Some people just can’t part with their high school yearbooks and old love letters, or… their old QuickBooks® files. Have you seen clients with QuickBooks files dating back more than 5 or 10 years? The archive function in QuickBooks can help with this – find it under the File Menu, Utilities, Clean Up Company Data. Running the Clean Up Company Data utility does not officially reduce the size of your file, however, this is what it can do - it will Verify Your Data to make sure there are no errors in the QuickBooks File database and remove old transactions that you don’t need anymore. Make sure you back up your file and verify your data first – before doing anything!

Ten years ago if I’d have presented this idea to a group of practicing accountants I’d have been run out of the room: “Let’s take your most sensitive client data, including social security numbers, bank account numbers, financial statements, tax returns, etc. and put them on the Internet.” It simply wasn’t going to happen. But over the past several years technology seems to have assuaged all but the most Luddite-like resisters and I commonly get this question: “We need to get our data backed up safely and securely on the Internet so we know it safe and always available for access or file restoration. Do you have any suggestions?”  Answer: “Well, yes, actually I do.”

This intrigues me --- a sub $100 dollar “works right out of the box” device that automagically shares a USB drive (or two, or three) securely, over the Internet. I have one on order and will report in when I get it. Until then --- here’s what I know based on the company’s website, blogs, and some reviews from usually reliable sources.

Have you ever documented your firm’s business processes?  Documenting and improving your business processes will help your firm operate more efficiently and lead to greater staff productivity.  In addition, business process documentation can be of great importance if you need to build a disaster recovery plan.

If you are interested in documenting your firm’s business processes, I recommend you purchase and learn either Microsoft Office Visio 2007 or SmartDraw 2009.   You can use either product to quickly draw a visual representation of your business processes using the flowchart templates included in the software.  Also, each product has numerous other templates that can be used to draw network diagrams, floor plans, organization charts and brainstorming diagrams. 

These tools are worth a look!