Regina to the Rescue

Real World Training (www.realworldtraining.com) offers Quickbooks classes and manuals. I've never attended their classes, but I've heard good reviews from a few clients that have.

Real World's two-day Level One QB training class is coming to the Denver this summer.  It's being offered at the Holiday Inn Denver West Village in Golden on June 13th-14th, and at the Fort Collins Plaza Inn, August 13th-14th.  Cost is $369.96 for the two days, or one day can be attended for $209.95.  Real World's phone number is 800-564-2688.

Intuit is now telling us that Quickbooks 2005 products will work with the new Internet Explorer 7.0, provided the user has the lastest release 9.  (If your QB is set up to receive automatic updates, you should be on release 9.)  QB2006 and QB2007 will also work if they are on the latest releases.

Contrary to what they told us a month ago, Intuit is now saying that QB2006 will not "run properly" with Microsoft's new operating platform, VISTA.  One must be using QB2007 if they are going to use VISTA.

    The IRS has set the mileage rate for 2007 at a 48.5 cents per mile.  This is a whopping 4 cent increase over 2006.  This means that any mileage reimbursement up to the 48.5 cent limit can be paid without being reported as wages; however, such reimbursed miles must be documented.

    The Social Security wage limit for 2007 is $97,500.  (The limit was $94,200 in 2006.)  This means that once that amount of wages has been reached in 2007, social security no longer is withheld for the remainder of the year. 

    Quickbooks 2006 was such a major upgrade that it wasn't surprising that their 2007 product had minimal improvements.  Plus, most of those improvements were directed at how accounting professionals interact with clients, and were therefore of little value to the end-user.

    I was recommending that my clients upgrade to 2006, but not to 2007, since there was little reason to spend the money for the latter.

    However, a couple of compatibility issues have come up since 2007 hit the shelves early last month, both concerning Microsoft products. 

    The first is that the 7.0 version of Internet Explorer will be coming out soon.  If one has QB 2005 or prior, they should not download IE7.  Only QB2007 and QB2006 (assuming one is on release 8) are compatible with IE7.  For QB2005 users, there is expected to be  patch available early next year.

    The second issue is Microsoft's upcoming new operating system, VISTA.  Only QB2007 and QB2006 products will be compatible with VISTA. 

    Therefore, for those who bypassed the opportunity to purchase QB2006, I am recommending that they now purchase QB2007.  Even if one has no intention of purchasing VISTA, or downloading the new IE7, they still might have other software products that use IE in the background, and which therefore might automatically upgrade IE to version 7. 

    WARNING FOR QB2007:  One of the few new features in 2007 was a Google search engine installed directly into the program.  Upon installing QB2007, the user is asked if they wish to install the Google search feature, along with the warning that anyone with multiple company files on their QB is sure to suffer performance issues.  Now, I'm hearing that QB tech support is not recommending that the Google search feature be installed under any circumstances -- again, because of performance issues.

    Please note that the Google search feature is a separate issue from the Google Ad feature, which is another upgrade for certain editions of QB2007.  As far as I know, there are no issues with the Google Ad feature. 

It seemed to happen overnight.

One minute, my fax machine was a useful piece of office equipment.  The next, it was spewing out unsolicited advertising at the rate of three or four pages a day.  It was aggravating.  Wasted paper and that oh-so-expensive toner.

When a law was passed a few years back, requiring unsolicited faxes to include a toll free "fax removal" number, where one could request that their fax receive no more unsolicited advertising from that particular business, I went into action.  Each advertising fax that came across, I dutifully called the toll-free number (listed in tiny print at the bottom of the page) and gave my fax number to be removed.  It was annoying to have to go through the process initially, but it was worth it.  Before long, I was down to receiving only about one unsolicited fax a week.

Then I moved to Castle Rock and had to get new phone numbers.  As soon as the fax machine was set up in my new office, out spewed the unsolicited advertising.  Once again, I had to make three or four calls a day, to have my number removed from each advertiser's list.  Now, I'm back down to one or two unsolicited faxes a week.

While it's apparent that calling the "fax removal" numbers is worth the time, it's also apparent that some advertisers have developed ways around the law, while still giving the appearance of complying.  I remember one investment advertisement where the toll free number (to have one's fax removed) had a white mark across one of the digits, so it was unreadable.  It appeared to be an innocent situation of dirt on the glass.  But the simple fact was, one couldn't call an unreadable number to have their fax line removed.

Then there's removal lines where you also have to provide a long "code", once calling the 800 number.  Sometimes when I've input the code provided at the bottom of the unsolicited fax, a digitalized voice tells me, "That code is not recognized".  So, once again, I can't get my number removed from their list.

Usually, when calling a toll-free fax removal number, a voice tells me to input the fax number I want removed, with area code.  Once I do that, the voice says, "Thank you.  Your fax number has been removed."  Those are the simple ones.

At other times, however, upon entering  my fax number, the voice tells me, "You will receive a final fax from us confirming that your number as been removed."  Those messages always annoyed me, because the last thing I needed was another wasted sheet of paper and toner just to tell me I wasn't going to receive any further faxes from that company.  Except... I never received any such "confirmation" faxes.  Ever.  Until last week.  For the first time, somebody said they were going to send me a confirmation fax... and they did.

Despite the decrease in unsolicted advertising via my fax machine, I'm still skeptical that my fax number is permanently removed from any one advertiser's list.  It seems it would be easy enough for them to, say, wait a year, and then add my number back and hope I won't notice.  I haven't tried to keep any records or logs of which companies have sent me faxes and which ones I've received a verbal confirmation that my number has been removed from their list.  It's tempting to make the effort to track such, but the fact is that most of these unsolicited advertisers don't put any indentifying information on their faxes, other than a phone number to call for their product or service.  So, a single advertiser could give the appearance of being all sorts of different companies.

Nevertheless, the law passed was a good one.  Performing the motions of having my number removed each time I receive a new unsolicited fax has saved me countless paper and toner.