Today's Technology for Tomorrow's Firm.
Issue link: https://cpapracticeadvisor.epubxp.com/i/283007
10 March 2014 • www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com FROM THE TRENCHES By Randy Johnston New Tech Tools that Will Save You Time As part of a mission to provide you the latest in technology tool insights, watching the trade press, atending events like the annua l Consumer E l e c t r o n i c S h o w (C E S) , a n d accou nt i ng show s, a nd spea k i ng w it h vendor s c re at i ng produc t s provides the chance to vete products for your consideration. Tis year is starting off w ith some interesting new tools for your consideration. So, What's New? Changing sofware is hard, and most of us avoid this unless we have no a lter nat ives. Because of t hat, we ofen wind up using a suite of related products and choose suppor ting sofware tools to complete the tasks at hand. On the other hand, hard- ware gets old and wears out, much like cars do. Some of us routinely change cars, not because we need to, but just because we want something diferent. Others have a plan to replace cars at 60,000 miles, 200,000 miles or at the end of the lease. Unfortunately, sometimes cars unex pected ly get replaced because of accidents or other items beyond your control. Computer ha rdwa re is much t he same way. We choose to replace the hardware at 3 years, 5 years or when it fa i ls a nd it is too e x pensive to repa i r. W hen we ma ke ha rdwa re changes, we are ofen forced to make sofware changes to support the new hardware. For example, touchscreen hard- ware works much beter with Win- dows 8.1 than it does with Windows 7. On the other hand, we can change t he w ay ou r h a rd w a re work s by replacing the sof t ware, much like replacing t he standa rd eng ine by puting a high performance engine in a car. We sometimes do this with our computer hardware by updating the operating system and installing more R M or a Solid State Drive. W hat are some of the technology tool cha nges we shou ld consider now? • Scanners • New generation wireless access points • Upgrades for writing technologies, such as the Livescribe 3 Smartpen • Conferencing displays for our confer- ence rooms and ofces • Touch screens in formats from desk- tops to laptops to slates to wall-mount displays • 4K support for computers and TVs • SaaS-based personal fnance docu- ment management • Battery recharging capabilities for smartphones and tablets • Many more… W hat technologies from this list can you use almost immediately? Te mainstream scanning vendors o f F u j i t s u a n d C a n o n h a v e a l l i n t r o d u c e d n e w p r o d u c t s w i t h i mproved feat u res t h is yea r. For most of you, you should be buying diferent models of scanners in any of your replacements or new acquisi- t i o n s f r o m t h e s e v e n d o r s . A n example of a single product that has an impact on Quick Books, Quick- Book s On l i ne, Xero, a nd Fresh- Book s is the NeatConnect Cloud Scanner and Digital Filing System. Tis product is $499, available now, and also allows scanning directly to gener ic ser v ices l i ke M icrosof t 's OneDrive (formerly called Micro- sof SkyDrive) as well as NeatCloud, Ever note, Box , Dropbox , Goog le Dr ive, Ema i l, FT P, SD ca rd, a nd Neat's Desktop Sofware. A fer scanning, the product per- forms optical character recognition (OCR) on the documents. It can then map the results at a feld level i n s e v e r a l p o p u l a r a c c o u n t i n g products named above. Installation and operation are simple, because the product is connected wirelessly and has a single buton to perform the scan function. One concern for the product is the recurring cost of cloud storage and the introduction of yet one more document manage- ment system for these accounting products. Wireless technologies are being d e l i v e r e d t o s u p p o r t t h e n e w 802 .11ac g igabit standard. W hile major vendors like Cisco and Sonic- WA LL should deliver their products by mid-year, the home technolog y vendor, Belkin, has introduced the L i n k s y s W R T 19 0 0 A C H o m e Router, which has a retail price of $299. T h is product uses t he new gigabit w ireless net work standard 802.11ac and can send and receive at 1. 3GBps w irelessly, more than 10 March 2014 t www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com Mr. Johnston is executive vice president and partner of K2 Enterprises and Network Management Group, Inc. He is a nationally recognized educator, consultant and writer with over 30 years' experience. He can be contacted at randy.johnston@cpapracticeadvisor.com . T his year is a great year to watch for improvements in procedures and processes suppor ted by maturing technology tools. We c a n l o o k f o r r e v o l u t i o n a r y changes to make in our practices. However, evolutionar y change can be taught and assimilated in day-to-day work. CPA 0314 1-21.indb 10 3/24/14 9:35 AM