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Silly Ideas are the best kind (
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This was a disappointing April Fools, I must say. No one used the window washer's cart to leave rude messages on the anyone's windows and we didn't really do much in the office either, owing to most of my friends in the office being on vacation or at client sites - and even I was busy finishing up a few last minute tasks before running off on vacation next week. So it'll be a slow month for posts around here too, as I'm not taking a computer on vacation either. While I'm still around, though, I'll share a few tidbits. Today, a link to Francine's own link to the FT April Fool's gag. What is the punchline? Change audit reports to just have the following line, to state "clean" audit opinions with a minimum of disclaimers: " These accounts are about right unless management have deliberately conspired to falsify them." Brilliant satire. Oh, and I had about 1200 pieces of spam hit my inbox last month, unless Google was hiding some from...
.ǝɹǝɥ ʇɥbıɹ sı ǝɯosǝʍɐ ʎ11ɐʇoʇ .ʇı ǝzıʇǝuoɯ puɐ ʎɹʇ p1noʍ ʎǝɥʇ ʇɐɥʇ ǝsuǝs sǝʞɐɯ .spɐ ǝ1boob ɥʇıʍ ʎʇ1ǝʌou sʇı ɟɟo ʎǝuoɯ sǝʞɐɯ ǝʇıs ǝɥʇ pǝɔıʇou ı
Now here's an interesting accounting-world related question - don't roll your eyes at the sight of "accounting-world" and "interesting" in the same sentence - if you were to almost reduce the sales-side of the equation and focus only on the cost of delivering audits, with a small profit margin to keep things running smoothly, could you deliver quality audits? Of course, it happens all the time with smaller firms that have lower overhead - which is why sole proprietor CAs can serve many small clients and charge lower fees to scoop up business from entrepreneurs. I wonder, though , if this approach is applicable to big firms too ? I haven't given this too much detailed though but the big thinkers are all over this all the time it seems . Something that definitely deserves some more attention and information. Like knowing what proportion of revenue is used to cover sales and administrative costs, for example It'd be interesting to see what would happen...
Bill Kennedy wrote an amusing post posing the question, are there any good accounting games out there for Xbox? Being a partisan PC gamer of sorts, my answer is, "are there any good games out for Xbox?" Seriously, you'll have to pry my mouse and keyboard out of my cold dead hands. If you're trying to interest your kids in business, the AAA "Tycoon" titles are, however, where it's at, as are titles like Simcity. Anything where you manage some sort of economy is the current pinnacle of 'awesome'. You could make an intelligent case for the original Railroad Tycoon and Simcity pushing me down the road towards my CA. Railroad Tycoon, and it's two strong sequels RRT2 and RRT3, have you in the role of a tycoon trying to make a fortune with railroads - had you guessing there, didn't I? Originl RRT, being a vintage 1990 game, was relatively basic, but the strong gameplay was there. You needed to make more money than you spent, had to decide on financing...
Try camping outside the entrance to a first class lounge. The free wireless signal just might trickle out. I don't have to use this trick tonight, and make sure you're not violating any rules by doing this. Airports are strict, after all.
I solve problems. I always was aware of this, but the Evil HR Lady identified this role as some sort of archetype. It's fun to find that some kind of grandiose term applies to you. Like how you see yourself while reading about the 'types' of people in The Tipping Point, and realizing your friends fit some of those roles. I'm not the only fixer I know, of course, which must be a pre-requisite for being in such a position. How else can you help people with your limited personal skillset unless you know many more people with access to ever greater skillsets? Having said that, I must say thank you to friends who helped me with various problems recently and everyone else who helps out whenever. If you're wondering if you're such a person, one telltale sign is to hear one of your friends say, "how do you know this?" with some mixture of shock and admiration. If you want to begin, figure out something that always confuses people and play with it until you have...
Dennis reports on a survey from the business software company Sage that talks about client needs and what accountants perceive themselves as , among other things. I don't have much to say about that directly, but it reminds me of something loosely related. There is a completely insane exercise still practiced around the world: the manual transfer of online timesheets from one computer system to the accounting system. And by "manual", I mean by hand. What. The. Hell. I want to know why there are no patches being offered up to automate the mundane process. Is if the fault of the online timesheet system, or of the accounting software? Or is the middleman interfering? Many small businesses use Quickbooks or Simply Accounting. How hard would it be to connect them to the various online timesheet systems? Or am I raging at a minor phenomenon? Do most clever companies already link the two systems together? If so, I wonder why I've been exposed to the Wrong method of doing things...
It'll tell us if the lunch hour rush is already present, or whether it's finally gone. It takes the guesswork out of perfectly timing an early or late lunch. A webcam will tell you that quickly. Sure, you could just guess when things will be less busy - say, anything outside the hours of noon through 1 p.m., but an unnecessary gadget sounds like much more fun.