In response to Microsoft’s withdrawal of support for Microsoft Office Accounting, Fusion Accounts are pleased to offer a free migration service for customers wishing to move to Fusion Accounts.  Simply sign up for our Free Trial and contact our support team who will be more than happy to migrate your data.

We have added some user sales reports showing sales orders against customers grouped by sales person.  These are available on the “Sales Reports By User” page from the “Sales” menu.

We have also added a product report showing product details.  This is available from the “Product Reports” page on the “Sales” menu.

Please let us know if there are any other reports required and we will happily implement them.

For those businesses using Sales Order Processing – sales orders, like invoices, can now be assigned to a sales person other than the person recording the order.  This improves the accuracy of the sales order reports.

As part of our marketing campaign, earlier this year we began a Google ad-words campaign.  Although very successful at generating site traffic and with a fair amount of “conversions” we were pleased with the ROI we were receiving.  However, as our natural rankings increased we decreased our monthly budget.

Whether by coincidence or not, a sales rep from Google contacted me shortly afterwards.  Not only was she really friendly (perhaps she’d seen my online mug-shot) but she also did a great job in “optimising” our campaign to such an extent that we were getting more conversions for 1/2 the cost!

My thanks go out to her!

Here is a brief summary of what she did:

1. Split my campaign into two campaigns – one for content and one for Google.  This allows easier targeting of the content keywords and adds.  Content adds are those adverts placed on other peoples pages but which are sourced from Google.
2. For the Google campaign split the campaign into groups based around related keywords – for example “Accounting Software”, “Accounting System” etc.
3. For each of these groups customise the ads so that they reflect the keyword in the url displayed e.g. for the “Accounting System” ads -
   
   Fusion Accounts
   Online Accounting Software
   Sign Up Now For 60 Day Free Trial!
   FusionAccounts.com/AccountingSystem
   
   Note – the actual link is still the same.
4. Use keyword substitution e.g.
   
   {KeyWord: Accounting Software}
   Online Accounting - Anytime,
   Anywhere. 60 Day Free Trial Today!
   FusionAccounts.com/OnlineAccounting

I guess the psychology around this is that if you see the search words you typed in coming back at you, you are more likely to associate it with what you want.

Then, after a couple of weeks she re-contacted me and we set up a keyword report to show what people had searched on and then added in “Negative” keywords.  These were searches that were matching and people were clicking on (so I was paying for) but that were irrelevant.  Example for Fusion Accounts were Halifax Accounting, Barclays Accounts etc.

I wish I had thought of Google!

4 years ago when my old Nokia 6310i brick finally gave up the ghost I spent some time convincing Orange to replace it with one the same.

She kept asking me silly questions like “what do you use your phone for?” – phone calls of course!

The 6320i and its predecessors were great phones.  My wife still has my old one.  The battery simply never runs out.  About 6 months ago she changed car and so the hands free kit was lost and she had no charger.  It took me about a month to remember to bring one home from work.  During that time the battery went from 6 bars to 5.

They were also pretty indestructible.  I know this as previously a typical phone would last me 9 months before I broke it.  Stepped on it, dropped it, cycled over it, fell out of a boat with it.  The Nokia just kept on going.

However, all good things come to an end.  I wanted mobile email.

So – we renewed our business plan and I got a HTC running windows mobile.  Email on it great – outlook – exactly the same as I’ve been using on my desktop for 10 years.

More recently I’ve noticed that its taking over my life – it now has twitter, google, youtube, google maps.  This year we even used it to navigate around Paris – though I’m going to have to hide the data bill from the accountant.

So – I decided it would be handy if I could blog from it.  Sure, I could use the web browser but its a bit cumbersome.  All the blogs I work on sit on the DotNetNuke platform.  The DotNetNuke platform supports a blogging standard called MetaWebLog.  Not sure where this standard comes from but it seems to work fine with Windows Live Writer – which is what I’m using now.

So I googled and tried a few apps.

Moblog

“moBlog currently supports Blogger, Wordpress.com and Live Spaces. Support for LiveJournal and MovableType/TypePad is also on the cards.”

 

Not much good for me then as I need “MetaWebLog”.

Maybe one of these is it – so I had a look on wikipedia and it told me live spaces used it.  I started to set up a blog as a live space blog.  Scrolled the input screen to the bottom and when I popped up the on screen keyboard it covered half the input boxes.  Not good.  Tried with keyboard but settings just didn’t seem to match what I wanted.

Verdict.

There only seems to be a couple of standards – maybe the writers should concentrate on these rather than specific blog providers.

UI seems to need a bit of polish.

Writer for Windows Mobile

First thing strange about this was that it does not come as a cab file but a zip file.  You simple unzip the directory onto your mobile.

Not sure how easy this is for those without a pc handy.

Set up the blog and tried to publish.  Not really sure if it worked or not – checked online – nothing there.

Verdict

Needs to tell you what’s going on.

Only supports one type.

Didn’t seem to be able to download.

Couldn’t get it to work.

TBlogger

Installed and setup fairly easily.  Only slight gripe was I couldn’t paste in urls to the text boxes.  Took me a while to find my blogid – but it was in the url the whole time.  This is not really a gripe with TBlogger but more with my head.

It successfully synced with all my blogs – downloading a local copy – so things were looking promising.

So – I tried to publish a blog but got an error – “Failed to create or amend item: quick test(): request contains boolean value when integer expected[request:parameter …”

Not sure if this a general issues or maybe a problem with DotNetNuke.  However, I do know that Windows Live Writer works fine.

I was able to edit an existing blog without any problems.

Verdict

Seemed to be very promising.  I was particularly impressed with being able to do a full sync from my blogs.  However, needs fixing and I have yet to receive a reply to my post on the home page.

Overall Verdict

No success.  Perhaps Microsoft will do a Windows Live Writer for Windows Mobile.

Of the 3 I looked at – TBlogger was certainly the most complete.

Perhaps I should get a life.

A couple years ago I was working at home for a few days and needed a printer in a hurry.  So I went down to PC world.  Man that place is depressing!  When I asked the guy if the printer was supported for Windows Server his eyes just seemed to glaze over.

Ended up with a Lexmark of some sort.  I have owned a Lexmark before and vowed never to buy anything not made by HP again – but you know how sometimes you think – how bad can it be.  Also, it was cheap.

Well – the printer itself has actually been OK.  But, from the first day I’ve used it the software has done nothing but tell me I need new ink.  It was practically the first thing it said!

I hate printer software that tries to take over your PC.  All I want is the driver.

Earlier this year, after 18 months or so, I was finally lured to pressing the “order more ink” button.  It gave me a list of vendors to buy from but when I clicked on any of them it did not work.  Pathetic.

So today – when I needed to print something – it finally ran out.  Two years after telling me to buy more.

20 minutes later in the office the HP LaserJet that I bought about 6 years ago printed out perfectly fine and did not try to sell me anything.

My sales team and users are constantly telling me to keep Fusion Accounts easy to use.  They also want more and more functionality.  So they want easy complexity.  The WII successfully implements two principles that we try to adhere to in the design of Fusion Accounts.

KISS

The first is the age old KISS principle.  KISS = Keep It Simple Stupid or as Albert Einstein put it "everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler".

Technologists such as myself love to use the latest “Whiz Bang” technologies.  What we often fail to forget is that users want things easier and don’t care what technology is used.  As part of our recent website revamp we asked all our employees to list there favourite website and explain why they liked them so much.

Without exception they listed sites such as Google, Gumtree and Easyjet as not only being great as they did what they wanted them to do but also because they did it in an uncluttered and simple way.

Google has to be the best example of the KISS principle.

“Old” internet users like me remember in the “early” internet days there was Netscape’s guide to the internet and  Yahoo had a category listings pages that were manually maintained.  Then in 1995 came AltaVista from DEC – which was a proper web crawler that indexed pages. It had a search.

Then along comes Google – which had one text box and a search button.  Ok – now behind the front page there is lots of other stuff Google can do for you and their business model and tools for paid advertising are great but I think what really made Google so popular was its simplicity.  And today the main page still features a text box and a search button.

In developing Fusion Accounts we have tried to adhere to this principle – but it is difficult.  Accounts have much more than one box!

So – we have tried to make each part of the system show just enough detail to allow the user to do what they need to do with extra bangs and whistles available to the advanced user.  We feel we have succeeded well in this, our users tell us they prefer it to other systems that they used to use – but we know new users who have not used any accounting systems before can find some of the concepts tricky.

Luckily as an online provider we are able to implement continuous improvements from user feedback.

The Principle Of Least Surprise or Astonishment

“In user interface design, programming language design, and ergonomics, the principle (or rule or law) of least astonishment (or surprise) states that, when two elements of an interface conflict, or are ambiguous, the behaviour should be that which will least surprise the human user or programmer at the time the conflict arises.”

My 3 year old daughter can use the WII!

The WII’s user interface uses big buttons.  It is uncluttered and there are always only a few choices.  If you need to do something in you can’t continue until you have done it.

The layout of each page is consistent, the options are consistent, the buttons to push are consistent.

This is quite difficult to apply.  One of the “Surprises” that we are currently addressing in Fusion Accounts is the use of negative numbers.  Most people know what a negative number is but it seems to surprise accountants who are much happier with credits and debits or brackets to indicate numbers less than zero.

So we have to consider who it is we want not to surprise.  Sometimes this provides us with a dilemma.  Our user’s who are accountants and bookkeepers  like to see codes for nominal accounts.  For example, when recording a payment for electricity then want to type a code for electricity.

To give least surprise we have used similar codes to Sage – so accountants are familiar with these.

Businesses users though are generally not used to Sage and do not know these codes.  They just want to say the payment was for Electricity.

We are currently making how the Nominal Account (payment category) is selected a user option.  We just need to make sure the number of user options does not break the KISS principle!

Anyone who has looked at my blog will know that we are currently recruiting.  I rang one of the local job sites on Friday who we’ve done business with before but who were recently taken over by a large media organisation.

“Hello”

“Hello, can I speak to *** please?”

“*** who?”

“*** who does the jobsite”

“She’s gone home” (fair enough – it’s 4:30 on a Friday")

“Is there anyone else who I can speak to?”

“No”

“Ok – bye”

And off I go to a competitor.

What about – “I’ll see if someone else can help you” or “can I help you” or “can I take a message” or just put me through to voicemail.

Probably not the guys fault who answered the phone – he should have been trained.  Everyone who has a phone on there desk should be given some clear instructions about how to use it.

Answer in a consistent and friendly that identifies you and your business - “Good morning/afternoon Stiona Software, Stuart McLean speaking”.  I learnt this from waiting for my mum in her works reception after school.  All the trained receptionists answered the phone like this.  Consider chucking on “how can I help you?”.

The caller will then generally ask to speak to someone specifically.  If the persons not there, ask if there is anyone else they would like to speak to.  Offer to help them yourself.  Offer to take a message.  Offer to put them through to voice mail.  Give an email address.  This could be a £1M client!

Then today I got the professional treatment.  I’m preparing for my motorcycle road trip next weekend.  Last night I watched “The Motorcycle Diaries” – great film about Ché Guevara and his friend’s trip around South America.  A bit further than Belfast to Dungloe but for anyone whose been to the North West of Ireland will agree the road conditions are pretty similar.

My insurance expires soon so I dug out the quote from my existing company.  Last year I paid £79, this year they wanted £95.  Am I going to pay that?  So I do a re-quote on go-compare – one of my favourite top 10 sites – and get a quote for £78.  Usually I would have just taken that.  I hate the way insurance companies give you their “cheapest” renewal quote and then are willing to reduce it to match a competitor.  Why didn’t you just match the competitor in the first place?  When you do this what they are saying to me is “I lied when I told you that was our best renewal quote – I could have done it cheaper but I wanted to chance my arm”.

But, I had to ring the current company anyway as they had my card details.  So I got through given a couple of push button options but not too many (only 2 steps with 2 options on each) and got an operator.

“Hello, Sarah speaking – how can I help you?”

Straight out of the bat – how can she help me?

She asked me about the other quote.  What was the excess.  Yes it was much higher but on a bike that is now only worth about £1000 that you wrote off before and bought back and repaired then you don’t really care about excess anymore – and I told her that.

So she moved through the other “non-price” differentiators – carrying pillion passengers – same – no claims bonus protected – different.

“Your current policy has no claims bonus protection”  I’ve about 12 years real no-claims although for some reason insurance companies can’t count past 5.

And, by magic, she got the price down to £87.

So I took it.  I spent more money and felt good about it.

Today I’m watching “The long way round” the epic journey of Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman from London to New York on motorbikes and looking forward to next weekends trip.

I’ve noticed over recent months that we are getting more and more sales calls and spam and that these are coming from businesses who previously would not have bothered with a small company such as us. I suggest some of these larger cats have been in the comfort zone too long and need to learn some lessons from some of the fighting fit alley cats that smaller business have.

Today I received two terrible sales calls. The first was from our car leasing company. We have some company cars on contract hire from a local supplier who is a very large franchise. We have had these a couple of years and I arranged it all and met the account manager at the time to sign the documents etc.

Today he called the office and asked to speak to me – first contact in two years:

“Mr McLean”

“Yes – Hi”

“This is … from … just ringing to check on how your cars are”

“Fine thanks”

“Good – well give me a ring if you want anything”

“OK – bye”

“Bye”

I mean – what was the point of that. Presumably the account manager has been either told or decided to ring all his customers and try and drum up new business but maybe he should have been given an indication of how to do it! For example, neither myself or any of the company directors have company cars – maybe he could have asked what I drive and if I was thinking of changing it.

(For the record I cycle to work but also drive a 1995 Land Rover Discovery that I run on Bio Diesel – carbon neutral. The car has lots of seats for all the kids that I seem to have accumulated. The bike is more reliable. It’s now worth £2K more than last week for a new trade in so I might get £4K– all I need is the 26K or so to upgrade to a new one. Of course – I’d also have to have the engine taken out of the old one and put in the new one as the new ones don’t run on Biodiesel so neither me nor the planet could afford to run it – which kind of defeats the point of a new car.)

The second call was even more bizarre. Since Geraldine was meeting an insurance salesman – yes they’ve started coming to our office in person for our meager pickings – and everyone else was busy I answered the ‘phone – something I generally try to avoid.

“Stiona Software, Stuart McLean speaking” – my standard greeting.

“Can I speak to the head of marketing?”

“Can I ask what about?”

“Marketing”

“He doesn’t take sales calls”

“Will he take an email?”

“No – Bye”

I’m no sales guru – but there are some pretty fundamental mistakes here. Firstly, I identified myself when I answered the ‘phone. If the caller had spent one minute researching our website before the call he would have known that I am one of the directors. Why would you want to speak to the head of marketing if you had a director? At worst having pitched to me I would have past him down to the right person – not that we have a “head of marketing” mind you – in fact I would be the head of marketing too! (We’re not IBM.)

Secondly, its about “marketing”. Wow – now I’m excited – I can tell its really vital that I connect you straight away because boy have you convinced me about the 10 fold increase in sales I’m going to get.

Then I remember our “head of marketing” (me) doesn’t take sales calls. Maybe this isn’t a sales call? Oh it seems it is and I can opt out of it by getting an email. Perhaps I’ll not bother.

I mean – these marketing guys are just too good to use – they’ve hit the jackpot, bypassed the gatekeeper and got straight to the budget holder, decision maker and actually someone who would love to increase their market share and I don’t even know what they do (except “marketing” obviously).

Cash accounting for VAT in Ireland is different from the UK. In the UK cash accounting applies to both sales tax (the VAT you charge) and Purchase tax (the vat you are charged).

However, in Ireland it only applies to sales tax.

Some accountancy software - including some older versions of Sage - always apply cash accounting to both sales and purchase tax. This means that you are waiting until you pay your suppliers before you claim the VAT back rather than when the supplier invoices you.

For details on Irish cash accounting see the Irish Revenue Site - Moneys Received Basis Of Accounting.

Fusion accounts allows businesses to specify weather they wish to use Supplier and/or Customer cash accounting. It also supports multiple VAT registrations for international traders.