Year End Tax News

Are you aware that The Small Business Jobs Act (SBJA) of 2010 may allow you to expense up to $500,000 of section 179 property during the 2010 and 2011 tax year?  

The year end is a great time for you to review your IT to see whether or not you have the right equipment in place for your business.  Have you been waiting to upgrade your server? Improve or expand the way you are backing up and restoring your data?   Or possibly get a new telephone system that can interface with your server, PCs and wireless capabilities? The SBJA increased limit for expensing new purchases may help you get what you need. 

Call Tom Witt @ 718-261-1353 to schedule a complimentary IT assessment or to find out how to maximize the impact your equipment has on your business – increasing productivity with IT is one of the easiest ways to build up business’ bottom line and the SBJA may help you along the way.

 The Small Business Job Act (SBJA) and Section 179 Deduction

 Depreciation and Section 179 Expense

A qualifying taxpayer can choose to treat the cost of certain property as an expense and deduct it in the year the property is placed in service instead of depreciating it over several years. This property is frequently referred to as section 179 property.

This month is a great time for you to assess whether or not you have the right IT in place for your business, and the SBJA increased limit for expensing new purchases may help you get what you need*.

The Small Business Jobs Act (SBJA) of 2010 increases the IRC section 179 limitations on expensing of depreciable business assets and expands the definition of qualified property to include certain real property for the 2010 and 2011 tax years.

Under SBJA, qualifying businesses can now expense up to $500,000 of section 179 property for tax years beginning in 2010 and 2011. Without SBJA, the expensing limit for section 179 property would have been $250,000 for 2010 and $25,000 for 2011.

The $500,000 amount provided under the new law is reduced, but not below zero, if the cost of all section 179 property placed in service by the taxpayer during the tax year exceeds $2,000,000.

The definition of qualified section 179 property will include qualified leasehold improvement property, qualified restaurant property, and qualified retail improvement property for tax years beginning in 2010 and 2011.

SBJA also removes cellular telephones and similar telecommunications equipment from the definition of listed property for tax years beginning in 2010.

Depreciation limits on business vehicles. The total depreciation deduction (including the section 179 expense deduction) you can take for a passenger automobile (that is not a truck or a van) you use in your business and first placed in service in 2010 is increased to $3,060. The maximum deduction you can take for a truck or van you use in your business and first placed in service in 2010 is increased to $3,160.

Caution:. These limits are reduced if the business use of the vehicle is less than 100%.

For more information, click on http://www.irs.gov/formspubs/article/0,,id=177054,00.html

 

*SOHO Solutions Inc. is providing this article for informational purposes only. You must consult with a tax professional to determine if your organization meets the IRS qualifications for this deduction.

It’s time for that end of year review

It’s that time of year that we start our end of year review and cleanup our files and contracts to get “our house in order” for the New Year.  If you’re not sure where to start, check out our article “Cleaning out the Closet – Getting rid of data you don’t need, keeping what you might need and making the best of the rest”.  

As members of the Independent Computer Consultants Association[i], we get really good suggestions and checklists to help us run our business.  One of these checklists is an “End of Year” checklist written by John Avellanet of Cerulean Associates LLC that we use to close out the year.[ii]^,[iii] 

 In this post, we want to share this checklist with you with annotations of what we do to handle our end of year tasks.  Our actions are in red:

 1.Financial Review

Review your finances, insurance and investments for the year:

1. Finish recording all invoices, receipts, purchase orders, etc. for the year.
   1. During the year, all of our receipts are scanned into SharePoint and placed under the appropriate project folder.
   2. Packing slips are scanned and put in project folders upon receipt
   3. Invoices are generated in Tiger Paw and imported to QuickBooks
   4. Review (or renew) your equipment maintenance contracts. Is your inventory up to date?
      1. We have a SharePoint for all of our warranties that are sorted by expiration date (we have the same for our client contracts too).  We go through this every month to see what is up for renewal.
      2. Verify the separation of personal and company finances. Complete all your expense reports.
      3. Review / renew your insurance; consider contacting an independent insurance broker to review your policy versus other options.
      4. Review your investments with your accountant / financial planner.
      5. Draft your budget for next year; consider adding a 5-15% buffer to various spend categories.
      6. Order 90-days’ worth of office supplies to start next year off well.

 2.    Records Review

Close-out your annual corporate (and personal) records also see our story “Cleaning out the Closet”:

1. Electronic records.
   1. Make a back-up of all records (e-mail, databases, project files, correspondence, etc.). We backup to tape and on-line backup
   2. Archive your old e-mail off your mail system. Mark it with the year and the e-mail software version. We backup to tape and on-line backup.
   3. Archive all records you have not accessed in at least 12-18 months off your system. We backup to tape.
   4. Make sure to mark the year and the software version(s).
      1. Review your software licensing. Is everything current? Are there any demos that you need to remove or purchase the full versions?   We remove software we do not use anymore.
      2. Paper records.
         1. Place into storage all reference material (articles, etc.) you haven’t accessed in 12-18 months.  After another 12-18 months, if you still haven’t accessed them – toss.  We also scan and store these.
         2. Document all corporate resolutions and/or any annual meetings you are required to hold under your operating agreement or state incorporation rules.
            1. Complete any formal company correspondence (e.g., copyright letters and so on).
            2. Review and document any intellectual property you’ve come up with this year.

 3.    Client & Project File Review

Review your client and project files:

1. Are documents marked appropriately (e.g., “confidential”)?
2. Cull out old notes and scribbles; capture them formally if still important or toss them. We store these on our SharePoint site – see our story “Winning the paper chase and organizing chaos with SharePoint – how we fought the good fight (or at least made it less insane).”
3. Create a “value” page for each client – what you did, what you did beyond scope, what you want the client to consider next year.

 4. Marketing & Business  Development Review

Review the results of your marketing and business development efforts:

1. Compare your website against your closest 3 competitors’ websites.
2. Review your “elevator” speech. Does your neighbor “get it”?  We periodically talk with our customers about this.
3. Review your marketing plan. Did you incorporate client and prospect contact at least monthly? What was your (ballpark) response rate – 0%, 1%, 2%, 5%, 10%?
4. Review the conferences you attended. What did you get out of them besides some names?
5. Update your resume / executive biography, LinkedIn profile, etc. What professional development did you complete this year?
6. Review the industry associations to which you belong. What are you getting out of them?
7. Do you have some “low hanging fruit” scheduled for January to build good momentum?

PLAN FOR NEXT YEAR

5. Mark Your Catch-Up Time

Block out 1-2 full days during the first week of your return from winter holiday strictly for catching up: voicemails, emails, postal mail, and so on.

6. Plan Your Calendar

Look at next month and next quarter. Capture any items triggered:

• Inquiries and phone calls to make
• Meetings and appointments to schedule
• Project or activity follow-ups to schedule
• Time you need each day to yourself to stay organized (block it out on your calendar)

Checking our Posture and Knowing Where to Go When in Trouble

In addition to the above checklist, we also take time to go over our information security posture and contingency planning.  Next month, we are going to post an article entitled “Facing the Unimaginable – What happens if I lose everything?” that will go into more detail on how to protect your business in the event of an accident, failure or outright catastrophe. As part of this process we check for changes on how we handle our information and how we keep it.  We also:

1. Update our Business Emergency Plan Outline
2. Update our Emergency Supply List
3. Review OSHA’s “How to Plan for Workplace Emergencies and Evacuations”
4. Review the costs of revising our Disaster Protection/Business Continuity Plans

I’ll admit – all of this work takes a lot of time that I could be spending taking care of our clients and bringing in more business – but, how good will I be able to deliver if I’m not ready or something unexpected happens?  The end of year review is time well spent.

Contact Tom Witt at (718) 261-1353 x101 for more information on how to better prepare for next year or to protect your business.  Or you can visit our website at http://www.sohosolutionsinc.com.

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[i] Independent Computer Consultants Association, 11131 South Towne Square, Suite F, St. Louis, MO 63123

[ii] This document is for informational purposes only. Discuss your specific records management, financial and legal

   requirements with your legal counsel and accountant to assure proper compliance.

[iii] © Copyright 2007 John Avellanet. John Avellanet of Cerulean Associates LLC. enquiries@ceruleanllc.com

User Tip – Password Protect Confidential Emails

Email can sometimes contain sensitive and personal information. So wouldn’t it be great if we can password protect some of those sensitive emails? You can password protect those sensitive emails so that if a friend or guest is using your computer they wont be able to see those emails. Luckily, Outlook has that option.

Here is what you need to do:

1) Startup Outlook

2) Go to File –> New –> Outlook Data File

3) Then select the Office Outlook Personal Folders (.pst) option and press OK.

4) Give the file that will contain your password-protected emails a name and press ok.

5) Then give the folder that will contain your password protected emails a name. (ie secure emails) Put in a password and don’t select the save this password in your password list. This way every time anyone who opens up your outlook and clicks on that particular folder (ie secure emails) will need a password to read emails in that folder. Then press ok.

6) Now you should see the folder (ie secure email) in your Outlook

7) Now begin to move the email  you want to be password protected into that folder you just created (ie secure email)

8) From now-on everything you open up outlook, you will be prompted to enter a password.

Using Blackberry Desktop Software to Backup and Restore your Blackberry Data

Your Blackberry device has a software to backup and restore your BlackBerry’s data; you can pick the backup location to make a copy of your E-mail, calendar and other data on your BlackBerry.  Software can be downloaded from the Internet to your desktop or laptop.  The URL for the download is http://na.blackberry.com/eng/services/desktop/

**Before You Download**

Talk to your IT staff prior to installing or using this software to ensure that it is compatible with your system and doesn’t interfere with your BlackBerry synchronization or any other systems applications.

Back up device data

To back up data that is in your built-in media storage, mass storage mode must be turned on.

1. Connect your BlackBerry® device to your computer.

2. In the BlackBerry® Desktop Software, click Device > Back up.

3. Do one of the following:

• To back up all your device data, click Full backup.

• To back up all your device data except for email messages, click Quick backup.

• To select which types of device data to back up, click Custom backup. Select the check box next to the data you want to back up.

4. If your device includes built-in media storage and you want to back up data that is stored there, select the Files saved on my built-in media storage check box.

5. Do any of the following:

• To change the default name for the backup file, in the File name field, type a new name.

• To encrypt your data, click Encrypt backup file. Type a password.

• To save your settings so that you are not prompted to set these options again when you back up your device, select the Don’t ask for these settings again check box.

6. Click Back up.

Restore device data

To restore data that is in your built-in media storage, mass storage mode must be turned on.

CAUTION

When you restore data to your BlackBerry® device, all files that are stored on your device are deleted before the backup file is restored.  The next time your BlackBerry synchronizes with your mail server, the newly restored files will be integrated in with your existing E-mail, calendars etc.  Speak with an IT professional prior to attempting to restore your BlackBerry data.

1. Connect your device to your computer.

2. In the BlackBerry® Desktop Software, click Device > Restore.

3. Select a backup file that contains the data you want to restore.

4. Do one of the following:

• To restore all your device data, click Full restore.

• To select which data you want to restore, click Custom restore. Select the check box beside the data type that you want to restore.

• If your device includes built-in media storage, and you want restore it, select the Files saved on my built-in media storage check box.

5. If the backup file is encrypted, type the password that you set to encrypt.

6. Click Restore

Taken from BlackBerry Desktop Software v6.00 User’s Guide,  Research In Motion Ltd.

* This article is for information purpose only.  SOHO Solutions recommends that IT professionals be consulted before installing any software.  SOHO Solutions is not responsible for any data loss, disruption of service, or any potential or material losses as a result of using the information provided in this article.  Should you have any questions please feel free to contact Tom Witt @718-261-1353 xt 101 or at www.sohosolutionsinc.com

Cleaning out the Closet – Getting rid of data you don’t need, keeping what you might need and making the best of the rest.

I don’t know about you, but our servers, desktops and laptops have accumulated a lot of stuff – programs, E-mail, documents, pictures, data files, downloads etc.  Once in a while, we just have to clean house and get it in order.  At the same time, I am nervous about getting rid of something, because like all things, after you get rid of it, you need it.  At SOHO Solutions, we try to strike a good balance between what we keep and what we “throw out” by asking ourselves one question…

Do we really need this? (Sorting it all out)

This simple question is the hardest to answer– so to answer it, I usually set a benchmark of 1 year – if we haven’t used it in a year, then we probably don’t need it.  Examples are E-mail correspondence on settled one-time matters, documentation on finished projects, quotes (tons of quotes), vendor quotes etc.  We put these files in a “box” called “Archive” (actually, we note the directory/folder they’re in on a list of directories to archive). 

I consider these files like old/out of style items that I’ll never wear, but might have to pull them out for a retro party – they’re put away “forever” but I can get them if I really need them.  Later on I’ll tell you how we handle this box (as well as the other “boxes” that we have); the rest of the items are sorted out by the following criteria:

1.     I might need it – keep it just in case

For us, these are files that contain technical information on how to repair older equipment that we still service;  we hardly ever refer to them, but sometimes we have to (maybe two or three times a year).  It is also E-mail correspondence that lists contact information and steps to resolve a particular problem.  We put this in a “just in case” box.

2.     Well, maybe we need it, but I’m not sure

These items are put with the “just in case” box; if we don’t use it in a year from now, then we put it in the “Archive” box when we clean up next year.

3.     Always have it at hand – Critical Information – I want it now!

This is the day to day or active client/project work that we definitely need on hand. We go through these files to see if they are stored in the right place on our SharePoint site; if they’re not we put them where they’re supposed to be.  These files are backed up every day.

4.     Laptop Files and USB Files

Since our laptops synchronize with our server, these files are sorted too.  If you don’t save your laptop files to a server, follow the same rules as above (and you better make sure you backup those laptop files or fugghetaboutit!). If you keep files on USB device, make sure you have a copy stored somewhere else too.  We backup our laptops with Symantec System Recovery which helps us restore the entire laptop (programs, files and settings) to its original state in case of a hard drive failure.

5.     We know we definitely don’t want it or ever see it again

The files that we know that we absolutely, positively and definitely know we don’t need, want, or ever look at again, we permanently delete them.   If there is any shadow of a doubt – we put them in the “archive” box.  They can always be thrown out next year.

Putting Everything Away

After we have all of our directories, files and E-mails sorted, we use tape, CD, DVD and on-line backup services to store them according to their need:

A.    The “Archive Box”

We look at all the items in our archive list and do the following:

1. E-mail messages stored in an archive that is broken out by calendar year with standardized subfolders (Quotes, Done, Sent, Orders Placed, Vendors, Benefits etc).  Microsoft Word has an archive function that lets you set the target of the archive.  Right now, we have the archive stored on the file server; when these files start getting too big, we will move the older years to tape and place in storage.
2. File directories are stored separately on a backup tape that is put into storage; we change the file names so they easily describe what’s inside.  The tapes are labeled by calendar year.

B.    The “Just in Case Box”

Since we most likely won’t need these too often, we burn them to a DVD; if the files are too big, we move them to tape.  We put the media in a filing cabinet where we keep are reference materials.

C.     Critical Information

These files are  kept on the server on our SharePoint site and are backed up to tape daily.  In addition to the tape backup, our “super critical files” such as our accounting data is stored electronically off-site with our Online Backup Service.  We identify directories and files (can specify individual files too) and set the online backup service to encrypt them and send over the Internet to an encrypted data storage facility.  The software is easy to use and web-based; we can retrieve files anytime and put them anywhere we want.

D.    Laptops and USB Files

These files are reviewed the same way we handle the files on the server; also, our laptops are set to save to the “My documents” folder on our file server, so they are backed up every day.  USB files are copied to the server. 

That’s basically how we clean up!  We do this process every year or sooner (if things are getting too out of control) for all of our files and paper documentation, which leads to…

What about the paper?

We have a lot of paper items too – receipts, packing slips, signed quotes bank statements/slips, etc.  All of these are scanned and placed in their respective file folder in SharePoint.  We go through these just like we do with the other files we have.

I want to get it back now wherever I am!

Stored away files that need to be retrieved from any location are stored using our online backup service.  This service has a Web interface gives us access to these files wherever there is an Internet connection. 

Making the best of the rest.

What’s most interesting to me about this process is finding things that I totally forgotten about or noticing “trends” of how we work.  I also find old contacts and products that really helped us serve our customers, but for some reason we haven’t used recently. 

Vendor Information

We go through these contacts to see if we still need them; we usually touch base with them to see what promotions and financing options they have.  Cisco at one point had 0% financing for three years for their equipment; one of our clients updated their entire phone system with that deal!

Old Quotes

We go over our old quotes to see which ones were rejected and why.  It helps us understand what our clients don’t want or need.  We review the accepted ones too to see what we did for them; we follow up with them just to see how they liked what they bought and how the things are going.  We also follow up with clients that we haven’t worked with in a while to see if they need anything.

Finished Project Files

Going through project files help us remember how good (or not so good) the project went and why – we note this to strengthen the good things and prevent the bad. We also check to see if all warranties associated with the project need to be reviewed and are on SharePoint.

Reviewing Old Service Orders – what we saw and did about it

We open a service order every time someone calls us for help – we review these to see what trends are happening to each of our customers and our clients as a whole. 

We saw some costly downtime and breakdowns

A few of our clients have a heavy Internet-dependent business with a server that shut down on them a few times last year.  Each shutdown cost him a lot of money.  After reviewing their service orders over the past year, we determined that it was better for them to go on a network maintenance and IT support plan.  The cost/benefit of the plan was clear after seeing the material losses and downtime they experienced to repair the downed server. Plus, they now have  IT user/desktop support on a fixed monthly budget.  The others decided to stick with time and material service – which is OK too; hopefully they won’t get hit hard at a bad time.  See our story on keeping the office moving.

We protected clients with virus and spam protection

Overall, we saw a trend of a lot of clients hit by spam and viruses on their laptops.  We started working with them to reduce SPAM  installing recovery software and external hard drive on their laptops/desktops.  If they were hit hard with a worm/virus; we now can just wipe out the drive and restore it within an hour using the recovery software.  Before that, we would have to spend 4 or so hours reformatting the drive, installing all the software and reconfiguring the system; their average bill was reduced by 75% (all this for a $100-$200 investment).

Helping our clients connect better

Some of our clients were using dial-up modems to connect to the Internet and to their servers from home (and spending a long time on the line).  We suggested they use a cable connection with Virtual Private Network (VPN ) for better security and quicker access.  Now they connect faster with better security to protect their data when they connect to their server remotely.

Overall

It feels good to clean house once and a while and review all the work that was done – overall, we provided services that met our client’s needs and our clients our happy with the service we provided to them.  Since we “cleaned up our closet” we can now easily find all the things we need to help them out more quickly.

How do you clean house?  Let us know!

Tell us how you clean house – we’ll review it and if it’s the best and ranked #1 against 10 other stories, you will win a Jabra Smart Series BT530 Headset.

 

Ways To Extend Laptop Battery Usage and Duration

1) When leaving laptop unplugged make sure you have the power settings set to max battery or Portable/laptop profile under windows control panel’s power options.

Go to Start –> Control Panel

Click on Power Options

click here to view power option screen

Change the duration of turn, off monitor , system standby and System hibernates based on laptop usage. Usually the default settings for Portable/Laptop Power scheme has the optimum settings.

Note: Recommend no to use standby mode. Only use hibernate. Hibernate will save your computer state and completely shut off, while standby will still use a bit of power. But standby will resume faster than hibernate, so it is more of a preference.

2)When your laptop is unplugged, always try to dim the brightness of the laptop display. The dimmer it is, the less juice it consumes.

3) When unplugged, try not to play CD or DVDs on the laptop. If you must use some cd or dvd media, they best thing to do is to copy the contents to the hard-drive before hand.

4)If not using wireless on the laptop. Turn off the wireless card on your laptop. Most laptops have a physical switch that can be used to turn it off, or it can be via some command via laptop’s manufacture software.  

5)If laptop is unplugged, try not to use any external USB devices.  (ie: charging I-pod, using external hard drive)

6)Try to keep your laptop cool at all times.

7) Defrag the hard drive at least once a month

8) Do not leave your laptop plugged in all the time.  You should at least use the battery at least once every two to three weeks. Also, do not let a Li-On battery completely discharge. (Discharing is only for older batteries with memory effects)

9) Try to keep laptop as clean as possible and clear any dirt that has built up near the laptop heat vents and fans.

Ok Now lets look at some optional physical improvement we can apply to extend the life of our laptop’s battery.

A) Get more ram, if possible

B) Replace laptop’s hard drive with a solid state hard drive.

Should you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to call Tom Witt @ 718-261-1353.

Keeping the Office Moving – How Our Customers Save Time (and Money) with Preventative Maintenance

Our customers are usually pretty careful when using their systems – they run backups to protect their data and call us if something doesn’t look right. But every so often I get this call:

Susan (Client): “Something happened to our system – I think the server is down.”

Me: “What Happened? “

Susan: “I don’t know, things were running a little slow yesterday, but now we can’t log in; we keep getting messages that we can’t connect to the server. We can’t get our E-mail or anything. Everyone in the office has stopped – we need to get our E-mail and book our invoices”.

After asking a few questions and attempting to dial into the server, it turns out that the server’s hard drive controller failed, essentially shutting everything down. There is no access until the controller card is replaced.

Susan: “What am I going to do?!? We need to get the system so we can work – I need this right away – we have an audit due today and bills to send out.”

Since Susan’s account is on a time and material basis, I explained to her that we would have to go out there and swap out the parts. This is what we did for Susan to fix the problem:

1. Susan physically goes to the server to get the serial number of the server (15 min)
2. We check to see if the server is still under warranty (15 minutes)
3. If under warranty, we talk to tech support to have them send a replacement; tech support required us to run diagnostics with them over the phone to approve the replacement part, we do that too. (1hr 15 min).
4. A replacement part is sent out (wait time –1 day)
5. Go onsite to replace the part (2 hours)
6. Turn system on and check out (1 hour)

The total time to get the server back is about a day and a half; most of it is for waiting for the part. The labor to replace the part and check out the system was 4.5 hours.

How much was the bill?

Our billing rate is $150 an hour, so the invoice was $675. The price and turnaround time would have been much higher if the replacement part wasn’t covered under warranty and delivered overnight as part of the warranty.

Susan’s account is on a time and material basis. How much did Susan really spend?

The system was down until 11am the next day – Susan’s company experienced 10 hours of downtime. She has 5 employees on staff; assuming they are paid $20 /hr.; the downtime loss is $1,000 payroll. The downtime would be much longer they needed evening/night remote access.

Luckily, no data was lost; the costs would have been higher for time spent restoring data (approximately 4 hrs.) and checking for data loss. More losses would have been incurred if any data had to be recreated.

Susan also experienced “opportunity losses” on transactions that couldn’t be captured or moved forward because no one could get E-mail or data they needed to conduct business. The total material loss is $1,675. The lost opportunity loss was much more, not to mention the impact to the company’s image and customer relations.

Gaining Leverage with Preventative Maintenance

Preventative maintenance (PM) gives your company a hedge against downtime on your operations; it keeps your information moving, employees connected and customers in contact. That is the bottom line on PM. There is no complicated formula of costs vs. benefits; it is very simple to calculate: What will happen to your business if you lost your E-mail/server/internet data for an hour? a half day? a full day or more?

Only you can answer that. To get a clear picture, think about your daily routine and why your employees, vendors and customers use your system:

No E-mail – who loses out? Does it matter?

No connection to your server – do you need your data right away? How long can you wait?

No Internet – do you use it for critical functions? How is it part of your business model?

Some of our clients can go a half day or a full day with nothing (they are paper-driven). Others can’t have any downtime  at all (Internet based businesses). Our customers that lose out if their system goes down have preventative maintenance for one simple reason: downtime is lost money.

Susan’s Story with Preventative Maintenance

Back to Susan. If Susan had preventative maintenance, the following would have happened: no downtime. Our preventative maintenance program uses a monitoring system that measures the performance of each critical component of Susan’s server: hard disk drives, processors, system boards etc. The same is done for other parts of her company’s network – the Internet connection, Anti-virus and Spam management services etc.

In Susan’s case:

1. When the controller card started to break down, our network monitoring detects a drop in performance and issues an E-mail alert to us. (Monitoring is done 24×7)

2. We would dial in and look to perform diagnostics while the system is up and running and determine it needs replacing.  No charge, part of contract.

3. We contact the technical support and arrange to get a replacement part (1hr)

4. Susan would be notified about the incident and our immediate response

5. The replacement part is installed after hours before it failed (2 hrs)

The total cost is $450 (3 hrs) compared to $675 (4.5 hrs) spent for service under time and material basis. The labor was less because:

1. Our preventative maintenance contract has the serial numbers for all covered equipment; the warranty status of each component is is checked before the contract goes into effect (saved 30 min)

2. Checking for data loss / integrity would be quicker because controller card didn’t fail (1 hr.)

Susan’s network maintenance contract includes 1 hour of free reactive maintenance each month; this wa applied to the bill, dropping the repair cost of the incident down to $300. 

The real savings is in avoiding the $1,675 in material losses from the downtime that Susan experienced without the contract. Also, preventative maintenance is a hedge against the opportunity losses and impact to the company’s image/customer relations due to system downtime.

SOHO Solutions also has a preventative maintenance program with all inclusive labor. If Susan had this option, her company would have paid $0 and no downtime during business hours to repair the server.

Is preventative maintenance right for your company?

It depends on how important your data, Internet and network is to you, and if any downtime causes a loss for you. Also, there are other benefits that you may want to consider when thinking about maintenance plans:

• All server software and firmware patches are applied monthly; this includes operating system patches, fixes and updates.
• Your maintenance costs are smoothed out over a fixed monthly cost to make budgeting easier
• Your system is monitored 24×7 to detect potential system failures before they materialize
• Backups are checked for completeness, along with checking that the anti-virus / spam management pattern files are current
• One hour of labor for reactive maintenance

All of these tasks are bundled together in preventative maintenance to keep your office moving. Having preventative maintenance gives you peace of mind we are keeping an eye on your network to keep it up and running efficiently and giving you more time to do what you do best – running your business.

To find out more about SOHO Solutions network maintenance programs, contact Tom Witt at (718) 261-1353 x101 or tomw@sohosolutionsinc.com. You can also visit our website at http://www.sohosolutionsinc.com.

Winning the paper chase and organizing chaos with SharePoint – how we fought the good fight (or at least made it less insane). Part III

Part III -Continuing our story of how we made SharePoint work for us.  

We created a “Sales” site tab on our SharePoint Site that has a folder for things that we need to help us sell – customer financing, opportunities, quote templates, sales training, quoting tools etc. Each “component” of the sales process has its own folder:

click here for example of folder in sharepoint

The “Opportunities” Folder on our Sales site holds a folder for each opportunity for Ideas, Notes, Correspondence and Vendor Quotes.  An example folder is “Opportunity #376 – ABC Company – SharePoint Installation”. Opportunity folders are sorted alphabetically and can be searched.

• Client E-mail correspondence is now copied (drag & dropped) to the “Correspondence” folder of the opportunity. E-mails stored on SharePoint can be opened and replies can be sent from that location.
• Hand written notes during phone conversations/on-site discussions are scanned and placed in the “Ideas” or “Notes” folder
• Phone messages that were saved as .wav files on E-mail are saved to the “Correspondence”
• Vendor quotes and pricing is placed in the “Vendor” folder; sometimes sub-folders are created for multiple vendors/ multiple quotes from a vendor  depending on the size of the opportunity 

We put the client’s specification under the main folder of the opportunity along with the documents for the sales presentation; these documents can be reviewed and edited by several people:

• Individual employees post their research documents/whitepapers to the opportunity folder for reference
• Research E-mail going back and forth is stored under a “Research” folder
• The author writes up the draft document and saves it to the SharePoint folder
• The author sends an E-mail is to a reviewer  with a URL link to the document
• The reviewer clicks on the link in the E-mail to open the document; the document is marked as “Checked out”;  track changes is enabled to keep track of edits.
• Anyone else who clicks on the document while it is checked out will get a message stating that it is checked out.  They have an option to read only or save it under a different name.
• The reviewer finishes saves and checks in the document; there is an option to save it as a draft or a final – SharePoint keeps track of multiple versions of the document.

What’s nice about SharePoint is that the entire E-mail can be stored with the attachments inside of it and can be renamed for easier reference.  We do the same for the attachments and .wav files of the phone conversations.  Everyone now can put their stuff in one location that can be accessed by everyone. 

This process eliminates the need to send documents back and forth by E-mail; the draft document can be opened and reviewed/edited with comments and saved. 

All of our research, paper information and phone messages are now stored digitally and kept together in a central place for each opportunity.  E-mails with links to the document are sent in lieu of sending a copy of the actual document.  This prevents accidental overwrites and minimizes time spent on compiling all the comments from several copies and editing one “main” document.

The end result is an easier and quicker way of creating and sharing information while using less storage space.

After the Sale: What we do now – project implementation

We create a folder tor the project under the “Operations” tab and with sub-folders for Orders, Software Licenses and Downloaded files.  We move the project plan document to this project folder.  We store all correspondents, notes and other documentation in this folder during the implementation phase.  This makes it easier for our technicians to find and download what they need while they are out in the field during the installation.

After the Installation: What we do now – post implementation/support phase

Once the installation is complete we move the licenses to the client folder (each client has their own folder to keep licenses, system configuration information and notes etc.  For subscriptions based software, we use a form that keeps track of the maintenance contract dates so we can send out renewal notices in advance of the maintenance expiration date.  This makes it easier to locate system and licensing information for technical support.

 

The end result is that all information pertaining to the sales, installation and maintenance phases of a project are centrally located, shared and searchable by our team.

 We followed the same process with all of our functional groups – Accounting, Marketing, Human Resources and General Management.  Each major “Tab” has individual user access rights set.

To learn more about SharePoint and what it can do for your business please contact Tom Witt at (718)261-1353.

Keeping Your Contacts (And in some cases your email, calendar, and tasks)

Now with phones that store unlimited amounts of data, memorizing numbers has become a thing of the past. Since all our contacts are stored in our phones, many of us run into trouble when we lose or brake these phones…and there go all our numbers! Here are a few ways to protect yourself from losing all your numbers and allowing you to avoid those expensive contact transfer fees at your local store.

1)      PC Software – Check the box or the manufacturers website, many phones come with basic software to connect to your PC. Usually these software programs allow you to backup your contacts to the PC. Examples of these include Blackberry Desktop Manager, Nokia Suite, Microsoft ActiveSync, Mac iSync, etc..

2)      Exchange Sync  or Google Sync– If your phone supports the Activesync protocol you can sync with either of these services. For Exchange sync you would need to have an Microsoft Exchange server, as most home users won’t have one of these you can use Google Sync.  The Activesync protocol allows for syncing contacts over-the-air without the need for cables, it also does email, calendar, and tasks over-the-air. Enter a contact on the street and within 5 minutes it is synced to your companies Exchange server or the Google service. Lose your phone and once you walk into the store and get a new one enter your username and password into Activesync and your contacts are back to your phone in minutes, and you’re ready to go. Exchange server also features a wipe all the data from the device if you lose it.

3)      Blackberry Enterprise Server – Blackberry Enterprise works pretty much the same way as Exchange Sync but is only available for corporate users because of the software needs to run on a server. But it allows for users to sync contacts over-the-air, also email, calendar, and tasks, and disable devices remotely.

4)      SIM card (AT&T and T-Mobile only) – This only applies for AT&T and T-Mobile customers because of the way the networks work, but that’s beyond the scope of this discussion. These providers phones come with a little card called a SIM card which stores all the info relevant to the phone working and being linked to your account. The SIM card also provides for the storage of a limited amount of contacts. There is a feature on these phone that allows for you to copy your contacts to the SIM card, and then on your new phone copy the contacts from the SIM card. Note this method only works if you did not lose your phone, as you will need to pull the crd from the old phone.

These Tips should help you keep your contacts safe and avoid having to send out emails, facebook invites, or talk to people directly, about losing numbers.  Option two and three are my personal favorites because it requires the least amount of work, is available everywhere your phone service is, and only requires you to remember three pieces on information, a server name, username, and password.

Corporate customers should contact Tom  @ 718-261-1353 about setting up ActiveSync.

Also Blackberry recently announced Blackberry Enterprise Server Express would be free, so corporate customers using Blackberry solutions should contact SOHO Solutions about getting this setup.

Winning the paper chase and organizing chaos with SharePoint – how we fought the good fight (or at least made it less insane). Part II.

Continuing our story of how we made Sharepoint work for us.

Our Sales Process and how Sharepoint helped us.
Our sales process is pretty simple:

1. We talk with our clients about how to become more profitable or efficient using things they already have or how to implement an idea that they have (e.g. all that data / corporate history lying around somewhere on the server or how to communicate with their staff and clients easier, etc).

2. Do the research to see what other things they need or what to do to turn their ideas into practice or transform their data/knowledge into profits (we like doing that). We then contact multiple vendors to get pricing for the items we need.

3. Put together a quote using our Customer Relationship Manager system and writing an engagement letter (with a project plan) to help explain to our clients on how we can make their ideas work and increase their profitability.
Each of these steps has the following information:

• E-mail to and from clients, vendors and staff during the research phase
• Word Documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations and project plans
• Web-sites and other Internet based sources

We decided to use SharePoint to make communications and information handling easier, efficient and productive when dealing among ourselves, vendors and clients.

How we used to work – unexpected surprises during the sales process (especially at crunch time).

During the Initial Discussions:

• Client E-mail correspondence was kept on the sales representatives E-mail account; hand written notes during phone conversations/on-site discussions were kept somewhere on the reps desk (hopefully in a folder, but usually in a pile of other paperwork). We couldn’t find E-mail and notes when we needed them.
• Phone messages were saved on the phone system. Sometimes they were accidently deleted; or even worse, messages were not accepted into the system because the employee’s mailbox was full. We never got the message or lost it.

While Researching and Creating Ideas and Recommendations:
The sales rep was usually the one responsible coordinating all the tasks involved with developing recommendations and getting an idea what was needed to implement the recommendation; other employees are usually involved one way or another:

• Documents created on how to meet the client’s specifications or ideas were kept by individual employees; the same was done for vendor quotes and any phone discussions. Vendor quotes were lost making us go back again and ask for another one.
• Phone messages were either taken down on paper or forwarded to the appropriate employee mailbox. Our phone system also creates a .wav file and E-mails the recorded message to the recipient. Messages were lost.
• Ideas and information sharing between staff was done by E-mail going back and forth; E-mail was stored individually. Some staff put the correspondence in a folder, while others didn’t. Too many E-mail trails that were splintering off into sub-trails.
• All this information was shared to whomever needed it, but was usually blasted out to everyone even if they didn’t need it (our E-mail system loved that). Too much redundant information stored in E-mail making it hard to find and stressing the E-mail system.

 We could easily see that all of our research and E-mail was digitally scattered, duplicated and fragmented; information that was only on paper was sometimes lost. Phone messages were hard to locate and at times accidently erased.

Creating the Quote and putting it all together
The documents created outlining the client’s needs and our recommendations on how to meet them are reviewed and summarized in the engagement letter. At this point we usually have everything together to make a presentation:

1. A quote with all of the parts and labor (a paper printout or .pdf file)
2. The engagement letter (MS word document) and MS PowerPoint
3. A project plan (Microsoft Project file)

We put this together by going back and forth in the same manner as the research phase. Editing documents by sending E-mails back and forth was frustrating – especially when we were near the deadline and not a good way to do business.

In our next newsletter Part III….How we fixed it – Making our sales process pain free (or almost pain free).  To see what SharePoint can do for you  please call Tom Witt @718-261-1353.