 30 minutes on one of our monthly member Web conferences, followed up with three one-hour sessions, spaced approximately two weeks apart, on how to sell the solution and integrate it into financial accounting software. These sessions are archived for those members who are not able to attend live. These VAR opportunities are a great way for SGCN members to expand their services, learn some new technologies, and earn some extra revenue! We’re pleased at the number of our members who are availing themselves of this benefit, but are always eager to have more members participate. Please visit www.sleeter.com/partners/solution for more information. That’s all for now… best of success over the next month, and let us know if we can be of assistance to you! - David Horwitz
Mark Your Calendars and Plan to Attend the 2009 Sleeter Group Conference in Orlando, Florida!The Conference registration will begin shortly after the 2009 tax season! Accounting Software Vendors: Sign up to receive our 2009 Exhibitor Prospectus. Send us an email with your contact information. (Prospectus will be available at end of March). Our 2008 Conference Exhibitor Webinar Series is Still Available. Miss the 2008 conference? You can still learn about some of the great solutions that were demonstrated in the Exhibit Hall. Join Doug Sleeter as he hosts a few of our 2008 Exhibitors in a series of free webinars. Watch them for FREE! Click here: 2008 Exhibitor Webinars. These Webinars are recorded and available to watch at your convenience. You do not need to have attended the conference to view these webinars! Questions? Please give us a call at 888-484-5484.
MISys is offering its MISys SBM Basic Operations Online Training Workshop at a special $99 rate for Sleeter VAR Program Members.
Sleeter VAR Program Members must be members of the Sleeter Group Consultants Network. Please visit here for more information.
We asked members of The Sleeter Group Consultants Network (SGCN) to nominate recipients for the Magnificent Member Awards. There are five categories for these awards including Prolific Poster, Top Techie, Best Business Coach, Solution Sharer, and VAR Top Seller awards. We announced the winners at our 2008 conference. The winners in each category were:
In each of the next few newsletters we’ll bring you an interview with one of these award winners. This month, we interviewed Scott Taylor, winner of the Sleeter Group Fishbowl Inventory VAR Top Seller Award. How would you describe your practice? How has being a member of SGCN and the VAR program affected your practice? What VAR offerings are you selling, and what are your goals with the program? What would you like to share with our readers about the VAR program? Anything else you would like to share with our readers?
Every Question: The company I work for uses Time Tracker with QuickBooks. We have encountered a problem that you might be able to help us with. We have a sensitive customer list and we don’t want all of our employees to see all of the company’s customers every time they log their hours into Time Tracker. Is it possible to customize the list of customers that each employee sees when they enter their hours? If not with Time Tracker, is there other software available that would be able to do this? Answer: Unfortunately, there is not an easy way to do what you want but I have a suggestion. What you really want is to provide a way to "hide or display" customer records based on individual users or roles (groups of users) within QuickBooks. That’s just not there, and I doubt you’ll see anything like that in the near future from QuickBooks. So, my suggestion is to change the way you use the customer list across the whole QB file. You could create customer numbers (or other unique identifiers), and use that number in the "customer name" field on all customer records. Of course, the rest of the customer record would have the complete name/address information, but the people who use the time tracking features would only see the customer number when filling in their timesheets. This should solve the problem. If not, you might look into using a specific time tracking product such as BillQuick (www.billquick.com) or Bigtime (www.edisonsattic.com). I’m not 100% sure if or how they solve the hiding problem, but they both provide much better time tracking and project tracking features than QuickBooks alone. They both integrate directly with QuickBooks. If you have other questions or need consulting help on QuickBooks, we can point you to one of our consultants in your area. Go to http://www.sleeter.com/user/consultant/search to find one of our experts.
The Sleeter Group Consultants Network is the nation’s premier accounting software consultant’s network. With over 600 members located throughout the US and Canada, our members serve over 150,000 small businesses. In addition to client consulting, many of our consultants provide consulting services to software developers who seek advice on the best practices for integrating their applications with QuickBooks and other accounting software products. To locate one of our certified consultants visit our Find a Consultant page. To learn more about becoming a consultant visit our Become a Consultant page or call our office at 888-484-5484. Members of the network receive a substantial discount on our resource products as well as our annual Accounting Software Consulting Conference. Membership also includes a copy of our Consultant’s Reference Guide.
Fishbowl Inventory announced a new satisfaction guarantee to all new customers of its inventory software solution, Under the terms of the guarantee, Fishbowl Inventory customers will have 120 days after completing their training to use the software. At the end of the 120 days, if they are not completely satisfied, they will then have a 30-day window to return the product for a 100 percent refund of the cost of the software portion of the purchase. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Copyright © 2009 The Sleeter Group, Inc. All rights reserved. 5798 Stoneridge Mall Rd. #101 Pleasanton, CA 94588 888-484-5484 |
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of you who have been receiving our newsletter for a while know that I’m a big proponent of taking your practice online. By taking advantage of online technologies, you can serve your clients better through sharing data and collaborating. We recently polled about 40 of our 
month Chuck Vigeant reveals a glimpse into the inner workings of the 
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