CPA Technology Blog

Monitors for Out of the Office and Other Hardware Recommendations

One of the more common questions asked by readers is a request for recommendations of external LCD monitors which can be attached to a laptop so that mobile users have two displays.  This post summarizes current thoughts on how to do this based on my experiences and the experiences of my friends, Randy Johnston, Bob Spencer, and Val Steed.  Together, we teach hundreds of CPE courses to accountants across North America each year, and also make recommendations at TechnologyBestPractices.com, CPAFirmTech.com, TotallyPaperless.com, and AccountingSoftwareWorld.com.  Many of us are also active consultants with CPA firms nationally either independently or through organizations such as NMGI.

The K2 CPA Firm Tech team members had an e-mail discussion re: our personal opinions on portable monitors for CPAs about three weeks ago. 

• Some of my co-workers @ K2 (Val, Randy, Bob) are recommending an HP 21.5” touch screen monitor – the HP L2105tm 21.5”($299).  Personally, I think this one is too big to lug around (14.1 lb (6.4 kg), Dimensions (w x d x h) 20.2 x 9.1 x 16.5 in).  The one I mention below is smaller, but does not have the multi-touch touch screen, and is also only an 18.5” display instead of a 21.5” display, resulting in much less work area, but my recommendation is a little over half of the weight of the HP model.  Info on HP model L2105tm is available on the HP website.
• Due its the much smaller form factor (17.72" x 11.65" x 2.83", Weight 7.94 lbs), I’m recommending the Samsung LD190N monitor for staff and seniors when out of the office  ().  It is a 18.5” LCD (1360 x 768 native resolution), and has a 5ms response time with decent contrast.  I purchased one of these for my own use a few weeks ago.  Some things you should know about this display:
  • This WILL NOT fit in my backpack sized for a 17”notebook, so I haven’t taken it on the road yet.
  • The monitor is NOT HDCP capable, so you will not be able to play Blue Ray DVDs on it, and only has an analog VGA cable input.
  • Since this one is only $119 vs. the $299 of the HP above (the HP is clearly a superior monitor, but it’s big, you could always buy a few of the Samsungs, and then see if you need a larger display and the touch interface. 
• You might try to find a good deal on 17” monitors, although I don’t know of any specific models to recommend, as most everyone is going to something bigger these days.

Screen protection will be a concern for most users, as there is no protection provided with either of these displays, and they will be very easy to crack.  I plan to protect my screen two ways:

• I plan to use black velcro (matches the framing on the monitor) to attach a trimmed corrugated plastic For Sale sign you can buy at Lowe’s/Home Depot and use it as a hard piece to protect the screen.
• I will see if any of my existing bags will hold the monitor so I can avoid purchasing a special case for it (I have about 10 laptop cases from throughout the years).

There are a number of alternatives for a case, including:

• For the smaller Samsung and other 19” class displays, there’s a closeout bag by Shuttle (gaming PC manufacturer) which is designed to transport their discontinued XP19 - 19” monitor (which had a piece of plexiglass over the LCD) from place to place.  I don’t have one at this point, but it looks pretty interesting, and is $60 @ Directron, an online closeout store.
• One firm reported that they use the CaseAce LCD harness to transport monitors and shield the screens from damage.  This is a cover shaped like a messenger bag (with the bottom open) to let you carry your monitor by the handle mounted on the top of the bag.  (Note: This harness appears to not be water tight, so you may want to also carry a trash bag with you to seal the monitor in the event of very heavy rain).  There is a larger version of this LCD harness which will let you carry monitors up to 24”. 
• Another firm reported that they used contact paper to reinforce the original packaging which came with their monitors and are using these boxes on the infrequent occasions when they need to move from site to site with their LCD.

Finally, some users will want to have more than one 22” monitor available in the office.  There are a number of solutions which will let you run the second external monitor (e.g. laptop LCD + 2 External LCD’s), including:

• VillageTronic’s viBook USB to DVI adapter.
• Arkview’s USB to DVI adapter
• Some docking stations

I would NOT purchase more than one of any device until you test it and verify that the drivers will not conflict with your applications and operating system.  I have had numerous issues with drivers for these items in the past, and some of the ones you can purchase at retail in office supply stores have software which will hang up when you try to run the PC without the attached monitor – which defeats the purpose of having a laptop.

FREE WEBCAST 12/9/2009 @ 2PM - On a personal note, I’m presenting a free one hour webcast on Gadgets with Greg Lafollette at 2pm EST on Wednesday, December 9th.  I hope you will register and attend.  The webcast is sponsored by Sage.

Got Tick Marks?

One of the more common things I am asked from people who are implementing a document management system is how they can include their “tick marks” in their documents.  My usual responses are to look at PDFlyer or Tick, Tie & Calculate in Acrobat (or alternatively, create your own stamps), and to either use graphics or a symbol font like wingdings in Word, Excel, and everything else. 

My wife and I recently started using SendOutCards to send some of her follow up correspondence as part of her work as a mortgage loan officer.  One of the things you get with SendOutCards is the ability to create a custom font based on your handwriting.  I have sent mine off, and am somewhat anxious about what it’s going to look like when it is complete (my handwriting really, really stinks).  This effort, however, has opened my eyes to how easy it is to create your own, personalized font to do things like tick marks and other symbols.  While you can purchase applications for $50 to do this, the geniuses over at LifeHacker had a great post in February which mentioned YourFonts, a web service which does this for you for free.  You fill out a form, scan it, and it encodes the stuff you wrote as images in a Windows-compatible TrueType font.

If you needed to create a font for tick marks, you could simply create your own font using this tool, and instead of making the letters correctly, you could assign a tick mark to each character on your keyboard.  And it’s free.  You will need to share your tick mark files with anyone who would print out your documents, and will probably want to render the final versions to PDF (and embed the tick mark font in the PDF files), but if you do this, it’s a fairly elegant solution to one of the more vexing problems associated with annotating documents.

Thoughts on Auditing from Across the Pond

Dennis Howlett, an accountant/blogger who is a British CA and lives in Spain recently posted to his blog (www.accmanpro.com) a story about Auditing and traditional financial reporting being over.  Interesting discussion (and it makes me wonder why our business model is exempt from being reengineered)... thought some of you gentle readers might enjoy it.  I may post a rebuttal after I've contemplated the article and formulated my thoughts.  Whether you agree or disagree, it is thought provoking.

Howlett's post: http://www.accmanpro.com/2009/02/03/auditing-its-over-cuz-its-not-smart/

The post that started it all: Umair Haque's "Smart Growth Manifesto":
        http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/haque/2009/01/davos_discussing_a_depression.html

Gliffy - More than a Family Nickname Gone Horribly Wrong

So there I was - reviewing some websites for a proposal, and out pops a gem of an application that you might want to consider.  It's got a funny name (like most web 2.0 / AJAX sites), but it seems pretty neat.

The site is Gliffy, which was written using OpenLazlo, an AJAX development tool.  Gliffy doesn't aspire to take over your Office (they'll leave that challenge to better funded competitors like Google - and even with the best brains and lots of cash, that's going to be pretty tough to pull off).  Gliffy just wants your flowcharts.  Lots of them.  And you can do it in a browser.

If you're one of those who has used my Excel flowchart template in the past, you might want to sneak a look at Gliffy - in the immortal words of Bluto, "Don't cost nothin'"

The View from 30,000 Feet

As I write this, I am en route to Charlotte for three days of classes, and I am receiving about three requests a day from course participants for my Excel flowchart template. Since responding to requests takes time away from other pursuits (e.g. blogging, gadget 'research'), I'm reposting the file to the blog for mass consumption.
The flowchart template can be obtained from http://blog.bftcpa.com/flowchart.xls.

I hope you find this file useful when you are creating your overview (or 30,000 foot view) flowcharts.

COSO releases Guidance on Internal Control Over Financial Reporting (ICFR) for Smaller Public Companies

COSO released an exposure draft of their new document on ICFR in smaller public companies today.  For more information, please visit their website at http://www.ic.coso.org

Blogs, Wikis, and Portals. Oh My!

Many tech consultants have observed that CPA's are "technology challenged" as a group.  This statement is generally followed by an apology to "*-challenged" people for lumping them in with a group such as us.  (As an aside, I tend to believe that the technology aptitude of CPAs follows a bell-curve just like the tech ability of any profession - there are leaders and there are followers in every group, and I choose to think of myself as a leader rather than a member of an impaired group).

With this in mind, two electronic publishing technologies have recently swept the web.  The first, blogs/newsfeeds, has been written about extensively in the press.  Most of you who don't know me personally from either my practice or seminars are probably here because of Eva Lang's article on blogs from the June 2005 Journal of Accountancy.  The second, wikis, has not been discussed as much, but represents a way for charitably minded professionals (or maybe just those of us with egos out of control) to share their knowledge with others. 

A Wiki is like a user-maintained encyclopedia, with the readers contributing articles as they look for information on a topic.  The granddaddy of all wiki websites is wikipedia.org.  This site is typical of most wiki sites I've interacted with.  It has a great deal of useful information, but it also has a great deal of garbage in its ranks.  One example - we're all very sick of the Gwen Stefani song, "Hollaback Girl" (actually I heard entirely too much of it, to the point that it was ingrained in my brain).  I looked "Hollaback Girl" and "bananas" up at Wikipedia (HG)(B) and at at urbandictionary.com (HG)(B).  Note the difference in the two sets of definitions - Wikipedia has well edited and thought-out definitions, with discuss the commonly used definitions of the words, while UrbanDictionary has about six definitions for each word, some of which don't even make sense.  Moral: Some wiki good, others bad.  Choose carefully, and check before you link.

(At this point, many of the parents of teenagers are telling their kids that they are grounded for various issues related to "Hollaback Girl" and racy music videos, and the rest of you are wondering what in thunder Gwen Stefani has to do with accounting and technology.... Well, here it is-

The POINT

We all remember the promise of CPA2Biz, and how it necessarily had to fall short of the huge expectations of all websites after the "dot com" crash of 2001.  This week I received links to two interesting sites (Intuit's TaxAlmanac and First Horizon's CPA First Resource) seeking to join AccountantsWorld, CPA2Biz, AccountingWeb, AICPA, and your State CPA Society as your daily portal of choice..  Both Tax Almanac and CPAFirst Resource appear to be vendor-controlled resource listings, and strike me as hybrids between a blog and a wiki.  Intuit's venture, TaxAlmanac, appears to be more of a Wiki than a blog (the main page includes:

TaxAlmanac is a free tax research resource brought to you by Intuit (http://www.intuit.com). It is a revolutionary leap forward in how accountants research tax laws, create and share knowledge....

TaxAlmanac is written by tax professionals from across the country and takes advantage of the knowledge of academia as well as practioners - in short, the real tax experts. The site includes key information that tax professionals find useful when conducting research - including the Internal Revenue Code, Treasury Regulations, Tax Court Cases, and a variety of Articles.

First Horizon's CPAFirstResource takes the form of an aggregation of weblogs instead of a wiki.  Its historical market data is actually a link to CBS Marketwatch, and its market news feed is a subscription based feed from financial data provider FinWin.  It is an interesting and useful site, and although it seems to sell First Horizon well, it appears to be in the early stages of its existence.

Blogs and wikis have funny names, and allow you to do some amazing things on your website on the cheap (for example, see www.bftcpa.com) and how I keep my website current with this blog.  CPA's should be careful with what they take on the internet on faith.  I like what I've seen of both these websites, and I think they will help practitioners be more productive and successful, but I also think they must be taken with a grain of salt (e.g. I don't think you'll see ads for Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Amsouth, Creative Solutions, or CCH on these sites), and the advice is probably only worth what you pay for it.  Although some good samaritans will do good work in these forums, some others may give bad advice, and only time will tell how well these sites will be edited for factual accuracy.

The other point to this rambling post is to call your attention to the democratization of the web.  Just four years ago, CPA2Biz was going to revolutionize how we all did business with our clients, and it did - by showing our profession that the democratization of information on the web makes it possible for any of us (even me) to have a website that looks as good as those of the big boys - we just have to decide what we want to accomplish and compile the data feeds which address those information needs.  The sooner you see the web and your intranet/Sharepoint site as a toolbox and not as a temple for super freaky geeks, the more opportunities you will see to optimize your communications to your target markets, and increase your team's productivity through targeted information sharing.  And that's what it is all about, isn't it?

Disclosure: I use Intuit's Quickbooks and Lacerte products, and am a fellow member of the Tennessee Society of CPA's, as well as a member of its professional development committee and the TSCPA Council,  TSCPA is First Horizon's partner in CPAFirstResource.com.  I am also a MS Registered Member, and teach courses for AICPA and Becker CPA review.  The thoughts here are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect any of the above organizations in any way, shape or form.  Just like the fuel economy sticker says on the window of a new car, your mileage may vary.