Do you run your business in the morning or at night?

July 21, 2010 – 4:08 pm

According to a study from the University of Education in Heidelberg, Germany (via a nice article in Inc. magazine), morning people are more proactive, and therefore better equipped to run a small business.

As a nighthawk, I can’t say I love their conclusions, though I take some consolation in the author’s assertion that nighthawks are “smarter and more creative, and have a better sense of humor.”

I’ve always loved getting stuff done at night. But the truth is that at night I’m usually cleaning up messes and getting on top of a backlog. That’s a good thing, in its way. But the early risers appear to be the sort to initiate actions, rather than just respond to situations.

Where do you stand in the continuum? Are you morning or night? Are you starting actions and charting new courses, or do you spend your energy steering the ship to keep on track? I wonder if, in order for a morning person to be proactive, he or she needs a nighthawk to take care of the housekeeping details.

–Rob

By Rob | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Comments (0)

2 Most Important Facebook Tips for Small Businesses

July 12, 2010 – 2:03 pm

Just stumbled upon a nice, concise blog post offering Facebook tips for small business. The post comes from Kelsey Brookes of Thinksync, a design firm in Australia.

Though you can find thousands of blog posts on how to use Facebook for small business marketing, Brookes does a good job of cutting to the chase.

To my thinking, the two recommendations that small business owners need to pay most attention to:

1. Promote the local community: Adding to what Brookes says, you need to pay attention to the “social” part of social media. You have to be part of a community, and the conversation has to be two-way. When you set yourself up on Facebook, Twitter or any other social media vehicle, if your communication amounts to “Look at me!” you’ll find yourself alone very fast.

2. Encourage posts from your customers on your Facebook page. Yes, that means giving up some control over the message, and there’s a chance that a cranky customer might say something negative about you. But social media gets its power from the community, and the more engaged people are in your page – posting messages, photos, videos, etc. – the more marketing value you’ll get out of the exercise. You’ll even benefit from the classy way you deal with the cranks.

If you’re doing more self-study on social media, make sure you follow Mashable, the website all about Facebook, Twitter and the other social media beasts. You’ll find great info for beginners and experts alike, especially in its small business section.

By Rob | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

New features for Wave Accounting

July 8, 2010 – 8:49 pm

We rolled out another set of improvements to Wave Accounting this afternoon (thanks for your patience, and sorry if our brief reboot caused any inconvenience).

Here are some of the highlights of today’s update:

  • When you send an invoice by email, you can now send it to more than one email address. If the address isn’t already among your contacts, it will automatically be stored so that you can reuse it later.
  • When you create a PDF of an invoice, the PDF name now includes the invoice number.
  • Contact info for your customers and vendors has been made more flexible to permit longer addresses.
  • We’ve made it easier to post an asset or liability from your bills and bank statements.
  • You can now access and edit transactions that were input using the account balance screen in the setup Wizard.

There were 81 things we added, tweaked or fixed today. A big thank-you goes out to the Wave customers who have provided feedback and wish list items. We’ll continue to make Wave Accounting better for you, so keep the feedback coming. Contact us any time with your comments and questions.

By Rob | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Comments (0)

Hate spreadsheets? There’s good reason for that.

July 6, 2010 – 4:00 pm

“Wrong information with credibility is worse than no information at all.”

Most small businesses in North America use spreadsheets or shoeboxes to “organize” their financial information. Most small business owners hate spreadsheets, but they use them anyway because, well, they hate accounting applications more. (Of course, we think small business owners will love Wave Accounting. Free trial, anyone?)

But the question for some small businesses remains: Why do you need a more than a spreadsheet? Does it really make a difference? Check out a recent blog post by Bill Inmon, a data warehouse guy who contributes to B-eye-Network.com. His attention is on big businesses, but the implications are easy to extrapolate to small businesses, too.

He paints an amusing (though troublingly accurate) scenario that goes like so:

Big Company has a meeting with Sales, Marketing, Accounting, Manufacturing and Finance. Each department brings a spreadsheet with compelling information. But the information doesn’t jibe. Each department built their own spreadsheet, and maybe the data isn’t identical, or maybe the reporting periods aren’t aligned, or maybe they did their calculations differently. But come meeting time, the various spreadsheets indicate that Big Company needs to hire 50% more staff, or lay off 10% of staff, and everything in between.

Which leads to Inmon’s punch line, which I excerpted above:

The spreadsheet, in fact, may be a liability when incorrect information is presented on it. When incorrect information is presented on a spreadsheet, it achieves the cachet of credibility, even when it is not credible information at all. And wrong information with credibility is worse than no information at all.

What Inmon says about big business holds for your small business, too. It’s easy to draw the wrong conclusions when you’re only looking at part of the picture. The beauty of an accounting application for small businesses, like Wave Accounting, is that the data — on which you’re basing your day-to-day business decisions —  lives cohesively in one place, and the reports that are generated are done right. With less work than you’d put into a spreadsheet, you’ll have much more business intelligence, and the quality will be better. You’ll have a better grasp of basic details (like who has paid you, and who is well past due). Your banker will be able to get a proper picture of how successful your business is, improving your ability to get a loan. The info you can get from an accounting application can totally change your understanding of your business when presented in a way that makes sense.

We’ll soon be rolling out some tutorials on what metrics a small business needs to follow, so please stay tuned for more. (And sign up for a free trial of Wave Accounting!)

By Rob | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Hiring for Small Business

June 23, 2010 – 7:59 pm

Another useful post for small businesses at American Express’s OpenForum.com blog. This time: how to hire.

A couple of the more interesting points:

  1. Some people say “past performance is no indicator of future success,” but Marc Cenedella of TheLadders.com job board says that past performance is precisely the best indicator. Don’t just look at the job title that a candidate once held. Ask the candidate what they accomplished.
  2. Be wary of the references a candidate lists. Of course candidates will only list people who like them. See if you can get a few additional names of references from the reference, and track down an opinion from beyond the candidate’s innermost circle of friends.

See the full video (4 minutes) with Candella.

By Rob | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Controlling tax rates in Wave Accounting

May 5, 2010 – 5:38 pm

Wave Accounting makes it easy to control the taxes that affect your business.  For example, as Ontario and British Columbia launch their new HST tax on July 1 all you need to do is go into your business settings, click on Sales Tax and make the necessary adjustment.  From that point on the application will automatically calculate all of your necessary taxes.

When you’re interested in seeing how much tax you’ve collected and spent you have two options: 1. you can look at the tax widget on the dashboard or,  2. you can run a Sales Tax Report from the Reports tab.

If you have any specific questions about how the HST (or any other taxes) might change the way you do business please talk to your accountant or bookkeeper.

By ksimpson | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Foreign currency and journal entries are here!

May 5, 2010 – 1:38 pm

If you’re sending invoices to clients in multiple currencies or have expenses from traveling to other countries Wave Accounting can now support your needs.

We’ve signed a deal with XE.com for them to stream real time exchange rates into our app.  This has allowed us to include exchange rates in the invoice, expense and payment areas.  The other thing this allows us to do is include foreign exchange categories in our reports – in fact we’ve created a report strictly to give you information on all of your foreign currency transactions.  We’ve also added calculations for realized and unrealized gains and losses on foreign exchange to key reports.  Small businesses owners that have transactions in more than one currency can now use Wave Accounting and still have full insight into their financial position.

Finally, we’ve also added a Journal Transaction screen in business settings that allows for standard double entries for transactions that fall outside of normal income and expenses.  This new screen is especially powerful when you are collaborating with your accountant so that necessary adjustments can be made easily and in a format they are accustomed to.

As always…keep your feedback coming!  It’s helping us build a better app.

By ksimpson | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

“Definitely worth checking out” says Mark Evans

March 17, 2010 – 4:45 pm

The word on Wave Accounting is spreading: Tech blogger Mark Evans gave us a shout out Monday after kicking the tires. Here are some of our favourite bits from his review:

  • “seems to have all of the necessary ingredients, including a way to send invoices”
  • “the prices are reasonable, especially for small companies looking for an online service that lets multiple people access an accounting system”

and best of all:

  • “For anyone interested in an online accounting system, Wave is definitely worth checking out.”

Mark did suggest that the set-up process could be a bit easier, and we agree: we’re working on a new roll-out of our set-up Wizard in the next week or two, which will streamline things even more for users who want to get in fast. See Mark’s full write-up.

By Rob | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Comments (0)

We’re officially launching on February 1st

January 29, 2010 – 3:07 am

Here at Wave Accounting, we’re in countdown mode. On February 1 we’re flipping the switch for the full launch of the online accounting application we’ve been tweaking and polishing since our beta launch in October. We’ll also be raising a special glass of champagne to all of those users who joined us and provided feedback in our early months.

We should point out that on February 1, we’re doing more than saying, “It’s Alive!” In this release we’ve added several new tools including a set-up wizard, a tool for uploading bank and credit card statements, a quick-entry method for inputting minor expenses and income, and several other key upgrades. In the coming 60 days we’ll launch upgraded invoicing functionality and a full suite of reports.

We’d love to hear about your experiences using the Wave Accounting app. If you need help please email support@waveaccounting.com. If you have business related questions please send them to info@waveaccounting.com.

By Rob | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Do Great Work, Pass it On

December 29, 2009 – 3:34 pm

While we’re building Wave Accounting into the best online accounting solution for small businesses, we want to make the world a better place, too. So the Wave Accounting team is proud to announce our partnership with 1% for the Planet. That means 1% of our gross earnings will be donated to support a variety of environmental causes.

1% for the Planet has an interesting approach to doing some great work. They ensure that donor businesses live up to their pledges. Then they ensure that the organizations that are receiving the funds have viable, legitimate plans for deploying the donations in a meaningful way.

We’re big fans of the transparency and legitimacy of 1% for the Planet. We also like the way we get to play a part in the big picture: Wave Accounting helps you do great work in your business; 1% for the Planet helps eco organizations do great work to make the world a greener, cleaner place. Like a planet in balance, it all keeps going ’round.

As a customer of Wave Accounting, you play an integral part in this cycle. On behalf of 1% for the Planet, and the groups and communities that receive their support, we thank you.

Find out more about 1% for the Planet.

By Rob | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)