According to the fortune-cookie logic most people live by, the best things in life are free. That's crap. I have a gold-plated robot that scratches the exact part of my back where my hands can't reach, and it certainly wasn't free.

- Josh Lieb

I was invited to be on The Appy Hour earlier this week.

It was so fun to be hanging out with two of my dear APIAs*, Heather Satterly and Liz Scott. They are super bright, forward thinking, collaborating women. I love being in their presence!

The topic was discussing my app stack: how I choose it and what it does for me.

I had an Doc outline of what we were going to discuss, and I copied my thoughts into the chat as we were going through the webbie. Then this morning I realized it would be of value to share that outline here on my blog.

It’s point form, it’s somewhat messy, it’s incomplete in the scope of choosing your tech stack - but “done is better than perfect”!

don’t know about you, but I find adding a link to text in docs, sheets, emails, slide decks… tedious.

Soooo tedious…

And I do it often. So I looked up the keyboard shortcut - who doesn’t love shortcuts? Now I’m sharing it with you

I still need to do a RightTool deep dive, but I already love the few features I use.

And I want to share with all of you, in two parts, my RightTool journey.

I have barely scratched what this magical Chrome browser extension can do.

I have not taken the time to do a deep dive review on RightTool yet, as I’ve had a lot going on since it came out. I had to move playing with it quite far down on my to-do list.

My accounting friends and colleagues were raving about it, though, and I heard it solved a few QBO issues. I decided I could install the RightTool extension and implement only the issue solvers from which I knew I could benefit. I could put off the heavy lift to explore all the features.

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Hector Garcia about RightTool, a QBO navigation tool he developed with Mark Corum and Patrick Cummings.

I recently had a quicky Zoom with a lovely woman from my FaceBook Group, The Workflow Wateringhole. She wanted to know the best steps to take to become a professional cloud based bookkeeper. We chatted, I gave her some advice which she said was great and she was going to follow up on it.

I decided to take that conversation from 1:1 and make it 1:many through this post.

If you are disorganized in the physical world, you will be disorganized in the cloud one.

Sure, you can search for many things in many ways in the cloud. But even the most robust of search options get dodgy if you don’t have systems in place to organize your digital world.

Operating digitally is as inefficient as operating physically if there isn’t an organized system for it.

It’s a frustrating, time-sucking dog’s breakfast either way.

Are you exhausted right now?

Most folks we know are, right?!

Together, we are all coming off a couple of tough years, and collaborating in an entirely (or mostly) virtual model requires us all to work differently. The old ways don't work as well anymore - we can't just pop our heads over the cubicle walls and ask co-workers “what’s up"?”. Instead, we have to peck things out in an email/Slack/Teams/WhatsApp… or schedule* a Zoom/call them to ask questions. It takes more work. And confusion can often reign supreme.

In the days of old, as in less than a decade ago, the technology was far different than today. And the mundane task load was heavy. Opening mail, entering transactions, cutting cheques, printing invoices, mailing stuff…and then filing, filing, filing!

Not anymore more. Cloud technology has changed all that.

I recently realized that not everyone knows about app-generated, copy/paste 2FA back up codes.

I was posting about sharing 2FA codes with team members in my FBGroup and an inquiry came up asking what these wee bits of magical security are (the inquirer didn’t call them “wee bits of magical security”, that’s all me). I couldn’t find a good article to reply with about them that wasn’t app-specific.

So I decided a quick overview - right here, right now - was in order.

Using tech to create 5 Star Client Experiences

We have had many renovations done over the years. Some went better than others.

The one thing that was consistent with the great experiences were great processes that were clearly communicated.

We have another one coming up in January and we are using a contractor that we used previously. We loved our experience with them and are happy to be having them do the work again.

What is the definition of an accountant?

Someone who solves a problem you did not know you had in a way you don’t understand.

Now back to the real purpose of this note…

Next week I am leading a session on branding and marketing for accounting professionals with the Dext Academy.

Last week I suggested some homework for it - visualizing your best you and what you want your business to look like.

Start to visualize - really, really visualize - the 5 Star Business, the 5 Star Client and the 5 Star You that you desire.

Make some quiet time just for you, create stillness in your mind. Close your eyes, picture what kind of business you want to run, what kind of accounting professional you want to be and what your rewarding life-work would look like.

"It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price"- Warren Buffet

It's also far better to adopt a wonderful app at a fair price than a fair app at a wonderful price.

Or a free app that sucks the time and efficiency out of your business rather than enhancing it.

"If you aren’t going all the way, why go at all?"- Joe Nameth

I have chatted before about back-ups, data location redundancy and internet security. Some of you may have listened to me go on about the need to adopt a cloud security policy and communicating it - some of you have done my workshop on it.

Before I launch into my favourite systems and automation that have changed the way I work and live I need to preface with three key things you must do before you create any automation.

And I want to emphasize that systems, routines and processes are as powerful as automation.

Not everything needs to be automated - in fact automation can wreak havoc if not thought through properly.

I can’t stress enough the importance of backing up your cloud data and implementing 3 location redundancy

“Redundancy for the sake of redundancy was my salvation.”

In 2005 my business was in a building that suffered a fire, and it burned to the ground.

I was already on my way to internet-based file management but more importantly, I was practicing 3 location data redundancy.

It was my saving grace for having my business up and running the next day, and client files intact.

Often a simple solution can solve a big problem.

The internet has been getting a workout; lately, that’s for sure.

::Understatement Alert::

Many of us are struggling with inconsistent internet service.

Sometimes it is the provider or where you live - there are many things we simply can’t fix about our broken internet.

But there are three best practices to keep your internet and computer running as smoothly as possible.

We’ve all become acquainted with Zoom.

Or Facetime, Go To Meeting, Google Hangouts, Skype (does this still exist?) - pick one - they are all of the same ilks.

Love them or hate them, the virtual meeting platforms will continue to be a prominent communication tool in our business lives.