Office 2.0 News

60 Tickets Left: Feb 23rd in San Jose: EchoSign's First Annual Web Contracts Conference with Groupon, Cigna, Taleo, United Healthcare, Marketo, BT, TransUnion and More

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 20:03 GMT

We're pleased our first annual user conference, Web Contracts 2012, will be held Thursday Feb. 23rd at the fancy new-ish Marriot in San Jose, CA. The agenda will be all about the present and the future of the contract on the web, and includes speakers from Groupon, United Healthcare, Marketo, Taleo, Adobe, Forrester, Aptina, TransUnion, Cigna, BT, SugarCRM, and more.

The event will be a bit different, collaborative and open, and a chance for us all to learn together and from each other. And there will be cocktails and a party afterwards ;)

There are 60-ish tickets left, they're free, and they are open to all EchoSign customers and power users. Register here. We hope to see you in San Jose on Thursday Feb 23rd.

8:00 am – 9:00 am Breakfast
9:00am – 9:30am – Adobe EchoSign: Past, Present & Future
9:30am – 10:00am –EchoSign '12 and '13 Road Map

10:00am – 10:15am –What we have Learned Together: 100,000 Customers and Counting

10:30am – 11:15am – Case Studies (Groupon, United Healthcare, Marketo)
11:15am – 11:45pm –EchoSign in High Volume Operations (Adobe, Taleo)
11:45pm – 12:45pm – Lunch
12:45pm – 1:15pm – Forrester on the Future of Web Contracts
1:15pm – 1:45pm – 4 Peat: How to Overcome Objections in Legal (Aptina)
1:45pm – 2:15pm – Using EchoSign in the Most Demanding Environment (TransUnion, Cigna)

2:15pm – 2:45pm – 10-20 Cool Things You can Do with EchoSign (Eran)
3:00pm – 3:30pm –One Million Contracts and Counting (British Telecom)
3:30pm – 4:15pm – Partner Breakout Demos: Conga (Appextremes), Apptus, Compusight, Sugar CRM

4:15pm – 4:45pm – Going Global: E-Signing Across 100 Countries (Meltwater)

4:45pm – 5:00pm – Closing Remarks, The Future of the Future, What We've Learned

5:00 pm –8:00 pm– Cocktail Reception

How Fortune 100 United HealthCare Uses Adobe EchoSign Electronic Signatures

View more presentations from Echo Sign.

Working Extended Hours? You’re Not Alone

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 09:04 GMT

According to a recent global survey conducted by Regus, a provider of flexible workspaces, one in two workers in the U.S. work well over eight hours a day and more than half regularly take work home with them.

Remote Work Does Not Mean Less Work

The study polled more than 12,000 business people in 85 countries and found extended working hours to be the new norm. Regus attributes this to a tight job market with fewer resources at employees’ disposal, and employees’ desire to keep and excel in their jobs. Some of the more interesting findings included:

35 percent of U.S. workers usually work between nine to eleven hours every day compared to 38 percent of global workers.
11 percent of workers in the U.S. and 10 percent globally regularly work more than eleven hours a day.
56 percent of U.S. workers take work home to finish at the end of the day more than three times a week compared to 43 percent globally.
14 percent of remoter workers globally are more likely to work eleven hour days than fixed office workers.
59 percent of remote workers globally are likely to take work home with them compared to fixed office workers.
13 percent of U.S. workers in small businesses were three times more likely to work eleven hour days than large business employees.

“This study finds a clear blurring of the line between work and home,” claimed Regus. “In the U.S., where the American Institute of Stress reports that coronary heart disease is much more frequent in individuals experiencing high levels of job related stress, the long-term effects of this over-working could be damaging both to workers’ health and to overall productivity as workers drive themselves too hard and become disaffected, depressed or even physically ill.”

But Don't Abandon Remote Work

Although the study found that remote employees worked longer hours, telework has been shown to produce higher job satisfaction, higher productivity, and lower stress levels. Therefore, one might conclude that by allowing your team members to work from more convenient locations and operate more independently, you might mitigate the negative impact of a longer work day.

Zoho Books says ‘Don’t fret while paying multiple bills’

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 07:05 GMT

Recently in Zoho Books you could record payment for multiple invoices issued to your customers. Now we got more good news for you!

After some careful analysis on the feature requests and our forums, we identified another pain point for …

Netvibes is now part of Dassault Systèmes

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:50 GMT

Today is one of the proudest moments in Netvibes history:

We are now part of Dassault Systèmes.

This is huge for Netvibes and great news for our users. The product, brand and team stays the same, but our ability to innovate will be greatly enhanced. So, why did we choose Dassault Systèmes and where is Netvibes headed?

Our vision has always been to bring dashboard personalization to the entire world. We’ve come a long way since our start as a personal startpage in 2005. Today, millions of people around the world use Netvibes Basic to dashboard everything that matters and manage their daily digital lives. Thanks to our users, Netvibes won more awards than any other dashboard solution and continues to grow as the best reader and monitoring tool in the world. Not surprisingly, companies were quick to see the potential of using dashboards for business, too.

Today, Netvibes Premium and Netvibes for Enterprise deliver dashboard intelligence for Fortune 500 brands, agencies, governments and enterprises, including Coca Cola, L’Oreal, Digitas, McCann Worldgroup, Sage and the US Dept. of Energy. We currently serve more than half a billion Web apps per month and our ecosystem is now the biggest, with more than 250,000+ universal Web apps.

So what’s next?

We believe that the future of business is dashboard intelligence, which will help companies understand everything that’s going on across the real-time Web and inside and outside their organization. This ultimately will create a better world in which brands react instantly to changing consumer needs and a better work environment with personalized work dashboards tailored for each employee. This future puts Netvibes in a unique position in the enterprise market. It also means we are competing against large, multi-national corporations and enterprise vendors.

To continue to grow and to achieve our ambitious vision, we needed an ambitious partner. Our revenue is strong and we were never for sale, but we found an exceptional partner: Dassault Systèmes. They are the leader in 3D and PLM, with about 10,000 employees and 135,000 customers in the whole industry–they have global resources. Virtually every products in the world is designed using their software, including the Boeing 777–they have deep technology and modeling experience.

As Bernard Charles says “Netvibes is a perfect fit with our 3D Experience platform. It will connect and combine products, usages, internal and external data sources, user intelligence and social tagging. All in real-time and in context for a better, richer experience and decision-making process.”

They believe in the future of bringing dashboard intelligence to all companies–they share our vision. This means if you like Netvibes, you’ll love the new Netvibes. Our product and team will stay the same, but you can expect new features, faster than ever. (In fact, you will see some great ones over the next few weeks!) Both users and clients can expect a long-term future growth and stability, backed by one of the largest public companies in France.

We are committed to this future. And we are committed to you. We are 100% committed to providing you with best dashboards in the world. Period. Without compromises.

Got questions? Leave a comment below. Drop us a note on Twitter or Facebook. We’d love to hear from you.

This is not the end of the journey. The journey has just begun. More info

Freddy Mini
CEO, Netvibes

No related posts.

The Service Cloud Console: 0 Click Data with Custom Console Components

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:29 GMT

Posted By: Gautam Vasudev

Introducing Zoho Support Express Plans complemented with a brand New UI

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:12 GMT

We are excited to introduce Zoho Support Express, our latest plan for small businesses and do-it-all teams. Also we are out with a simplified new UI which is easier to access, spacious and faster.

Our Express plans are designed keeping …

Are You the Annoying Guy at Work?

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:38 GMT

There’s one in every office: the loudmouth, the grump, the interrupter… In fact, talk to anyone about their coworkers, and you’ll almost always uncover a litany of frustrations – often about habits that most of those coworkers don’t even realize they have. But have you ever wondered if you might be that annoying coworker? After all, the office mate who’s The Annoying Guy generally doesn’t realize it.

Here are 10 warning signs that you might be pushing your coworkers to the limits of their sanity.

1. Do you dump last-minute work on people when you could have avoided it? There will always be projects that pop up at the last minute, but don't be the manager or the coworker who sits on something and doesn't assign it out until late in the game. You'll come across as inconsiderate and disorganized, and it’ll be your name people are cursing when they’re working late to make that deadline.

2. Do you really like to talk, even when other people are on deadline or have something else to do? This one is hard to see in yourself, so think about how much talking you do in the average conversation compared to how much the other person does. Be alert for cues that your colleagues may be trying to extract themselves from the discussion, and remember that just because you happen to have time to talk, it doesn’t mean that others do.

3. Do you complain about people behind their backs rather than telling them your beefs directly? We've all had the frustrating feeling of discovering that a coworker is complaining to others about something we did but didn’t bother to come talk to us about it directly. When you talk to someone directly, not only do you act more fairly by giving them the chance to know about your complaint and to respond to it, but you may also learn new information that makes you see things in a different light.

4. Are you frequently negative? If you hate new practices, other people’s suggestions, and the guy down the hall, and especially if you’re not shy about making that known, you might be the office grump. Grumps sometimes think that they’re demonstrating their value by pointing out flaws all the time, but if you find fault in every suggestion, you’ll lose credibility, and eventually people will start finding ways to avoid your input altogether.

5. Do you bring your personal life into the office? If you’re frequently taking personal calls in earshot of others (especially if they involve yelling, swearing or crying), sharing details about the fight you had with your spouse last night, talking about your fertility issues, or complaining about your uncontrollable rash, you might be making people uncomfortable. While it’s fine to open up to your coworkers to a certain extent, remember that professional boundaries are different from social ones and err on the side of discretion.

6. Do you interrupt other people’s conversations? If you’re in the habit of answering questions that were addressed to other people, and if you don’t believe there’s any such thing as a private conversation at work, you might be the office interrupter. It can be really difficult to resist the impulse to interrupt once it’s become a habit, but try to work on retraining yourself to wait your turn and not to jump in people are talking privately.

7. Do you love to use the speakerphone? If you always play back your voicemail messages on speakerphone or, worse, have whole conversations on speakerphone, you can be confident that your coworkers are mentally cursing you. (Bonus points if these are personal calls you’re conducting within earshot of everyone!) Keep in mind that you’re not at home alone; you’re in the midst of coworkers who are trying to focus on their own work.

8. Do you feel like you know everything there is to know, and you’re not shy about showing it? If you find yourself always telling people a better way to do things and offering unsolicited opinions, you might be the office know-it-all. It’s great to have knowledge and share it, but if you come across as if you’ve done it all and can’t possibly learn anything new, you’ll alienate and annoy your colleagues. Try holding back and letting other people demonstrate their own knowledge.

9. Do you pull your weight? If your coworkers are working away, but you’re playing on Facebook or planning your wedding, chances are high that you’ve got a reputation as the office slacker. If you work less than others and find excuses for not being productive, it’s time to turn over a new leaf. Slacking off won’t just alienate your coworkers in the short-term; it will also ruin your reputation – and references and promotion potential – in the long-term.

10. Are you chronically defensive? If you bristle at the slightest hint that your work wasn't perfect, your coworkers might end up spending more time trying to avoid you than talking to you because they don't want to deal with your prickliness. As a result, you’ll end up finding that problems go unaddressed and you don’t get important feedback when you need it. If nothing else, try practicing this phrase: “I want to take some time to think about this, but I appreciate you telling me.”

If you recognize yourself in any of the above habits, you might just be the irritating coworker that your colleagues are complaining about. But don’t worry – there’s hope for a recovery! Try a one-month moratorium on the behavior and see if any of your relationships improve.

Simpler, Configurable Menus and more Usability Improvements in February On Demand update

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 01:09 GMT

We are excited to bring some new changes that will make vtiger CRM more easier to use. Here are the key changes in this month's update (deployed on February 4th).

Redesigned Main Menu – Simple and Configurable (video)

We introduced a flat menu to simplify navigation and reduce the number of clicks. Instead of the 2 level menu structure, which was a source of confusion for many users, the redesigned menu only has one level. Key modules are now accessible with a single click. Administrators will be able to configure the menu order using Menu Editor in Settings page.

Lead Conversion is more intuitive

The new lead conversion popup will make it more easier to understand what happens when a lead is converted, and also provide more control (for example, users can choose not to create an Account ).

Hide and Show feature of home page widgets made easy (doc, video)

Default Widgets can now be enabled and disabled from the home page.

Please click here for a full list of enhancements and bug fixes in the February Update.

Documentation: http://wiki.vtiger.com.

For Videos : http://vtiger.com/video

Regards,

vtiger Team

Four Tricks to Improve Your Memory

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 09:05 GMT

Many times when you need to remember something you can write things down on a piece of paper or on sticky note. You can use one of the dozens of note-taking apps that exist for your phone or you can opt to leave a voice memo. You might even set alarms with notes to go off at certain times to remind you of something. These luxuries are great but their downside is that if you use them all the time you lose the skill of relying on your own memory. And there are times when your only option is to rely on your memory.

For example, times you rely solely on your memory:

Remembering someone’s name after a networking event or party. Sure, you might have exchanged business cards but how do you remember which is whose?
Taking an exam. And other times when bringing your notes along is considered cheating!
Knowing details about your client’s company or a company where you are interviewing. It’s not nearly as impressive if you pull out a list.
Making a mental to-do list. Do you write out a shopping list for less than ten items? What about less than five? How often do you remember to buy everything you intended?

As with most things, having a good memory is a skill that can be acquired, learned, and practiced. There are a few memory techniques that you probably already use, but perhaps you are not aware of them. By becoming aware of how they work and practicing their use, you can increase your memory capacity.

Chunking

There is a limit to the number of arbitrary items our working memory can process. In a paper titled, The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two, George Miller found that it is possible to increase that limit by chunking the information into something more meaningful. By consolidating data points into fewer, organized, sequenced chunks of information you can remember more than would be ordinarily possible. What constitutes a chunk differs based on your own long-term memory and store of knowledge. Examples of chunking:

The town where I grew up had the area code of 973 and the city code of 398. Everyone’s phone number started with a 973-398 so I only had to recall the last 4 numbers instead of all 10.

Meaning

Here’s a common workplace scenario: you walk into a conference room only to be promptly introduced to Jason, Elizabeth, Vern, Robert, and Paul. According to PsyBlog, names are difficult to remember because they are arbitrary and meaningless. The trick to remember names, then, is to assign meaning to them. Use whatever pops into your mind. Perhaps Jason is sitting on the left so you picture him as a “J” which is a letter hooks to the left. Vern might be wearing green so he is Fern Vern. You have to use what works for you and it’s often true that the sillier the better.

Association

When you encode two unrelated items together in your memory, when you encounter one you will likely also remember the other. If you plan to visit your boss’s office before leaving for the day, take a minute to associate your boss with something you will undoubtedly come across today, such as the elevator. To do this, you could picture your boss standing in the elevator as the doors open or you can picture his face on the button that you usually hit. The next time you take the elevator you will think of your boss, thus remembering you wanted to go talk to him today. The elevator or the elevator button are essentially acting as a trigger which reminds you of your plans of talking to your boss.

Visualize

Adding a visual element engages a new area of your brain. Create an image of what you want to remember. If it is a sequence of items, you can create a “video” or walkthrough of sorts to link them together. For example, to remember a grocery list, you might picture your route around the grocery store. If you are memorizing your presentation, think of yourself as a tour guide, bringing your audience to several stations (i.e., your talking points).

Do you have a good memory? How do you manage to remember things that people often forget?

What Cloud Apps are of Most Interest to Salesforce.com Customers?

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 08:45 GMT

Posted By: rachella grossi

Dispatch Jobs made easy with vWorkApp and Zoho CRM

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 08:23 GMT

This is a Guest Post by Michele Goldsworthy, Online Marketing Specialist at vWorkApp.

vWorkApp and Zoho CRM have come together to create the first solution on the market that combines customer relationship management with mobile job dispatching and scheduling. The …

7 Ways to Make Your Story Enthralling to Potential Employers

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 10:02 GMT

Career experts often advise job seekers or networkers to “tell your story.” But what does that mean? Should you share how you won the school science fair in third grade or how you once locked your keys in the car with the engine still running? It’s difficult to know exactly what story to tell at the right time – and how to make it interesting enough that eyes don’t start to glaze over or someone pulls the fire alarm just to get away from you. There is a skill to telling the right kind of stories at the right time so that you not only gain the interest of an employer or contact, but also will enable the person to recall you more vividly later. One important key: Make sure emotion is evoked. Telling the story of winning the science fair might work if it conveys a sense of joy gained through hard work. Even locking your keys in the car can become a funny tale that underlines the sense of satisfaction gained by overcoming an obstacle. Dan McAdams, a Northwestern University psychology professor who has studied storytelling for more than 10 years, told a publication for the American Psychological Association that stories “help us smooth out some of the decisions we have made and create something that is meaningful and sensible out of the chaos of our lives.” That means someone who doesn’t know you well will gain a deeper understanding through your stories of who you are and what makes you tick. Bragging about how you developed a new product can turn some people off, but telling a story of how a mistake you made actually helped you find a better answer can be much more appealing and convey the same message. Here are some tips for telling memorable and appropriate stories:

1. It has to be true.

It’s too easy to verify facts these days through the Internet or social networking sites, so don’t fib to a boss or potential employer.

2. Don’t be long-winded.

Great stories are those that can retold to others. If it’s too lengthy, others will have trouble remembering key points.

3. Determine a message.

What do you want others to walk away with after hearing your story? Don’t tell a tale that shows how you want to win at all costs when you’re trying to get a job with a team-based company. Try to talk about skills that will appeal to a particular company or contact.

4. Align your values.

People are most drawn to those like them. If your research has shown a job interviewer spends time coaching youth baseball, tell the story of one memorable youth sport that helped hone your sense of self.

5. Flesh out your resume.

It can be hard to convey your personality in a piece of paper, so use stories to add punch to important skills. Think about a story that conveys, for example, your ability to be organized, flexible and cool in a crisis.

6. Practice.

Not everyone can be Chris Rock or Tina Fey, so don’t try to imitate someone else. You want to tell an authentic story that’s about two minutes long, sprinkled with enough detail to keep it interesting and relevant. Often, stories about how you persevered through adversity or how you turned a frustrating experience into a positive one are the most appealing.

7. Look in the mirror.

While you don’t want to tell a story as if you were performing in children’s theater, facial expressions and hand gestures can be used to underscore key parts of the story. Raising your eyebrows, for example, can be used to convey surprise and gain more interest from your listener. Remember that telling someone you’re a “people person” doesn't really reveal who you are or why they should want to get to know you better. Dump the trite phrases and instead offer a deeper connection through the stories you share and you’ll develop the kind of connections that will lead to happily ever after in your career.

Program update Feb 3

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:01 GMT

Three new features

1) You can now update a previously uploaded file in-place, and optionally keep the prior file as a revision.

2) You can now re-assign many items to another user/workgroup at once

3) We’ve implemented an "Undo" feature when deleting individual contact/company record, or any activities.

And an enhancement to the “Real-time duplicate resolution” feature

We added more checks to reduce the chance that different people with the same name are seen as duplicates. The system now detects contact duplicates having the same:

Full contact name plus any: phone field (regardless of formatting), or any standard address field, or any company name
Any matching email address
Same full name and all other: phone, address and company values are not set

5 Steps for Avoiding Online Career Blunders

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:48 GMT

By now, you’ve probably heard of Crystal Cox, the blogger who was sued for libel by Obsidian Financial Group after Cox wrote that some of their business practices were illegal. Cox is now required to pay $2.5 million because a judge ruled she was not a journalist and therefore not entitled to protect anonymous sources.

This is a scary story because one definitely gets the sense that Cox thought she was doing the right thing and had no intention of getting into hot water over it. And I suspect that millions of casual social media consumers are in a similar boat right this minute.

Self-Censorship is Key

My rule of thumb for staying out of trouble online is not to post anything – anywhere – that you wouldn’t be comfortable seeing on the home page of Google, or that you wouldn’t want read by your grandmother or religious officiant. This (usually) means no posts or images involving sex, drugs, or radical politics.

It’s Not Always Obvious

When you are employed with an organization, what you can and cannot post online takes on a whole new dimension. In general, you should always think before you post, because there are the obvious no nos (such as not writing that you hate your company or that you are looking for a new job) and the not-so-obvious no nos (such as posting a company announcement on Facebook or giving a colleague a reference on LinkedIn).

Privacy Controls Are Not Everything

You are not excused from careful consideration if you make use of privacy controls on your social media networks, or if you don’t think you are “friends” with anyone who could disapprove. This approach is by no means full proof. As an example, a young professional I know in Chicago got fired after she called in sick but sent a live tweet to her friends from a Cubs game the same day. One of her friends re-tweeted the remark, which eventually found its way back to the young professional’s boss.

Know the Rules

It is also critical that you understand that company’s policy when it comes to social media. Hopefully, this is written down somewhere. If you can’t find it, ask a contact in HR. Otherwise, you could end up posting something that will cost you your job. Even if you were completely in the dark and your intentions were totally innocent, at-will employment laws in most states mean that an organization doesn’t need a serious reason or in depth process to let you go. And worse, if word gets around why you were fired, it may be difficult to secure another position because other organizations will be leery of your lack of discretion.

Thou Shall Not Resume-Blast or Defame

Staying out of trouble online involves more than just social media too. When you’re job hunting, be aware that when you post your resume in a public place, you risk your boss or HR department discovering it while sourcing candidates. And, in light of the example at the top of this post, please do not defame anyone on a website. It may seem like a good way to let off some steam, but your comments could come back to haunt you – if not legally, then personally or professionally.

If you’re a bit freaked out by this advice, that’s good, because it means you will be more vigilant. Remember: if in doubt about a piece of information, keep it to yourself.

New Wiki released! – Finding help got easier.

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 05:54 GMT

In our continuing efforts to improve the user experience with the product, we are leaving no stone unturned. This includes areas outside the product, such as website, forums, and wiki site.

Today, We upgraded our main wiki site and in the process moved to the latest version of MediaWiki. We made changes to simplify the navigation to make it easier to find content. We are also improving the feature and developer documentation.

Collaborative authoring (with community members) will be back up soon. Please give us sometime to get the ground ready for the same.

We welcome your feedback and suggestions.

Note: Old wiki site can be accessed here - http://wiki.vtiger.com/ archives

Regards,

vtiger Team

Announcing Zoho Sync: Push Mail And Mobile Sync Service

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:11 GMT

We made a new year resolution to keep our services in tune with the ever evolving world, especially with respect to the rapidly growing smartphone and tablet segment. Today, we are glad to announce the release of Zoho Sync for …

Tech@State and Syria Live Dashboards

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 10:20 GMT

Consumer social monitoring tools let you track a few Twitter accounts. But what if you need to analyze an entire country in real-time?

Netvibes was invited by the Department of State on a panel that will discuss the answers to this question at the Tech@State conference on Feb. 3-4 in Washington, DC. We hope to see some of you there!

To demonstrate how Netvibes helps government agencies visualize real-time information, we created Syria Live. Check it out for live analysis of what’s going on in Syria right now!

Also, we created a Tech@State 2012 conference dashboard where you can see everything that’s being said at the conference, plus speaker sessions, conference info, videos and more.

Tax Thursdays: When and how to hire an accountant

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:06 GMT

Welcome to the FreshBooks Tax Thursdays series! We know a lot of small businesses struggle with taxes, so we’re hoping to help make it a little easier by featuring advice from leading accounting professionals every second Thursday from January to April. Today we hear from Mariette Knoblauch on what to look for when you hire an accountant to help with the taxtime crunch.

Does this scene sound familiar: You look down at the pile of paperwork representing everything your business did last year, up at the screen with TurboTax, back at the pile and you begin to wonder if you might ever get through your taxes. Letting someone else try and make sense of it all can help but you don’t necessarily want to go to the first place you see. How do you find a good accountant to do your taxes? Here are some questions to ask if you have begun interviewing folks to straighten out your books:

Who should you ask for help?

First, look for how much of the alphabet they have after their name. CPA stands for certified public accountant and it means he or she has passed difficult tests to demonstrate their professional skill. Not all CPAs do taxes, though. You want to find one who specializes in taxes for small businesses, not a moonlighting auditor. This will typically be your most expensive option, and may be more than some people need.

What do those other letters stand for, can they help me?

An EA, or enrolled agent, has passed tests showing their tax knowledge. They are often former IRS employees, and like CPAs and attorneys can represent you before the IRS. This year the IRS is introducing a new designation, Registered Tax Return Preparer (RTRP). RTRPs will need to pass a competency test on tax preparation. For now tax preparers who are not CPAs or enrolled agents won’t have an RTRP yet, but they do need the most important letters of all – PTIN.

A PTIN, or Preparer Tax Identification Number, is required by the IRS in order to prepare tax returns for pay. Anyone you hire to do your taxes must have one. The IRS plans to make this information publicly available in time but for now the only search tool I’m aware of is from Teaspiller. Your tax preparer, whether they’re a CPA, an EA or unenrolled preparer, must sign your return with this number. Don’t do business with anyone who doesn’t have a PTIN, or won’t sign your return.

How do you test their know-how?

Letters alone don’t guarantee that someone is a good tax person for you. You want someone who also understands your business, is responsive and communicates well. Ask your colleagues who are in the same field for referrals. Are they on LinkedIn or other professional websites? Ask for an informational interview – most accountants will give you a half hour at no charge to talk in general about their qualifications and how they work.

It may seem more expensive to pay someone else to do your taxes but when you consider the time and hassle of trying to figure it out by yourself, and the money a professionally prepared tax return can save you in mistakes and penalties, a good tax accountant is worth the cost.

Mariette Knoblauch is a tax accountant in Seattle specializing in small businesses who use cloud accounting software. Her website is www.ballardbeancounters.com

P.S.: Find more FreshBooks Certified Beancounters on the brand new Fresh Map!

Caption Contest: What’s Mr. Groundhog actually thinking?

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:38 GMT

You may have noticed an additional furry critter in Tuesday's Leaflet. What? You didn't? Go on, take another look!

February 2nd marks the official Groundhog Day, where Punxsutawney Phil (the most popular Groundhog) and Wiarton Willie (The Canadian Groundhog) emerge from their burrows and predict either 6 more weeks of Winter, or an early Spring. Groundhog Day also happens to be one of our favorite Bill Murray movies, so we thought how better to celebrate this momentous occasion than a caption contest!

Here's what to do, leave a comment below, tweet us, or comment on our Facebook post to tell us what Mr. Groundhog is actually thinking when he emerges from his burrow to see the sun. Tomorrow we'll pick the best caption and the winner will receive a copy of Groundhog Day on DVD and an Amazon.com gift card!

Harvey Mackay on Job Seeking, Personal Branding and Life Lessons from Lou Holtz (Pt 2)

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 10:21 GMT

Harvey Mackay says his best friend outside his own family is legendary former Notre Dame Coach Lou Holtz. Holtz was also the head coach at the University of Minnesota and says that when he arrived in the Twin Cities (where Mackay makes his home), the “wind chill factor was about fifty degrees below zero,” and “Harvey sold me six refrigerators.”

All jokes aside, Mackay is considered a sales and business guru who has shared his selling secrets with millions of people through his bestselling books, including his latest, “The Mackay MBA of Selling in the Real World.” He has also chronicled how job seekers can use his networking and selling strategies to find a job with “Use Your Head to Get Your Foot in the Door.”

In the second part of this interview with Anita Bruzzese, Mackay offers his advice to newbies in the business world.

AB: There seems to be growing optimism about the economy. In your opinion, how should people best position themselves in their business or their career as things start to improve?

HM: I would answer this question the same way I would for the last 25 years, no matter what was happening: You must go to school for all your life.

What I mean by this is that you would hate to have major surgery with a surgeon who graduated in 2002 and didn’t keep up on the latest technology. You must continually enhance your skills throughout your career. Go to night school to enhance your computer skills. Go to Toastmaster’s International to enhance your presentation skills. You’ve got to keep enhancing your skills.

AB: Employers are being cautious about hiring. What words of advice would you have for the job seeker who may have been looking for work for a year or more?

HM: I think there are some things these jobs seekers can do to make themselves more successful.

First, they need to really know the market and territory. Even though they’re using LinkedIn to network, 50 percent to 75 percent of jobs still come through personal contacts. So, you’ve got to really get out there and meet people in your area or industry.

Second, I would immediately volunteer. Do something you’re passionate about. The biggest problems for nonprofits are money, money and money. So go knock on doors and make sales calls for these organizations. Not only will you start to feel better about yourself because you’re out there meeting people, but you’re also building a network.

Third, there are more people willing to help you than you think. Never say no for another person. Let them be the one to say no. The dumbest question is the one you never asked. I’ve mentored over 500 people, so don’t be afraid to ask someone to help you.

Fourth, get all the advice you can from career counselors or self-help books on the mistakes other people made in trying to get a job. Learn what you should be doing.

If they (job seekers) do all those things, their probability of getting a job goes dramatically up.

AB: Can you talk about some of the challenges faced by older job seekers?

HM: I think the age group of 45 to 65 has been hardest hit. It may sound corny, but unequivocally, they have to reinvent themselves.

You cannot solve a problem unless you first admit you have one, and about a third of them won’t even admit they have a problem. They still think just because their company closed up they can stay in the same industry, go across town to a competitor and get a job. That’s not going to happen.

So what can they do? They know one skill basically. They’ve got to go back to school. They may have to get an MBA, go to a career counselor, network – do all the things we’ve been talking about.

AB: A lot of career advice surrounds the idea that you’ve got to have a personal brand and promote yourself more to others. But a lot of people don’t have the chutzpah to do this. What would you say to them?

HM: They don’t teach chutzpah in school, so you’ve got to invest in yourself. Read Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” You’ve got to promote yourself and meet other people. You can’t be successful by yourself. Even the Lone Ranger had Tonto.

AB: What lessons do you feel we can all learn – and should never forget – from the past couple of years?

HM: First, if you’ve had a job, you should be pretty damn grateful.

Second, you have to be prepared to be fired from Day 1. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Let me give you an example: Lou Holtz was a 130-pound weakling and had no football skills when he decided to try out for the team in a small town in Ohio. He didn’t really have a chance to make the team except for one thing. He decided to learn all 11 positions. If he had learned only one position, he would have had to wait for that player to be injured. But if he knows all 11 positions, he knows the odds improve. That also helped later make him a great coach.

My point is that if you’re going to be on an employer’s payroll, then you better learn to be a Jack of all trades. Learn about all the different parts of a business.

AB: You’ve been in business for a long time. Where do you get your energy and enthusiasm from?

HM: I have no negative friends. I’ve left people behind who got negative as they got older. I’ve carefully picked my friends – those people who have done something with their lives, who are relevant, who have continued to learn, stayed optimistic and continue to make a difference. I surround myself with successful people who can’t wait to get up in the morning, just like me. I constantly read or listen to motivational books or tapes.

AB: Do you ever think you’ll retire?

HM: No, no, no! Retirement is a dirty word.

Admiring our customers is so easy

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 09:44 GMT

At FreshBooks we get to spend a lot of time admiring how thoughtful and talented our customers are. Case in point happened just the other day while sorting through email replies to our recent newsletter. I noticed that someone had set this message as their “out-of-office” auto-reply:

“I am currently trying to win the “Best Dad of the Year” award by taking my family on a ski trip to Austria. I will be in limited email contact. If this is urgent, please resend your request to my colleague Matt …”

Well heck, how lovely is that?! Skiing in Austria?? We all thought that he deserved to win the award he is trying for and had Etsy seller TwoPaperDollsShop send him a fine certificate. Congrats Pat for being a very generous Dad and treating your family to such a great adventure!

beautiful letterpress from etsy seller TwoPaperdollsShop

*this moment was not filmed in front of a live studio audience but if it had been, there would be wild, dramatic applause for Pat's thoughtfulness*

Bookmark feature in XING Beta Labs, event comments and more

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:57 GMT

Today’s release incorporates a number of changes to our platform, including a new addition to our Beta Labs – bookmarks. As the name suggests, the bookmark feature lets you bookmark interesting content such as websites, videos, events, groups and companies. By clicking on “bookmark”, a little window will open allowing you to add any notes you like. After clicking on save you can view your bookmark by going to My Network in the top navigation bar followed by My bookmarks.

If you’d like to take advantage of this feature you need to access our Beta Labs. As with all of our Beta Labs projects, the features there may change considerably during the course of their development. We are of course deploying various resources to continue developing the bookmark feature so that it can offer more options and improved usability.

We’ve now reactivated the option to add comments for people who organize and take part in XING Events! At the bottom of the events overview page you’ll find the option to add a comment and view comments posted by other people attending the event. That way you can ask any questions you may have or find the answer to a question you perhaps wanted to ask.

Have you received a message that was sent to several people? If so, when you reply the default setting is now “Reply to all” so you’ll automatically reply to everyone who initially received the email. This is intended to ensure continuity of the correspondence. You can of course choose to send your answer just to the sender. And finally there’s now a new form available in XING groups that allows you to reply to posts.

Have fun using the new features and don’t forget to leave feedback!

Sign up for the free FreshBooks SXSW shuttle

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 10:09 GMT

Beep beep! We'll be heading down to Austin, Texas in March for another great time at South By South West Interactive conference. Sign up for our special mailing list and get news of where you can hang out with us, hear about the fun surprises we're planning, plus get all the details on grabbing a seat on our free (yep FREE!) airport shuttle to the Austin convention center on March 8th! Simply fill out the form right here (we promise to only use your information for SXSW specific mailings). See ya at South By!

The 8 Behaviors of High-Performers

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 08:40 GMT

Some jobs come with a role description and the duties you perform do not change much from day to day. In such a position, you know exactly what is expected of you and what to do in order to do well. However, most jobs are a bit more ambiguous and the path to success a little less prescribed. Nobody is there holding your hand through the steps or handing you a cheat sheet and in many cases one doesn’t exist.

First, a quick distinction between the behaviors and the outcomes as it is related to job performance. Behaviors are what you do while outcomes are what get done. Behaviors are the only component of job performance that are within 100% of your own control. So this is where I will focus.

Outcomes, while good and necessary, differ depending on what work you do. They are the result your actions, but they are also very much influenced by factors outside of your control. For example, meeting a certain dollar amount for a sales target is an outcome. Whether you are a good salesperson or not, the market demands and product quality exert an influence on what is possible and how easy or difficult it is to achieve.

Actively seeking to become a better performer, then, involves behavior. For almost any job out there, there are eight universal categories of behavior that influence the outcome of your work:

Basic Skills

Job-specific competence – the level of technical knowledge required for the position and how well you complete tasks related to the major aspects of the job. How well you do exactly what you were hired to do. For example, writing code if you are a programmer.

General work competence – how well you do other related tasks. This is the type of work that everyone is responsible for in your organization, your work unit, or your profession. For example, customer service or proficiency in Microsoft Office.

Managing Yourself

Personal effort – demonstrating effort on a frequent, consistent, and substantive basis. This includes both effort in doing and thinking. For example, when overloaded with work, you expend extra effort rather than automatically passing it on to others. Alternatively, when confronted with a difficult problem, you proactively seek solutions before giving up and asking for help. Related: see #3 and #6 on this list.

Personal discipline – keeping a schedule and organized work day. This can range from such basics as coming to work on time and avoiding personal altercations to more advanced techniques such as respecting deadlines and managing time effectively.

Working with Others

Communication – written communication such as writing clear and concise emails; oral communication such as making a point at the weekly meeting; formal communication such as presenting the results of a survey to a board; or informal communication such as discussing a project with your boss.

Teamwork – performance that is a result of a group effort rather than simply your individual effort; activities requiring collaboration or cooperation with others. Specific behaviors could include keeping a group focused, encouraging participation, acting as a good role model, and offering assistance.

Taking Action

Management – typical management duties are setting goals to support a strategy, planning projects, organizing, delegating work, adhering to a budget, meeting deadlines, training employees, and keeping everyone informed and on the same page.

Leadership – in practice, this one can get confused with management sometimes and might be neglected if you are not naturally great in this area. Examples of leadership are striving for innovation, influencing others, motivating others, acting as a role model and serving as a coach.

Take a look at the above list and determine where you can make changes. But… if this list is at all intimidating, remember this: “only the mediocre are always at their best.”

Gliffy for JIRA 5

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 19:05 GMT

JIRA 5 is a major milestone for Atlassian and will bring many improvements to our favorite bug tracker.

Today, we're releasing a new version of Gliffy that is compatible with the latest release candidate (as of this writing rc3).

Release Notes – Gliffy JIRA Plugin – Version 3.7

[GJIRA-20] – JIRA 5 compatibility
[GJIRA-28] – Using "Save as new diagram" causes flash to freeze with error
[GJIRA-32] – Gliffy Plugin License language is incorrect for OnDemand
[GJIRA-37] – Duplicate diagram names are added in document manager.
[GJIRA-40] – Error message while attaching images to the diagram
[GJIRA-15] – Completely remove Batik from JIRA Plugin
[GJIRA-22] – Compatibility with Java Core v1.5

Customer Profile: From the powerslam to the power of networking

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:49 GMT

Ever wonder how other FreshBooks customers run a business and do what they love? Customer portraits connect you with your fellow FreshBooks peers to share guidance and inspiration.

Today, Lance Cardoza is the president and CEO of Business Street Media Group, a public relations and consulting company connecting businesses in central California. Lance and his company put together events such as 40 under 40 and Heroes In HealthCare. But just a few years ago, he was working in the professional wrestling industry. Learn how Lance went from the ring to the boardroom by diving into entrepreneurship and staying focused on his vision:

How did you come to own Business Street?

I was working in professional wrestling. I was into photography and the video end of it. I really enjoyed the media aspect. Well, full circle, I had a family and I went into commercial printing. Then I ended up buying Business Street and taking it to where it is today.

Business Street began as a magazine, but it had a terrible launch date: Sept. 11, 2001. You didn’t own the company at that point, but you were working with the proprietor. In your recollection, did the start date hurt the business?

Yes, in the first while. When the owner first printed it, he was devastated. He knew no one would be interested in something new, a business publication. We all felt it. The whole country was turned upside down. The first year was challenging, especially looking for advertisers. In the second year it started to pick up. He was one of my commercial printing clients, so I encouraged him to grow. I thought it was a great idea; it just needed some tweaking. It needed the mission statement to go from a paragraph to two simple words: “creating connections.”

You bought Business Street in 2004 and now it’s a website and public relations consultancy – not bad, considering when it started. What advice do you have for others faced with a difficult launch?

Don’t focus on the mainstream media. They get caught up in the bad news. Focus on what you’re doing with your clients and your product. Why are people interested or not interested? What are we not doing to make it work? What are we doing that is working?

What surprised you about working for yourself?

I thought being your own boss meant not having to answer to anybody. That’s not true. You answer to everybody. Learning that humbles you.

What do you like most about it?

It’s the excitement to create. It all falls on your shoulders to get things started… I figure any event can be done in 13 weeks. You need 13 weeks to promote it, run it, and organize it. If we get teams of people put in place, we’ll be fine.

Who inspires you?

I look to successful people who have learned how to use the media but not abuse the media. I would look at Donald Trump and Vince McMahon at WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment). Another big one would be Michael Gerber, who wrote the book The E-Myth. He was tackling the fact that 95 percent of businesses fail in the first year. Why did they fail? Because they lacked systems. He wrote about putting systems in place to grow the business.

What would you like to see happen with your business?

I would like to see Business Street Media Group on the news side become a national company.

What advice do you have for small business owners just starting out?

Buy The E-Myth. I think everybody should read it before starting a business. What small business owners do when they begin is they’re working in the business, not on the business. In the end all they’ve done is create a job. They start businesses because they want to break away from the job, and they want to create. A lot of people don’t realize they fall into that trap.

Are you still in the professional wrestling industry?

I’m still a promoter today. I have an independent league, Lucha Xtreme… And I own a training center where we train professional wrestlers to go up to the big companies.

Customer Portrait: Monica Ponsky and the dream that built MedWish

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:06 GMT

Monica in Honduras

The world is full of inspiring, hard working people with great ideas. At FreshBooks we are lucky enough to meet them every day when they call in with a question about their account or billing. We’ve noticed that the more time folks have to spend outside of running a business, the more time they have to invest in awesome projects.

Recently I had the pleasure of chatting with FreshBooks customer Monica Ponsky. We struck up a conversation about the fantastic not-for-profit organization called MedWish International that Monica helped create with her husband, Dr. Lee Ponsky. I was so blown away by the work they’re doing I had to share their story. We asked the founders to tell us more about the organization and while this is a story about the non-profit world, they offered advice that can apply to anyone trying to make a great idea get traction in a world with lots of competition:

How did MedWish get started?

In 1993, we founded MedWish International with the goal to save lives and conserve our environment. In partnership with hospitals, medical clinics, and private practices throughout Northeast Ohio, MedWish takes excess surplus medical supplies and sends them overseas to promote health and save lives in less developed countries. Monica also plans the annual benefit, Band Aid Bash, which raises over $230,000 each year to support our mission.

What are the essential ingredients for making a great idea come to life?

Two things: dedication and passion. MedWish is an idea that started just like most entrepreneurial endeavors (i.e.: in a parent’s garage) and has been successful enough to have now shipped supplies to 97 countries and sent 2.7 million pounds of surplus medical supplies. The organization has been around for 19 years, but really took off in 2005 when we hired the right Executive Director, who had a vision of building bigger partnerships and finding significant funders. We also spread the word about MedWish with everyone we know and meet, without fear or hesitation, because the cause speaks for itself.

What is the key to your success?

MedWish is the connector between America’s surplus medical supplies and the dire need for said supplies overseas. For that reasons, we make sure to have excellent relationships with all our stakeholders. Our network includes volunteers and an active board that pushes MedWish within the business and philanthropic communities. We have a generous group of donors, and we are always working to attract new funders interested in humanitarian relief, environmental conservation, and special needs. We have dedicated international partners, who arrange for the shipments and pay all the associated fees. And we have over 50 amazing local hospitals and clinics that call us whenever they have unneeded supplies. It's important to keep all of these groups happy!

How do you maintain your purpose and passion?

We constantly receive pictures, stories, and even videos from our overseas recipients. Seeing these supplies in action, and learning about the lives that are saved, keep our passion and commitment strong. We recently received a letter came in last week from a woman in Uganda whose life was saved by medical supplies. I can't think of anything more powerful!

What have you learned from the people you are helping?

We've learned the incredible value of medical equipment and supplies, no longer deemed useful by the American healthcare industry, in saving lives around the world. We've learned about the ingenuity and spontaneity of overseas healthcare providers, as they struggle with a complete absence of supplies. And we've learned that we should never take anything for granted: that simple pair of latex exam gloves, that 20cent syringe, and that two-dollar pair of medical scissors…they are worth their weight in gold to those who need them.

This sounds great! How can someone get involved?

We welcome volunteers and donors, so just visit our website for all kinds of opportunities. If you have things like old crutches or wheelchairs etc., you can mail them to the MedWish warehouse for distribution overseas. We are always looking for worthy projects overseas to supply so suggestions are welcome, and volunteers come from around the US to work in our Cleveland warehouse. And, of course, you can also help us by donation: for every $1 contributed, we can set $16 worth of supplies overseas.

Freed from Paperwork, Nonprofit Employees Have More Time to Do Real Work

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 08:48 GMT

At Horizons for Homeless Children (HHC), job one is helping homeless children become ready for school and learn how to play, share, read, and enjoy exploring their worlds. But the nonprofit’s employees were increasingly drowning in paperwork. Now, just a few weeks after implementing the QuickBase application developed by The Data Collaborative, Inc., HHC has automated many of the tasks formerly done manually, freeing time for the more important hands-on work of educating and advocating for homeless children and their families, said Nathan Hutto, Director of Evaluation and Innovation, who spearheaded the project.

“Our center-based staff maintain case files on each family we serve; everything was on paper,” Hutto said. Intake assessments, for example, were done by hand and employees had their own categories for basic demographic information. Such a system was fine when HHC was founded in Boston in 1988, but today, it touches the lives of more than 2,200 young homeless children each week through its Playspaces in shelters across the state, and 175 children through its three Community Children's Centers in the Greater Boston area.

After a comparative analysis of the database applications available, HHC made the strategic decision to invest in QuickBase and to engage Data Collaborative to custom-fit its application development through the Intuit QuickBase Solution Provider (QSP) program. Headquartered in Arlington, Mass., Data Collaborative has been providing QuickBase application development since the product’s inception in 1999.

“The investment metaphor is the right one,” Hutto said. For example, assistant directors at each Center used to spend eight hours per month auditing files. The personnel costs of these routine tasks on an annual basis was more than the start-up investment in QuickBase and consulting services provided by Data Collaborative combined.

“Previously in our paper-based system, we couldn’t have many reports,” Hutto said. Now with QuickBase, generating quantitative data for grant proposals or donor reports is no longer a chore, but a strategic asset for the nonprofit as it seeks to continue its primary mission of preparing homeless children for school success and exploring their worlds.

“Using QuickBase has been a game-changer for the organization,” Hutto said.

How the HHC Solution was Created

Data Collaborative Developer Josh Shortlidge started working closely with Hutto in September 2011 to understand the organization’s current — and future – needs. They could simultaneously log into the application from their respective computers (i.e. ‘shared screen’) and talk through specific design issues by phone. Shortlidge described the collaboration as follows:

“Some of the key technical requirements were tracking students and classroom attendance, as well as the ability to generate statistical models from the data. We made an interface that the non-technical center-base staff would feel comfortable using on a daily basis.

Even though the application is up and running, we’re still working together to enhance its capabilities for different user groups at HHC. Nathan is now building a lot of the new functionality himself. The challenge of the project was, and still is, invigorating, thanks to Nathan's voracious leadership!”

Twenty HHC staff members are now trained on it, Hutto said, including more than 15 who use it daily. “There was a bit of a learning curve to get all users up to speed,” he said, “but many workers had been waiting from day one for a system like this.”

For more information on QuickBase visit our website or sign up for a 30-day free trial.

Year of the Meetup

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:17 GMT

We hereby declare 2012 as the Year of the WordPress Meetup. You'll want to get in on this action.

meet·up \mēt-əp\ noun
A meeting, especially a regular meeting of people who share a particular interest and have connected with each other through a social-networking Web site: a meetup for new moms in the neighborhood; a meetup to plan the trip; a meetup for WordPress users.¹

So what is a WordPress Meetup? Basically, it's people in a community getting together — meeting up — who share an interest in WordPress, whether they be bloggers, business users, developers, consultants, or any other category of person able to say, “I use WordPress in some way and I like it, and I want to meet other people who can say the same.” Meetups come in different shapes and sizes, but they all carry the benefit of connecting you with potential collaborators and friends, and helping you learn more about what you can do with WordPress. Here are some of the common types of WordPress meetups:

Hang out and work on your WordPress sites together
Social/happy hour type gatherings
Mini-lectures/presentations
Developer hacking meetups
Show & tell of how group members are using WordPress
Formal instruction on how to use WordPress
Lecture series (possibly with visiting speakers)
Genius bar/help desk

There's no prescribed format, as each local group can decide for itself what they want to do. Some groups mix it up from month to month, while others have multiple events each month to satisfy the needs of their community.

The tough part? Running a popular group takes time and money. Just as we worked last year to remove the financial burden for WordCamp organizers and provide logistical support so they could focus more on their event content and experience, we want to start extending that kind of support to meetup groups as well. We don't want it to cost anything for someone to run a WordPress meetup, or to attend one — building local communities should be as free as WordPress itself!

Since there are so many more meetups than there are WordCamps, we're going to start with the cost that is the same for every group: meetup.com organizer dues. We're setting up an official WordPress account on Meetup.com right now, and over the next couple of weeks will be working with existing meetup group organizers, people who want to start a new meetup group, and the helpful folks at Meetup.com to put this program in place. WordPress meetup groups that choose to have their group become part of the WordPress account will no longer pay organizer dues for that group, as the WordPress Foundation will be footing the bill.

This is exciting for several reasons. First, it means local organizers who are giving something back to the project by way of their time won't also have shell out $12-19/month for the privilege. That alone is a big step. Second, it will open the door to more events and leaders within a community, since leadership and event planning won't need to be tied to “owning” the meetup group. Third, more active meetup groups means more WordCamps, yay!

In addition to the financial aspects, we'll be working on ways to improve social recognition of meetup activity by incorporating feeds from the official meetup groups into the WordPress.org site, and including meetup group participation in the activity stream on your WordPress.org profile.² I'm also hoping we can do something around providing video equipment to meetup groups (like we already do for WordCamps) to record presentations and tutorials that can be posted to WordPress.tv, helping meetup groups offer WordPress classes in their community, and getting involved with mentoring WordPress clubs at local schools and universities. Oh, and we'll send out some WordPress buttons and stickers to the groups that join in, because everyone loves buttons and stickers.

We're also putting together some cool resources for people who want to start a new meetup group. There will be a field guide to getting started and some supplies to help you get your group going, and a forum for organizers to talk to and learn from each other.

Over time, we'll be talking to organizers and looking at what other expenses we can absorb and what other support we can provide to local groups. For now, we're starting with the organizer dues. If you currently run a WordPress meetup group (whether you are using Meetup.com or not) or would like to start a WordPress meetup group in your area, please fill out our WordPress Meetup Groups survey. Filling in the survey doesn't obligate you to join the official group, it just gives us a starting point to a) find out what groups are around/interested, and b) get some information on existing groups and their expenses and needs. Meetup.com will contact the group organizers who've said they'd like to join the new program, and will walk them through the logistics of the change and answer questions before helping them to opt-in officially.

So, if you currently run a WordPress meetup group, or you would like to start one, please fill out our WordPress Meetup Groups survey. I can't wait to see more meetups!

1 – Adapted from “meetup” definition at dictionary.com.
2 – Didn't know about profiles? Check out http://profiles.wordpress.org/users/yourwordpressdotorgusernamehere (put in the username you use in the WordPress.org forums) to see yours!

Why Haven’t You Bought Your Domain Name Yet?

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 09:13 GMT

Somewhere, there is a major disconnect.

On Mashable, Erica Swallow recently wrote a post on creating a personal website that received over 3500 tweets. It was incredible that so many people were interested in this content and shared it with their networks.

On the other side of the spectrum, there’s the seminar of highly-driven professionals I facilitated last week. When I asked how many people had a personal website, two out of 100 raised their hands.

Everyone Needs a Website

I suppose there is a perception that if you don’t have your own business, you don’t need a website. This couldn’t be further from the truth. If you are employed anywhere and intend to be in the future, you need to have a strong online presence depicting a person who is reliable, loyal, smart, and competent, and it’s your responsibility to ensure that something great appears when a potential business contact or hiring manager types your name into Google.

Build it Simply

For this reason, it’s a no brainer to purchase your name from a web domain company like GoDaddy.com and create a visually-appealing website that expresses who you are, what you love to do, and why people should care.

Your site might include a professional biography, photo, credentials, work samples, and contact information. You don’t need to spend gobs of money on a professional web designer – simply buying a template online and typing your content into the relevant fields will do the trick. In fact, it only costs a few dollars a year to purchase a domain name and keep a small site running.

Go Beyond LinkedIn

Complete LinkedIn profiles are must-haves too, but they don’t produce the same level of impact as sending someone to yourname.com. If someone has already bought your name by the time you read this, try using a middle initial or a nickname (e.g. rickthompson.com instead of richardthompson.com) so that you can create an online home all your own.

Marci Alboher, for instance, does a great job of using a personal website to effectively brand herself. Although Marci currently works full time for Civic Ventures, a nonprofit think tank, her strong online presence complete with opinion pieces and a Twitter stream has her well-positioned for future opportunities and allows readers to get a glimpse of her personality.

There is, of course, an opportunity here to be really creative. In the Mashable article, Erica Swallow features a fantastic online presence by Hagan Blount, which is presented in the form of an infographic and includes quotes, stats, and a skills graph. Using tools like YouTube Annotations, it’s also easy to create a video component to your website that outlines your unique combination of skills and experiences in a compelling way (as PR executive Graeme Anthony does here).

Drive Visitors, Post Smart

In addition to using your site as a landing page for Google searches, you can proactively drive people to it by commenting on related websites, writing expert articles, engaging in social media channels, and placing your URL in your e-mail signature and on your business cards.

Please just make sure that you are discreet with the information you provide on your site. If you are currently employed, you don’t want to get into hot water by posting confidential company data or anything that suggests you are actively looking for a new job.

Hat tip to Kristine Jubeck, a website designer at Pearl Street Studio who turned me on to the need for this post.

Harvey Mackay on What it Takes to Win (Pt 1)

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 09:02 GMT

Harvey Mackay is the author of five bestselling business books, including “Swim With the Sharks Without Being Eaten” and “Beware the Naked Man Who Offers You His Shirt,” both named to the top 15 most inspirational business books of all time by The New York Times.

Besides selling more than 10 million books worldwide, Mackay is a nationally syndicated columnist for United Features Syndicate and is a top Toastmaster’s International Speaker. He is chairman of the MackayMitchell Envelope Co., a $100 million company he founded at age 26.

Recently he spoke with me about making a business successful today, the value of relationships and how he gets people to say “yes.”

AB: You’ve written a number of successful books over the years, and there are some common themes…

HM: The theme of everything I write is: “prepare to win.” There are more than 310 million people in the U.S. and for those over age 15 or so – from the moment you wake up in the morning to the time you go to bed – you are a sales person. You’re negotiating, communicating, persuading and influencing others. If you don’t realize that, then that’s when you’re going to wind up being the one influenced or persuaded. That’s when you’re going to wind up second, or third or fourth.

AB: Another theme seems to be how to get a “no” turned into a “yes,” whether it’s getting a job or landing a new customer. What’s something you feel people don’t understand about persuading others?

HM: The best way to do it is by humanizing your selling strategy. The concept doesn’t change if you’re selling insurance or envelopes. People buy from other people because of likeability. I haven’t made a cold call in more than 40 years, and neither does anyone in my company. From 40 to 70 percent of the time, you’re not going to be talking business with a customer. So what do you talk about? You go to what I call the “invisible web” and get information. Just using Google isn’t good enough.

You find out whether the person (you want to do business with) is a Democrat or a Republican, where they play golf, how much money they give to charity and where they went to school. All of this is ethical, and legal. The information is out there.

You’ll get better and better at it. Do you know everything when you go in to talk to the person? No. But you read what’s on the walls and on the desk and gain information. You talk to the guy at the front gate and the secretaries and assistants, and you gain information about the person.

We train our people that from the moment they leave a sales call, they go to their cars and begin dictating everything they learned into their iPhones or write it down.

You do all that so you build a relationship with the person. And that’s how you start to turn the “no” into a “yes.”

AB: You’ve been in business for a long time and are a self-made millionaire. What do you think is different about starting your own business today from when you launched your company at age 26?

HM: All the skills and ingredients and traits are the same. You’ve got to have passion and knowledge and be a self-starter. You’ve got to have the No. 1 most important thing – trust – with your customers and employees. But what has changed is how we get information. The acceleration of time is beyond comprehension. It’s urgent you’re knowledgeable about the Internet and social media and technology. So while all the principles of a successful business are the same, today you’ve got to merge it with cutting-edge technology.

AB: What do you think the No. 1 reason is new businesses fail today?

HM: A lot of people would say it’s a lack of capital, but I think that’s the second reason. I think it’s the people you hire. For entrepreneurs, the single biggest decision they have to make is who they hire. In the first 25 years of my business, I hired every single person, from the truck driver to the switch board operator to the sales person. One person can make all the difference.

AB: Another theme in your books has been the importance of relationships. Can you talk about that?

HM: If you really dive into the DNA of successful people you’ll find that they all have the ability to build and nurture relationships.

My father taught me early that I should always be saying to myself when I meet another person: “What can I do to help you?” It’s about reciprocity without keeping score. The key is to expect nothing in return. You must be a giver, not a taker. If you live your life that way, you can’t wait to get up in the morning.

I’ve figure out what I want on my tombstone: “He couldn’t sleep fast enough.” I don’t want to go to sleep. I was born excited.

AB: Do you think the kinds of relationships you’re talking about can be built online through sites such as Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn?

HM: I watch my grandson text so fast, his fingers are just flying. I call it the age of thumbs and forefingers. But I sincerely believe in one-on-one relationships. I’ve made at least 10 to 15 trips of 4,000 miles each just to spend 180 seconds with someone so I could look them in the eye and tell them I’m their 911.

It’s very difficult to be “all in” with teleseminars or emails. You have to be all in. The difference between 100 percent all in and 99 percent all in is 100 percent.

I’ve never met a successful hermit.

In the next installment of this interview, Mackay will talk about building a successful career, self promotion and what lessons we must learn from a bad economy.

New in Zoho Sheet: Format Painter, Vertical Merge and Goal Seek

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 08:00 GMT

We are glad to introduce the following new features in Zoho Sheet and we believe you will find these really useful.

Format Painter:
Copy formats and styles of one or more cells and apply them to other cells. This helps you …

Get your bugs off other bug trackers and into Zoho

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 06:57 GMT

Here’s a piece of exciting news! Get your bugs off other bug trackers and into Zoho with the brand new Import Bugs option. We’d work hard to make your migration from other bug tracking services quick and hassle free into …

Record advance or multiple invoice payments at one go!

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 08:10 GMT

As the new year unfolds, Zoho Invoice and Zoho Books brings glad news to one and all especially those weary folks troubled by monotonous work.

Our developers had been elbow deep in some amazing coding this past few weeks and now …

You asked, We listened. More control over your CRM

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 03:11 GMT

@headhunter: @zoho ROCKS … new CRM GUI is just simply STUNNING….Would have to be one of the best web apps I have EVER seen – EVER – Usability PLUS!

This was one of the responses to the public launch …

The Service Cloud Console: Where's my Home Tab?

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 14:53 GMT

Posted By: Gautam Vasudev

Customer Portrait: Lessons in building relationships with Chris Eustace

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 09:23 GMT

Ever wonder how other FreshBooks customers run a business and do what they love? Customer portraits connect you with your fellow FreshBooks peers to share guidance and inspire you.

Chris Eustace is the owner of Eustace Consulting, which delivers Customer Relationship Systems, specifically SalesForce.com, to all different types of businesses. Chris started out with little more than $4,000 in his bank account and after close to 3 years, he has turned his company into a successful business with a team working with him. Chris always has also been able to tap into his natural sales talent, despite always thinking he never had it. He’s also a great relationship builder.

How did you know it was the right time to go out on your own?

“I didn’t, I honestly didn’t. I had been laid off from a job before and was able to pick up a little bit of side consulting work. When I decided to quit my job, I said, ‘I don’t care if I have to go make subs or sandwiches. I just can’t do what I’m doing anymore. I’m not happy doing this.' Then I said, ‘You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to pursue my passion, I’m going to go back to school for 3D animation, and I’m going to do a little bit of consulting on the side.'

So I started back in school with 3D animation while doing some consulting on the side. I was responding to Craigslist ads and things like that. I actually started using FreshBooks right off the bat. Sooner rather than later, I really started to get some traction, and I was like, ‘Wow. I don’t really have time for school anymore. I’m getting so excited and getting so busy with this stuff that this could actually become my career!'

At this point, I can’t imagine not having done this. It’s totally reshaped the way that I look at life and the way that I look at opportunities. I never really got that being in a 9:00 to 5:00 job. It was just like, ‘OK, I’m just going to my job. I don’t see how this is the land of opportunity.' You look back and people said I was insane; I had a well-paid, 9:00 to 5:00 job. It was stable, but I was miserable and that’s not the way to live.

It was nice to pursue something while I was young and didn’t have a wife. I didn’t have a family. I just said, ‘You know what?' I had $4,000 in the bank.I then thought, ‘I’m just going to try something else because I can’t do this anymore.'

Tell us a little bit about your business. Where did the idea came from and what you and your team do?

We’re a Salesforce.com consulting company with a primary focus on developing and deploying Salesforce.com for customers. We’re mostly focused in the New England area, but we do have some customers in California and Texas. We’ve been in business since April of 2009 and since that time, we’ve worked with about 130 to 135 different companies.

I’ve been in CRM my whole career but had never worked with Salesforce until 2008. Once I saw Salesforce, I said, ‘I am never working with anything else. This is head and shoulders above anything else that I’ve ever seen.' I have experience with, I would say, about eight or nine other CRM packages in-depth and in my opinion, Salesforce is the best.

From there, we’ve actually started to expand our footprint a little bit in that we’re not just doing Salesforce. Salesforce is always the core, but we’re expanding our scope and saying, ‘Wait, what do you do for email, what do you do for document storage?' Because people are spending too much money on all these things when there are other more cost-effective solutions available.

For example, they can go to Google Apps for Business,which is cloud-based email, calendaring, contacts, and all the other features you would get with Microsoft Exchange. All data is stored and hosted through Google, totally reliable, secure and saving companies significant amounts of money. And then, for document storage, we typically work with Dropbox or Box.net and work to migrate all of their data off old servers that they had previously had to pay people to maintain. We then move them up into the cloud and integrate everything into Salesforce.com.

What does a CRM do for a business you work with? And what is Salesforce?

CRM stands for customer relationship management. It encapsulates a lead all the way to a closed sale.If you choose to implement the service module, it has the whole service and support feature set where you can support your customer base, add trouble tickets, and populate and maintain a knowledgebase. With Salesforce, what we do is really look at how are you storing all your customer data. ‘What kind of analytics can you run?' From storing customer data, tracking leads and opportunities, creating and maintaining Marketing Campaigns down to tracking internal activities going on with your sales department or any other department.

How did you learn sales?

It’s funny, I never really thought of myself as a good salesperson. But now I actually love selling. My favorite part of my job is going out getting new prospects, meeting companies, figuring out what their challenges are and then giving them solutions that are the best of breed and work for them.

I’ve always been good at public speaking; I’ve never had a problem with public speaking before. The thing that makes sales easy for me is that I 100 percent believe in the product we’re selling, and I know that this is the right choice. If they choose to go another way, I actually kind of feel bad for them because I know they’re going to revisit their decision of not going with Salesforce.com and I can guarantee that, if they get the adoption that they need, there’s no reason they would not be successful. Having the confidence in the product, myself and my team are the key things that played into that.

What’s the biggest learning you have had since starting your own business?

I think the most important thing is developing good relationships with people. That’s what it really boils down to. We can get the work done and there’s 1,000 other people that can get the work done, too. But if you can develop and cultivate relationships, that’s where you’re going to be successful.

Really, knowing how to partner with the right people, choosing the right tools, and building the relationships and continuing to cultivate those relationships is the most important thing. Some of them turn into friendships and things like that. Building those relationships is the number one most important thing that I think I’ve learned from this.

How do you get leads? How do you find your new clients? Is it all from cultivating relationships?

We get leads in a variety of ways. People will find us just on Google as we’ve done some SEO on our website. They search in ‘Salesforce consulting Boston' and we get some leads that way. We get leads from customer referrals, so when a customer has a good experience with us they refer us. Then, thirdly, and probably the biggest, is through our partner channels. Building the relationships with the companies you partner with, gaining their trust and providing a great feedback-loop for them is critical.

We enjoy spending time with our channel partners as well- dinners, drinks, and meetings. They’re good people and they know that we do good work so they trust us and we trust them. We’ve really built off of that to provide them a feedback loop. As we’re working through a sales process or a project, they’re getting updated all the time through different automated processes that we’ve built.

What’s next for you? What does success look like?

Success for me? Honestly, I never went into this business to make money. I just said, ‘I can’t do what I’m doing anymore. What I want to do is have flexibility in my day and make my own schedule.' Success, for me, is being happy in my day-to-day job. I kind of had the luxury that I’ve been very fortunate, monetarily, with what I’ve done, but that was never the end goal for me. The end goal was just for me to be happy day-to-day. I would like to continue this success in growing the business while maintaining happiness for myself and the happiness of my employees.

I ask my team, ‘What can I do to make you happier?' Because at the end of the day, you’re going to do the best work when you’re happy. What is it? Is it an iPad? New equipment? Exploring new areas that you don’t necessarily have experience with?

I also like to spread the wealth of the company so when we’re doing really well, everyone will benefit. After all, they are helping my company grow so let’s provide them with what they need and ensure that they know their value and that they are instrumental in growing this company.

Ultimately, it’s just staying happy, continuing to grow, and really doing a great job for our clients. I know it’s a little cliche, but it really is really how I feel.

What's the wackiest thing you've ever done?

Chris' bobble-head version of himself!

This is a little bit of a tough one but it’s about one of my rep that’s given us the most business. There is actually a bit of a story behind this.

The story is that this one rep believed in us and liked the work that we were doing and we weren’t really known at the time. When we went out for drinks with these guys, they were telling the story about how this one rep would always refer to us in the meetings and nobody knew who we were. His coworker started teasing him and printing out pictures of me from Facebook and pinning them all over his cubicle, which I thought was strange, but I laughed it off. For Christmas, on top of the gift I gave him, I had a bobble-head doll of myself made, and I sent it to him. It says, ‘Eustace Consulting loves Salesforce.com,' and it has to stay right on his desk so hopefully it will encourage people to ask questions about us.

Do you have anything else to share or anything else you want to include?

I would just tell people, especially when you’re in your 20’s. If you are young, pursue what you want to do because your 20’s should really be about experimenting, discovering what you do like and what you don’t like to do. Even if you are in a miserable job, just say, ‘OK. Well, I am learning. This is what I don’t like to do,' and then take parts of that that you do like to do and try and explore. Don’t feel like you have to be doing this 9:00 to 5:00 or whatever because you don’t.

If they have the motivation and will power to start something on your own then really just go after something that you’re passionate about. You’re going to be way more successful with what you are passionate about rather than just trying to make it to the next Friday.”

Zoho Invoice simplifies a law firm’s billing process

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 08:00 GMT

We are aware of the fact that Zoho Invoice has helped a lot of small businesses, freelancers and service providers to streamline their invoicing process. Here is an example of a full service law firm, HMLC that is based in Dubai, …

The Latest Mobile Networking Generation – Easy New Contacts with XING Beam and Samsung

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 06:30 GMT

Marc Ehrich, Product Manager Mobile

So you’re at a trade fair or conference and you meet some interesting people you’d like to connect with. Business cards are one option, but wouldn’t it be easier to just shake hands via XING? Well, our Mobile Handshake feature, released in September 2010, let’s you do just that. The Mobile Handshake uses HTML5 geolocation functionality in smartphones to allow XING members to add contacts via their browser or native apps (iOS, Android, BlackBerry).

The latest version of our Android app which we released today makes it much easier to add and share business contacts. Near field communication (NFC) offers users a quick and secure way of transferring data wirelessly over short distances. Anyone interested in adding a new contact can simply open up their XING profile on their smartphone and then hold it up to the smartphone of the person they want to connect with. The process involved in sharing other members’ digital business cards is just as easy, too.

Technical Requirements

As you can see in the video, it’s really easy to exchange details. To take advantage of this feature, users need to have an NFC-enabled smartphone running the Android 4.0 operating system (Ice Cream Sandwich), currently available on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. The “old” Mobile Handshake is of course still available and works on any platform.

Win one of two Samsung Galaxy Nexus

As we’ve teamed up with Samsung to present this new feature, we’re raffling off two Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphones. If you’d like to take part in the prize draw, just send an email to sweepstake@xing.com with “XING Beam” in the subject line and details of your most interesting mobile networking experience to date in the main text field. The closing data for submissions is February 6, 2012.

New in Zoho Creator: Searchable Lookup, Exposed Formula Field and Flexible Custom Actions

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 03:54 GMT

There has been plenty of activity going on at Zoho Creator lately; regarding Forms, Views, and everything database. The changes they bring are intended to achieve greater convenience in terms of usability, and it comes as a result of increasing …

Four-Peat: The 3,000,000 Salesforce Users Vote EchoSign #1 - For the 4th Straight Year

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 21:36 GMT

Anyone can claim they are #1. Talk is cheap. But the 3,000,000 users of Salesforce.com have spoken. And we're extremely pleased to note that Salesforce.com has announced that, for the fourth straight year, its customers have voted EchoSign #1 in Contract Management. EchoSign - The Customers' Choice. The Choice of the Web. Thank you for your support. We'll do everything we can to continue to earn it in 2012.

Netvibes Premium Dashboard 1.2: New Features & Improvements

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 09:26 GMT

It’s been two months since we launched Netvibes Premium, our powerful analytics solution for brand managers and social media professionals, and we’re constantly listening to our users remarks and suggestions to make it an even better product.

This week we’ll launch new features and improvements for both our Premium and Basic dashboards.

Social Pack Improvements (for Premium)

We listened to your feedbacks and improved our charts to make them more readable in all situations, even with large scales and extended period of analysis. We also added a color picker which allows you to choose between five different colors for every social pack widget and add clarity to your dashboard.

Highlights on charts have also been improved: relevant legend is now highlighted when you move your mouse over a particular section of a chart. And vice versa.

On widgets with sources or authors, you can now go directly to the domain by simply clicking on the favicon on the left. You can also switch to a new view that lists all unique sources, with no limitation.

Facebook Improvements (for Basic & Premium)

But we also thought about our Basic users and upgraded our Facebook widget. The widget will now allow you to drag & follow any user name or page in your timeline to start following it in a new widget. Easy!

Another thing you can now do with the Facebook widget is collapse or expand it. To gain space on your Dashboard, you can choose to only show its description and expand it back to the full widget when you need to have access to the whole timeline. Perfect for users who need to monitor a lot of Facebook timelines.

Finally we’re happy to introduce our brand new Facebook Search widget. Easily parse through your Facebook content, unveil mentions and monitor brands or topics. Add it on your dashboard and try it right away!

As you can see, there are new things for everyone, both our Basic and Premium users. And if you want to discover our Premium solution with analytics features and see how it works, why not sign up for a free trial upgrade to Netvibes Premium today and try it out?

Tax Thursdays! Seven Small Business Tax Write-Offs

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 08:23 GMT

Welcome to the FreshBooks Tax Thursdays series! We know a lot of small businesses struggle with taxes, so we're hoping to help make it a little easier by featuring advice from leading accounting professionals every second Thursday from January to April. Today CPA Chad Shultz walks us through tax write-offs for small businesses in the US.

As an owner of a small business, staying aware of the day-to-day operations of the business is a priority. At this time of the year, however, an owner must also be considering tax strategies for the business and write-offs are key for helping reduce the amount of income tax you need to pay. In light of this, here are 7 essential things to know about writing-off expenses and some common mistakes to avoid:

1. Car Expenses

Using a vehicle for business is quite common; when filling out your return, you will need to calculate the cost of this expense using either the Actual Expense Method or Standard Mileage Deduction.

The Actual Expense Method allows the taxpayer to write off actual out-of-pocket costs plus depreciation if he or she owns the car. Examples of expenses include Depreciation, Licenses, Tires, Loan Interest, Tolls, Gas, Oil, Towing, Insurance, Parking Fees, Registration Fees, Lease Fees, Repairs and Garage Rent. Keep in mind that parking and traffic tickets are not deductible. Also, if the car is used for personal and business, then a percentage of use needs to be determined and the business percentage is what the owner uses for the business write-off.

If you opt for the Standard Mileage Deduction, then track the business mileage and multiply that the IRS rate (i.e., $ .555/mile – July 1-Dec. 31, 2011); the total is the deduction.
To track you might use a mileage log or a smartphone app. An example of a business mileage log includes: Date, Destination, Business Purpose, Odometer Start/Stop and # of Miles. Auto expenses are also tracked with the type and amount spent (i.e., toll).

2. Travel Expenses

Airfare is deductible but if the taxpayer uses frequent flier miles to purchase a particular ticket, the cost of the airfare cannot be deducted. The taxi from the airport to the hotel, as well as transportation costs to go to a customer, including bus and limo costs, lodging, and meals (food, drinks, tax and tip) qualify. Other deductible items include the reasonable cost of cleaning/laundry, tips to the taxi driver, meals, bellhop, telephone costs to your office, receiving a fax, and computer/cell phone rental. These are based on actual costs and not per diem travel rates.

3. Business Gifts

You can deduct up to $25 per person per year, so keep in mind that if the business owner purchases a $30 bottle of wine for a client, only $25 is deductible. Some people also get confused with “gifts” vs. entertainment. If you give someone a ticket that costs $20 to a ballgame as a gift, then you can deduct this. If, however, you code it as entertainment, it may be subject to the 50% rule, making it a $10 deduction.

Make sure receipts are kept for any of the gifts, expenses with notes, showing the date, the person the purchased meal/gift is for, purpose of meeting/gift, and any other pertinent information. Suggestion: scan their receipts, since most receipts are on thermal paper that fades.

4. Repairs

The cost to repair business equipment or property is deductible, but be sure you make the distinction between “repair” and capital items. For example, if you replace an air compressor in the business air conditioner, that is considered a repair vs. adding a new air conditioning unit, which is a capital item.

5. Rent

Rent expenses are deductible, along with other terms of a lease (i.e., property taxes.). Many make January rent payments in December. If the business is using cash basis, then it will be deducted with the current year. If the business uses accrual accounting, then it must be capitalized.

6. Advertising

Deductible advertising expenses include business cards, print/radio/TV ads, yellow page advertising, package design costs as part of advertising campaign, billboard rental fees and signs on the side of cars/trucks, and PR expenses, including fees, event fees and costs of press kits.

7. Small Expenses (that can add up)

Dues and Subscriptions: Dues for professional, business or civic organizations are deductible (i.e., American Bar Association, American Marketing Association), Chamber of Commerce and Rotary. However, athletic, sporting, airline or hotel membership costs are not, even though they are business oriented. Business and professional publication subscriptions are deductible.
Legal and Professional Fees: These fees, which include legal, accounting and tax prep, and appraisal fees, are deductible.
Bank and Merchant Fees: Bank-related fees, such as monthly, ATM and online banking costs, as well as merchant service fees, including Pay Pal related costs, are deductible.
General Office Expenses: Office supplies, postage, books, cleaning/janitorial services, flowers and plants, snacks and beverages, are all deductible.

For specific information about tax write-offs for your industry visit the IRS.gov Small Business website, where you’ll find information that IRS agents use for examining returns. Another resource is the IRS’ Self Employed Individuals Tax Center.

- Chad Shultz, CPA www.shultztax.com

Links in Comments, Improved Event Organization, and more

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:04 GMT

Today’s release includes a number of changes to improve usability in and around our platform. From now on you can add links to comments that are highlighted and can be clicked on by other users. In addition, we’ve improved the keyboard usability when it comes to adding tags.

Event organizers will be happy to know that we’ve revamped the entire process which also includes much clearer input fields without the loss of any functionality (you can even add a photo now) so it’s easier and quicker to post events.

We’ve also been working on our recently launched Beta Labs project, which currently includes Polls and the Freelancer Marketplace. Here we’ve improved the usability of polls so you always see the buttons allowing you, e.g. to add more options, along with improved project navigation for the Freelancer Marketplace the option to add keywords.

New feature: Real-time duplicate resolution

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 02:56 GMT

Solve360 now shows if there are any matching records to the one you’re working on and offers you a one-click option to merge them.

When you open or update a contact or company record the system will automatically check if there are any other records in the system that appear to be the same as the one you’re currently working on. If any are found a special message is displayed below the details header. Hovering over the item name will show you the details behind it, clicking on the link will merge the two records.

Currently, merging records will copy each field value, category tag and activity from the newest record to the oldest record, then the newest record will be deleted. Empty fields in the newest record will not over-write fields with values in the oldest record.

For contact records it checks full name and email address, for company records it checks the company name. To avoid unexpected results duplicates are checked against records having the same owner e.g. in the same workgroup.

Internet Blackout Day on January 18

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:18 GMT

WordPress.org is officially joining the protest against Senate Bill 968: the Protect IP Act that is coming before the U.S. Senate next week. As I wrote in my post a week ago, if this bill is passed it will jeopardize internet freedom and shift the power of the independent web into the hands of corporations. We must stop it.

On January 18, 2012 many sites around the web — from small personal blogs to internet institutions like Mozilla, Wikipedia, reddit, and I Can Has Cheezburger? – will be going dark in protest and to drive their visitors to sites like americancensorship.org to take action and help fight the passage of the Protect IP Act. So will WordPress.org.

If you want to join the protest by blacking out your WordPress site or applying a ribbon, there is now a variety of blackout plugins in the WordPress.org plugins directory. While joining the protest in this manner is laudable, please don't forget to also make those phone calls to U.S. Senators — they're the ones with the voting power.

New tablet and smartphone support

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 02:08 GMT

Due to popular demand, we've just released better support for tablets and larger smartphones, so that you have the choice between viewing the mobile version or the normal version of Protopage on your device.

We were previously automatically redirecting mobile devices and tablets to the mobile site, but we now present you with a choice when you visit protopage.com from those devices. As before, you can always reach Protopage mobile directly by going to protopage.com/mobile from your mobile device.

5 tips for managing client expectations

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 16:33 GMT

This is a guest blog post that appeared on the RightSignature blog. RightSignature is an add-on service to FreshBooks that allows you to send invoices and estimates to clients for signature with just a few clicks.

It’s usually good news when a small business or freelancer lands a new customer. But the situation can quickly turn sour if you’re not careful about managing client expectations. Does the customer understand what they’re buying? Is there any chance that the client might think you’ll deliver one thing, when you planned to deliver something else? The risk exists if you don’t follow these five pieces of advice: use a contract, communicate, build a relationship, keep your word, and over deliver.

Use a Contract
By laying that groundwork at the beginning of the job, it’s much more likely that the customer will be happy with the finished product. In a contract you can lay out exactly the terms of the project – deadlines, who’s responsible for what, and of course the amount of money involved. It’s the first step in ensuring both you and your client understand what to expect. You can use FreshBooks to generate a detailed invoice, and then send it to the customer via RightSignature for legally binding electronic signature.

Communicate
Use your words! Keep your client informed as to project progress and issues (including potential solutions for the occasional problem). Many freelancers rely on email to connect with customers, using their email programs as veritable repositories of information, including details about when, exactly, the client agreed to push back the project’s deadline, for instance. In fact, email may be better than other forms of communication (texting and voice particularly) for permissions because it lets you go into detail, and people tend to save emails, so you can check back for verifications later.

Build a Relationship
But email certainly isn’t the only form of communication you should use. It can be somewhat cold and impersonal. Pick up the phone and speak to your customers every once in a while. That can help you build a relationship with your clients, and it helps remind them that you’re not just a distant service provider. You’re a person. That can help you smooth over mistakes (when they happen). After all, it isn’t so easy to write off a work relationship when there’s a personal connection as well.

Keep Your Word
Did you commit to participating in your customer’s conference calls? If so, do so. Did you agree to a deadline? If so, meet it. It’s particularly important that you should keep your word on small details, because if you can’t meet the little expectations, your client may conclude you’re incapable of meeting the larger needs involved in the job.

Over Deliver
Aim to go above and beyond the contract. Throw in extras – services, recommendations, support, follow-up – whatever will make your client take notice. If you do manage to over-achieve once in a while, your client could come to see you as someone she can count on as a valuable business partner, not just a vendor. That puts you in a different class of service provider, and it could translate into more business down the road.

The shiny new XING share button – How to implement it in your blog or website

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 11:31 GMT

By Victoria Schiffer, Software Engineer and Annika Tanudjaja, Junior Software Engineer.

Have you come across XING’s new share button with its enhanced statistics regarding shares, comments, clicks and more on a website you visited recently? Maybe you were wondering if you could implement it on your own website, too? Well we’ve got good news for you because you can! Here’s how to do it:

Share Button Builder

Go to the share button page that’s also available via the footer on www.xing.com to find the best button style for your site and to configure it to meet your needs.

Step 1 – Pick your favourite layout

Maybe you want to add a counter and our newly available statistics' hovercard to your share button, or just stick with a simpler version for smaller spaces on your website. Either way, you can choose the layout that works best for you.

Share button with counter and statistics' hovercard

The share button with a counter (available both in vertical and horizontal styles) shows the total number of shares for this link on XING. Our new hovercard offers additional statistics such as the total number of clicks, likes and comments for the link on XING. If you’re an Internet Explorer user, you’ll need to have IE 8 or higher to be able to access the hovercard. Anyone with a lower IE version will still be able to see the share button and counter, but without the hovercard.

Simple share button

The simpler version of our share button provides you with three layouts, each with a different size, to meet your needs.

Step 2 – Enter an optional URL

Usually you can leave the “Other URL” field empty and should only add a custom URL if you want to share a page other than the one showing the button. This may be of use to you, e.g. if you want to add separate buttons for various content on a single page. If you don’t add an “Other URL” here, all of the share buttons would share the same overview page along with the same statistics.

If the field is empty, the current website’s link is what will be shared on XING. So if you only want to share the website that displays the button, skip this part and go to the next step where you can select the button’s language.

Things to consider when adding a custom URL

If you enter a URL in the “Other URL” field, this is the link that will be shared on XING. Do not encode the URL as we encode it again before redirecting to the XING share form. If you encode it, it would be encoded twice, hence leading to an invalid link that cannot be shared on XING.

Step 3 – Select the button language

The share button is available in German and English, and this applies both to the button’s tooltips and the hovercard’s tooltips as well as the link on the hovercard.

Step 4 – Share button preview

In the preview section you can see how the share button will appear on a website – with all its functionality – in exactly the same way you customized it. So if you choose a share button with a counter and enter an optional “Other URL”, the preview will show the exact shares and statistics on XING for your given URL.

Step 5 – Copy the code to your website or blog

The code displayed needn’t be changed once you have customized your share button with the options stated above. So now all you need to do is copy and paste the code and then add it to your website’s HTML source code.

Things to consider when adding the code to your website

Please be aware of any erroneous escaping of the code by webdesign software or so called WYSIWYG editors and content management systems. If the code is escaped in any way, the share button might not be displayed or work properly. If you run into any problems you should check your HTML source code. The