The Rise of Socially Conscious Business

Entrepreneurs build more socially conscious businesses these days.

For decades, non-profits and businesses have existed in separate realms. The non-profits focused on helping the poor and providing aid, while businesses focused on raising capital and building revenue.

It seemed that the two were destined to stay on their own paths, gawking at each other and failing to work toward a common goal.

However, we’ve recently seen the rise of socially conscious business entrepreneurs, people who are driving innovation and changing systems in order to solve social problems. They have business plans and ventures that are hell bent on changing economies for the better, while at the same time running a successful for-profit business.

They are proving to everyone that poverty can be alleviated and money can be made - all at the same time.

So how do they do it What’s their secret

Well, it’s:

• Passion
• Innovation
• Basic business principles

These socially conscious business entrepreneurs dedicate their lives to solving social problems they are passionate about. They find a way to change things for the better, they get going and they never stop running.

One such example here in the U.S. was founded on the idea that you could turn trash into reusable compost. EcoScraps picks up old fruit and vegetables from stores and restaurants, composts it, then turns around and sells it as bags of organic potting soil. Their clients include Costco and Whole Foods among many others. They are creating a sustainable, profitable business while solving the problem of leftover and old produce.

Bill Drayton, Founder of Ashoka, has been identifying and supporting individual social entrepreneurs since 1980. He realizes the potential these individuals have and their ability to create impactful and sustainable businesses. By receiving investment early on, social entrepreneurs are able to scale and grow their businesses to have an even bigger impact.

Social conscious business entrepreneurs are proving that social problems can be solved with for-profit business models, and they won’t take “no” for an answer.

Frankly, I think they’re onto something.

Eco Photo via Shutterstock

Running A Fleet of Vehicles Five Reasons You Need Fleet Tracking

Technology is here! You can do more than slap a “How’s My Driving” sticker on the back of your fleet trucks. If your business makes use of a fleet of vehicles, you should be thinking about fleet management. GPS tracking collects valuable data points that can help increase productivity and decrease your fuel consumption.

Companies like Fleetmatics, Nero Global Tracking and Networkfleet offer GPS tracking and analytics for transportation, delivery, service, and trucking industries. Fleetmatics says the benefits don’t stop at knowing where your employees are and reducing fuel costs. There’s also better route guidance, faster emergency response and improved vehicle maintenance.

Here’s how:

1. Sometimes drivers take the long way. Without seeing the GPS data, you can’t know and can’t tell your driver there’s a short cut that takes ten minutes off the drive.
2. “When drivers keep their own time sheets and ’round up’ or ’round down,’ you pay,” says Fleetmatics. When you know where your vehicles are and how long they’re there, you know how many hours have been worked.
3. You’ve got proof of service in the case of a dispute with a customer or employee. C Jones Trucking “was sued by former employees claiming that they were due overtime pay for not traveling out of state. By law, trucking companies are exempt from paying overtime fees if the vehicles travel out of state. C Jones was able to pull all their records and prove that they didn’t owe the additional $120,000 in overtime wages,” says Fleetmatics.
4. If your vehicle is stolen, you can get it back. According to Nero Global Tracking, “Houston Landscapes saw an instant return on investment from their GPS fleet tracking solution when they not only recovered a stolen back hoe in less than hour, but also received a huge insurance discount on every asset.”
5. You can set up alerts for when your drivers are speeding. Fleetmatics says, “When people see a recklessly driven vehicle with your company’s logo on it, they assume that your company does not care about the safety of the community. Keep not only your vehicles but also your company’s name in tact by tracking your fleet.”

Tell us about your fleet tracking experiences in the comments! Success stories or cautionary tales, we want to hear them. Have you had success with fleet tracking

Running A Fleet of Vehicles Five Reasons You Need Fleet Tracking

Technology is here! You can do more than slap a “How’s My Driving” sticker on the back of your fleet trucks. If your business makes use of a fleet of vehicles, you should be thinking about fleet management. GPS tracking collects valuable data points that can help increase productivity and decrease your fuel consumption.

Companies like Fleetmatics, Nero Global Tracking and Networkfleet offer GPS tracking and analytics for transportation, delivery, service, and trucking industries. Fleetmatics says the benefits don’t stop at knowing where your employees are and reducing fuel costs. There’s also better route guidance, faster emergency response and improved vehicle maintenance.

Here’s how:

1. Sometimes drivers take the long way. Without seeing the GPS data, you can’t know and can’t tell your driver there’s a short cut that takes ten minutes off the drive.
2. “When drivers keep their own time sheets and ’round up’ or ’round down,’ you pay,” says Fleetmatics. When you know where your vehicles are and how long they’re there, you know how many hours have been worked.
3. You’ve got proof of service in the case of a dispute with a customer or employee. C Jones Trucking “was sued by former employees claiming that they were due overtime pay for not traveling out of state. By law, trucking companies are exempt from paying overtime fees if the vehicles travel out of state. C Jones was able to pull all their records and prove that they didn’t owe the additional $120,000 in overtime wages,” says Fleetmatics.
4. If your vehicle is stolen, you can get it back. According to Nero Global Tracking, “Houston Landscapes saw an instant return on investment from their GPS fleet tracking solution when they not only recovered a stolen back hoe in less than hour, but also received a huge insurance discount on every asset.”
5. You can set up alerts for when your drivers are speeding. Fleetmatics says, “When people see a recklessly driven vehicle with your company’s logo on it, they assume that your company does not care about the safety of the community. Keep not only your vehicles but also your company’s name in tact by tracking your fleet.”

Tell us about your fleet tracking experiences in the comments! Success stories or cautionary tales, we want to hear them. Have you had success with fleet tracking

Key Points To Consider Before Using Employee Monitoring Software

The topic of employee monitoring is a tricky one. It’s understandable for employers to want to ensure no one is wasting company time and money, but employees can end up feeling anxious, undervalued and untrusted.

Susan M. Heathfield at About.com says “employee internet monitoring is an overbroad reaction to the activities of a small percentage of employees. It contributes to an environment in which employees feel untrusted. It encourages sneaky behavior. It causes employees to waste energy worrying about whether what they are doing is okay or not, and it encourages a 9 to 5 mentality.”

On the other side of the coin, Birch Grove Software recently announced that its employee monitoring cloud service, ActivTrak, has come out of beta testing and has officially launched. “It is already used by more than 15000 business owners and managers, who have stored over 90 million screenshots in the cloud, and every hour 35 thousand new screenshots are added.”

Their press release states “almost 90% of employees use the Internet at work for personal purposes - mostly for social networking, online games and online shopping.” I was unable to independently verify this statistic or find a source for it.

ActivTrak says their product will increase productivity. But is this true

Here are some things to consider before implementing employee monitoring software:

Psychology Today points out that trust is a two-way street. If you want your employees to trust you, you should trust them. “As an employee, if you believe you’re trusted or you believe you aren’t, does it matter The answer is yes. Trust, or the perceived sense of trust or not trust, impacts behavior.”

Two British Columbia professors, Sabrina Salamon and Sandra Robinson, discovered, “When employees in an organization perceive they are trusted by management, increases in the presence of responsibility norms, as well as in the sales performance and customer service performance of the organization, are observed.”

Their study involving 88 retail stores found: “In stores where employees felt trusted, they were more likely to rise to managers’ expectations and perform better in terms of sales and customer service.”

And if, indeed, your employees are “cyberloafing,” is that cutting into your bottom line According to some studies, frivolous breaks actually increase productivity:

A 2009 study by a Ph.D. student at Massey University found that employees who felt they could surf the Web here and there without getting yelled at were happier. Not only did it alleviate boredom, it also showed them that their boss would be more open to flex time, working from home or other options.

Another study, conducted in 2011 by researchers at the National University of Singapore, backs this up. That study found that mindlessly surfing the Web refreshed workers and made them more productive, even more than chatting with friends or co-workers did. The Web surfing provided what the researchers characterized as “an instant recovery” and gave them the energy to get back to work. “When you’re stressed at work and feel frustrated, go cyberloaf,” said researcher Don J.Q. Chen. “Go on the ‘Net. After your break, you come back to work refreshed.”

Most recently, a new study out of Hiroshima University in Japan, published this September in the journal PLoS One, found that looking at cute pictures of baby animals actually served to increase concentration. The researchers write that in the future “cute objects may be used as an emotion elicitor to induce careful behavioral tendencies in specific situations, such as driving and office work.”

Finally, several studies have shown that employee happiness often directly correlates to productivity and more profits for you. Employee monitoring might not make your employees unhappy, but it probably won’t help their mood any.

I’ve looked for statistics that show employee monitoring increases productivity, but I’ve been unable to find any. Let me know in the comments if you have seen results with employee monitoring! Let me know if you have alternatives to this kind of software! What’s worked for you, and what do you think I want to hear from all sides of this issue.

Key Points To Consider Before Using Employee Monitoring Software

The topic of employee monitoring is a tricky one. It’s understandable for employers to want to ensure no one is wasting company time and money, but employees can end up feeling anxious, undervalued and untrusted.

Susan M. Heathfield at About.com says “employee internet monitoring is an overbroad reaction to the activities of a small percentage of employees. It contributes to an environment in which employees feel untrusted. It encourages sneaky behavior. It causes employees to waste energy worrying about whether what they are doing is okay or not, and it encourages a 9 to 5 mentality.”

On the other side of the coin, Birch Grove Software recently announced that its employee monitoring cloud service, ActivTrak, has come out of beta testing and has officially launched. “It is already used by more than 15000 business owners and managers, who have stored over 90 million screenshots in the cloud, and every hour 35 thousand new screenshots are added.”

Their press release states “almost 90% of employees use the Internet at work for personal purposes - mostly for social networking, online games and online shopping.” I was unable to independently verify this statistic or find a source for it.

ActivTrak says their product will increase productivity. But is this true

Here are some things to consider before implementing employee monitoring software:

Psychology Today points out that trust is a two-way street. If you want your employees to trust you, you should trust them. “As an employee, if you believe you’re trusted or you believe you aren’t, does it matter The answer is yes. Trust, or the perceived sense of trust or not trust, impacts behavior.”

Two British Columbia professors, Sabrina Salamon and Sandra Robinson, discovered, “When employees in an organization perceive they are trusted by management, increases in the presence of responsibility norms, as well as in the sales performance and customer service performance of the organization, are observed.”

Their study involving 88 retail stores found: “In stores where employees felt trusted, they were more likely to rise to managers’ expectations and perform better in terms of sales and customer service.”

And if, indeed, your employees are “cyberloafing,” is that cutting into your bottom line According to some studies, frivolous breaks actually increase productivity:

A 2009 study by a Ph.D. student at Massey University found that employees who felt they could surf the Web here and there without getting yelled at were happier. Not only did it alleviate boredom, it also showed them that their boss would be more open to flex time, working from home or other options.

Another study, conducted in 2011 by researchers at the National University of Singapore, backs this up. That study found that mindlessly surfing the Web refreshed workers and made them more productive, even more than chatting with friends or co-workers did. The Web surfing provided what the researchers characterized as “an instant recovery” and gave them the energy to get back to work. “When you’re stressed at work and feel frustrated, go cyberloaf,” said researcher Don J.Q. Chen. “Go on the ‘Net. After your break, you come back to work refreshed.”

Most recently, a new study out of Hiroshima University in Japan, published this September in the journal PLoS One, found that looking at cute pictures of baby animals actually served to increase concentration. The researchers write that in the future “cute objects may be used as an emotion elicitor to induce careful behavioral tendencies in specific situations, such as driving and office work.”

Finally, several studies have shown that employee happiness often directly correlates to productivity and more profits for you. Employee monitoring might not make your employees unhappy, but it probably won’t help their mood any.

I’ve looked for statistics that show employee monitoring increases productivity, but I’ve been unable to find any. Let me know in the comments if you have seen results with employee monitoring! Let me know if you have alternatives to this kind of software! What’s worked for you, and what do you think I want to hear from all sides of this issue.

Pinterest Analytics: Shows You What Drives Traffic to Your Site

Pinterest just unveiled a new traffic measuring tool that website owners can use to see their site’s activity from the social site. Pinterest Web Analytics can show how many people have pinned images from your website, how many other users have viewed these pins, and how many people have visited your website from Pinterest.

The photo below shows a site metrics chart. This can illustrate how many pins, pinners, repins, repinners, impressions, clicks, and visitors your site has received on a given day or measure trends of activity over a longer time period.

The thought behind Pinterest Web Analytics is that it not only allows you to measure reach and see how many visitors Pinterest drives to your site, but it can also help you see what kind of content is most likely to attract an audience.

Writing on the official Pinterest blog Pinterest Software Engineer, Tao Tao, says:

“We think that these tools will help website owners understand what’s working for them and what’s not so that they can create even better pins in the future.”

To use Pinterest Analytics, you must first have a verified website. Then you must sign up for early access to Pinterest’s new look, which you can find in the site’s profile menu. Once there, you can select Analytics from the top right menu and immediately begin viewing your site’s activity. The tool is free to use today.

This is Pinterest’s first official analytics offering. Before the release, there were third-party Pinterest tools such as Pinfluencer that allowed site owners to find similar insights into their Pinterest activity. Some of these services still offer tools that Pinterest does not. For example, Pinfluencer facilitates running contests on the site. But the availability of simpler analytics tools could cause users switch over to the official Pinterest Web Analytics.

Pinterest has been working toward becoming a more business-friendly platform in recent months, with the introduction of business accounts and its official business site. The company said that Pinterest Web Analytics is a “first step” toward making business owners understand their audiences and the types of content they want to see shared.

Time For Small Businesses to Take Mobile Seriously [Infographic]

It’s abundantly clear from the release of Google AdWords Enhanced campaigns that mobile search is big. Most likely, it will be at the forefront of advertising for the foreseeable future. That’s no surprise given that mobile searches are up 200% year over year.

As a small business, understanding the mobile marketing landscape and how Google plans to play in that space will be critical for charting your mobile search marketing strategy in the near term.

Outlined in this mobile Read More

The post Time For Small Businesses to Take Mobile Seriously [Infographic] appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Quickbooks Online Releases iPad App To Keep On-The-Go Business Owners Productive

There’s a huge demand from small (and large) business owners for apps that make their lives easier. App developers have risen in huge numbers to fulfill the demand. We recently ran a list of apps that can really make a difference in the traveling businessperson’s life.

Just as DocuSign went from being just a computer application for electronically signing contracts, to providing a mobile solution in DocuSign Ink, Intuit has made a similar jump with QuickBooks.

“Managing a small business is a different game today than it was a few years ago, due in large part to the proliferation of smartphones and tablets,” said Dan Wernikoff, senior vice president and general manager of Intuit’s Financial Management Solutions division.

Inuit has rolled with the changes in technology over the years and has never stopped evolving. QuickBooks has been making accounting easy for over 20 years, taking their product from desktop computers to pocket devices.

Intuit’s Wenikoff said they’ve “found that more than 20 percent of QuickBooks Mobile for iPhone users access the app through iPads.”

Those iPad users now have an app all their own, and it does way more than you’d think. You can create and send professional estimates and invoices on the spot, accept electronic signatures to approve estimates, access your finances from anywhere, view a complete customer history, and add photos and notes so you don’t forget anything. On top of that, your data is visualized. You can see your income and expenses charted.

One example of a Quickbooks iPad app user’s experience:

“As a wedding planner, I spend 70 percent of my time away from my desk meeting with clients and vendors. At the end of the day, I used to sort through my meeting notes, map out next steps, track payments and expenses, and follow up with invoices,” said Sadie Waddington of Locally Grown Weddings in San Francisco, Calif. “Now, I save time by catching up on accounting during the four hours I commute on public transit each week using QuickBooks Online for iPad.”

You can try out the app for 30 days for free. After that, QuickBooks Online for iPad starts at $12.99 per month or $124.99 per year.

Let us know about other business apps that make life easier for you!

Network Security: What Every Business Owner Must Know

Today, networks are literally running the world. Every bank transaction you make nowadays goes through a network cable. The reliability and stability of digital products sometimes lulls people into an unhealthy sense of security, and the consequences can be catastrophic especially for businesses.

While network security in your home might consist of getting your hands on a firewall, a business needs to cover more areas within this domain:

Access Control

When sharing files within the network, you might want to make sure that only the people you intend to share the files with have access to them. The first thing you should do when sharing a file in your local network is modify its properties to make it readable and modifiable only to those who should have these privileges. You don’t need to concern yourself with this if you don’t share any resources within your LAN.

Hardware Firewalls

While a software firewall might be sufficient enough to protect a home network, a small business might have trouble defending itself against certain attacks this way. One particular attack has grown rather popular: The distributed denial of service (DDoS). A DDoS is an effective way of taking down an Internet connection by flooding it with packets from multiple computers. It’s sort of like how filling your kitchen sink’s drain with grease will clog it. Hardware firewalls are usually more effective at fighting off attacks, since the packets are stopped before they ever reach a computer. With a software firewall, packets first arrive at your computer before being filtered.

You can easily get a hardware firewall by buying business-oriented routers. Don’t use consumer routers for your network.

Got Telecommuters Use a VPN!

To protect your business and employees, your telecommuters should use a virtual private network (VPN) to access sensitive information. A VPN lets two remote computers communicate without needing to be in the same local area network. The VPN assigns an address to each computer and lets them talk as if they were next to each other, across the Internet. Data sent across a VPN is usually encrypted.

Single Sign-On

This is probably one of the most essential parts of any business. Single sign-on (SSO) is the practice of consolidating someone’s identity on the Web to one single account. In other words: Instead of logging in to 10 accounts, you place all of the account credentials into a central application that will sign you in. By eliminating the need to remember more than one password, SSO allows you to make different complex passwords for each online account. Two very highly-reliable services for SSO are SmartSignin and Okta. We’ve recently covered this topic here, if you want more.

Teach Employees Proper Security Etiquette

Aside from your own Internet habits, you also need to make sure that your employees have the street smarts necessary to prevent any data breach. Have a conference with your employees about network security, teaching them best practices such as being wary of email attachments and regularly updating the software on their personal devices. It’s best if you get a network security professional to speak at the conference.

Planning on opening a Wi-Fi hotspot Don’t connect your computer to it.

This is particularly popular with cafes and restaurants. If you’re planning on offering free Wi-Fi to your customers, be aware that this adds an enormous security liability in your network. Make sure that your computer isn’t hooked up to the same router that the Wi-Fi network is in. Otherwise, anyone can sniff out the data coming in and out of the network adapter.

While You’re At It, Look Into Unified Threat Management

If you think you’re up to shelling out the bucks, get yourself a unified threat management (UTM) router rather than a normal one. These hunks of metal offer gigantic benefits! Besides acting as a hardware firewall, they also prevent viruses, intruders, and spam. They also participate in load balancing, which is useful if you have more computers that download bulky amounts of data. If “UTM” is attached to the router’s name, you should really spare the cash for it. They’re an excellent investment.

We’re Done, Folks!

If you follow this small checklist and adopt all of the solutions, you’ll have a very well-armed fortress protecting your data, your employees, and your customers. Nothing feels better than knowing you’re operating a squeaky clean network with no worries.

Quickbooks Online Releases iPad App To Keep On-The-Go Business Owners Productive

There’s a huge demand from small (and large) business owners for apps that make their lives easier. App developers have risen in huge numbers to fulfill the demand. We recently ran a list of apps that can really make a difference in the traveling businessperson’s life.

Just as DocuSign went from being just a computer application for electronically signing contracts, to providing a mobile solution in DocuSign Ink, Intuit has made a similar jump with QuickBooks.

“Managing a small business is a different game today than it was a few years ago, due in large part to the proliferation of smartphones and tablets,” said Dan Wernikoff, senior vice president and general manager of Intuit’s Financial Management Solutions division.

Inuit has rolled with the changes in technology over the years and has never stopped evolving. QuickBooks has been making accounting easy for over 20 years, taking their product from desktop computers to pocket devices.

Intuit’s Wenikoff said they’ve “found that more than 20 percent of QuickBooks Mobile for iPhone users access the app through iPads.”

Those iPad users now have an app all their own, and it does way more than you’d think. You can create and send professional estimates and invoices on the spot, accept electronic signatures to approve estimates, access your finances from anywhere, view a complete customer history, and add photos and notes so you don’t forget anything. On top of that, your data is visualized. You can see your income and expenses charted.

One example of a Quickbooks iPad app user’s experience:

“As a wedding planner, I spend 70 percent of my time away from my desk meeting with clients and vendors. At the end of the day, I used to sort through my meeting notes, map out next steps, track payments and expenses, and follow up with invoices,” said Sadie Waddington of Locally Grown Weddings in San Francisco, Calif. “Now, I save time by catching up on accounting during the four hours I commute on public transit each week using QuickBooks Online for iPad.”

You can try out the app for 30 days for free. After that, QuickBooks Online for iPad starts at $12.99 per month or $124.99 per year.

Let us know about other business apps that make life easier for you!

Network Security: What Every Business Owner Must Know

Today, networks are literally running the world. Every bank transaction you make nowadays goes through a network cable. The reliability and stability of digital products sometimes lulls people into an unhealthy sense of security, and the consequences can be catastrophic especially for businesses.

While network security in your home might consist of getting your hands on a firewall, a business needs to cover more areas within this domain:

Access Control

When sharing files within the network, you might want to make sure that only the people you intend to share the files with have access to them. The first thing you should do when sharing a file in your local network is modify its properties to make it readable and modifiable only to those who should have these privileges. You don’t need to concern yourself with this if you don’t share any resources within your LAN.

Hardware Firewalls

While a software firewall might be sufficient enough to protect a home network, a small business might have trouble defending itself against certain attacks this way. One particular attack has grown rather popular: The distributed denial of service (DDoS). A DDoS is an effective way of taking down an Internet connection by flooding it with packets from multiple computers. It’s sort of like how filling your kitchen sink’s drain with grease will clog it. Hardware firewalls are usually more effective at fighting off attacks, since the packets are stopped before they ever reach a computer. With a software firewall, packets first arrive at your computer before being filtered.

You can easily get a hardware firewall by buying business-oriented routers. Don’t use consumer routers for your network.

Got Telecommuters Use a VPN!

To protect your business and employees, your telecommuters should use a virtual private network (VPN) to access sensitive information. A VPN lets two remote computers communicate without needing to be in the same local area network. The VPN assigns an address to each computer and lets them talk as if they were next to each other, across the Internet. Data sent across a VPN is usually encrypted.

Single Sign-On

This is probably one of the most essential parts of any business. Single sign-on (SSO) is the practice of consolidating someone’s identity on the Web to one single account. In other words: Instead of logging in to 10 accounts, you place all of the account credentials into a central application that will sign you in. By eliminating the need to remember more than one password, SSO allows you to make different complex passwords for each online account. Two very highly-reliable services for SSO are SmartSignin and Okta. We’ve recently covered this topic here, if you want more.

Teach Employees Proper Security Etiquette

Aside from your own Internet habits, you also need to make sure that your employees have the street smarts necessary to prevent any data breach. Have a conference with your employees about network security, teaching them best practices such as being wary of email attachments and regularly updating the software on their personal devices. It’s best if you get a network security professional to speak at the conference.

Planning on opening a Wi-Fi hotspot Don’t connect your computer to it.

This is particularly popular with cafes and restaurants. If you’re planning on offering free Wi-Fi to your customers, be aware that this adds an enormous security liability in your network. Make sure that your computer isn’t hooked up to the same router that the Wi-Fi network is in. Otherwise, anyone can sniff out the data coming in and out of the network adapter.

While You’re At It, Look Into Unified Threat Management

If you think you’re up to shelling out the bucks, get yourself a unified threat management (UTM) router rather than a normal one. These hunks of metal offer gigantic benefits! Besides acting as a hardware firewall, they also prevent viruses, intruders, and spam. They also participate in load balancing, which is useful if you have more computers that download bulky amounts of data. If “UTM” is attached to the router’s name, you should really spare the cash for it. They’re an excellent investment.

We’re Done, Folks!

If you follow this small checklist and adopt all of the solutions, you’ll have a very well-armed fortress protecting your data, your employees, and your customers. Nothing feels better than knowing you’re operating a squeaky clean network with no worries.

Quickbooks Online Releases iPad App To Keep On-The-Go Business Owners Productive

There’s a huge demand from small (and large) business owners for apps that make their lives easier. App developers have risen in huge numbers to fulfill the demand. We recently ran a list of apps that can really make a difference in the traveling businessperson’s life.

Just as DocuSign went from being just a computer application for electronically signing contracts, to providing a mobile solution in DocuSign Ink, Intuit has made a similar jump with QuickBooks.

“Managing a small business is a different game today than it was a few years ago, due in large part to the proliferation of smartphones and tablets,” said Dan Wernikoff, senior vice president and general manager of Intuit’s Financial Management Solutions division.

Inuit has rolled with the changes in technology over the years and has never stopped evolving. QuickBooks has been making accounting easy for over 20 years, taking their product from desktop computers to pocket devices.

Intuit’s Wenikoff said they’ve “found that more than 20 percent of QuickBooks Mobile for iPhone users access the app through iPads.”

Those iPad users now have an app all their own, and it does way more than you’d think. You can create and send professional estimates and invoices on the spot, accept electronic signatures to approve estimates, access your finances from anywhere, view a complete customer history, and add photos and notes so you don’t forget anything. On top of that, your data is visualized. You can see your income and expenses charted.

One example of a Quickbooks iPad app user’s experience:

“As a wedding planner, I spend 70 percent of my time away from my desk meeting with clients and vendors. At the end of the day, I used to sort through my meeting notes, map out next steps, track payments and expenses, and follow up with invoices,” said Sadie Waddington of Locally Grown Weddings in San Francisco, Calif. “Now, I save time by catching up on accounting during the four hours I commute on public transit each week using QuickBooks Online for iPad.”

You can try out the app for 30 days for free. After that, QuickBooks Online for iPad starts at $12.99 per month or $124.99 per year.

Let us know about other business apps that make life easier for you!

Team Connectivity: How to Create Time To “Unplug”

Collaboration in the workplace is center stage in the news, but experts say there are ways your team could be too connected.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s recent announcement that employees at the company would no longer be allowed to work from home has lit up the blogosphere with commenters complaining that the change dooms working mothers to second-class citizen status.

Mayer says the change is necessary to enable informal employee interactions that lead to innovation and a more engaged workforce. But perhaps the real issue in creating more employee engagement isn’t where you work, but how you work.

The latest Randstad Engagement Index Study has some interesting findings about what female employees value in the workplace and how they want to work. Working relationships are by far the most important factor affecting female employees’ satisfaction with their jobs. A whopping 87 percent say relationships with their coworkers impact their happiness at work, and 85 percent say relationships with direct supervisors do.

Half of the women say a work environment that offers flexibility is important to their happinessâ€"and 49 percent say their company is flexible and accommodating when it comes to their hours or working arrangements.

But while technology is enabling a lot of that flexibility, it’s also the cause of a lot of dissatisfaction. Some 42 percent of women in the survey say they are struggling to disconnect from work during off hours at home. And a majority (68 percent) say technology’s blurring of the division between work and home is not making them any more productive.

Says Linda Galipeau, Randstad CEO of North America, in announcing the survey findings:

“Many workers mistake being busy for being productive. These are two very different concepts thatâ€"when looked at from an organizational standpointâ€"could have serious implications for a company’s bottom line.”

Whether your employees are in the office from 9 to 5, or you helm a virtual workforce that rarely sees each other in the flesh, is 24/7 connectivity taking its tollâ€"on both you and your team

If you or your workers are feeling overwhelmed take these steps.

Consider How Connected You Really Need To Be

Break down the various elements of your business and how frequently they need to be attended to. Is it okay to check social media once or twice a day Maybe you need to respond to customer complaints within the hour, while lead inquiries can wait 12 or 24 hours.

These metrics will differ for each business.

Figure Out How To Cover The Bases

If an element of your business truly requires 24/7 responsiveness, figure out ways to spread the responsibility among multiple employees so each person has some guaranteed downtime.

For example, if you’re a website hosting company and need to be there when a site goes down at 4 a.m.

Automate Where Possible

FAQs on your website, an automated phone tree menu or prerecorded hours and directions can all help answer customer questions while freeing employees for more important tasks.

Eliminate Redundancy

With so many ways to contact each other, often we overcompensate by emailing, instant messaging and calling each other about the same thing.

Set standards for what types of situations require each method.

Set The Example

If you’re addicted to urgency, your employees will be too. Your business will suffer from the constant adrenalin overload.

Lead by example. Set your own parameters for time off (like not sending work emails on the weekend) and encouraging your employees to do the same.

Is connectedness helping or hurting your business

Plugged In Photo via Shutterstock

Network Security: What Every Business Owner Must Know

Today, networks are literally running the world. Every bank transaction you make nowadays goes through a network cable. The reliability and stability of digital products sometimes lulls people into an unhealthy sense of security, and the consequences can be catastrophic especially for businesses.

While network security in your home might consist of getting your hands on a firewall, a business needs to cover more areas within this domain:

Access Control

When sharing files within the network, you might want to make sure that only the people you intend to share the files with have access to them. The first thing you should do when sharing a file in your local network is modify its properties to make it readable and modifiable only to those who should have these privileges. You don’t need to concern yourself with this if you don’t share any resources within your LAN.

Hardware Firewalls

While a software firewall might be sufficient enough to protect a home network, a small business might have trouble defending itself against certain attacks this way. One particular attack has grown rather popular: The distributed denial of service (DDoS). A DDoS is an effective way of taking down an Internet connection by flooding it with packets from multiple computers. It’s sort of like how filling your kitchen sink’s drain with grease will clog it. Hardware firewalls are usually more effective at fighting off attacks, since the packets are stopped before they ever reach a computer. With a software firewall, packets first arrive at your computer before being filtered.

You can easily get a hardware firewall by buying business-oriented routers. Don’t use consumer routers for your network.

Got Telecommuters Use a VPN!

To protect your business and employees, your telecommuters should use a virtual private network (VPN) to access sensitive information. A VPN lets two remote computers communicate without needing to be in the same local area network. The VPN assigns an address to each computer and lets them talk as if they were next to each other, across the Internet. Data sent across a VPN is usually encrypted.

Single Sign-On

This is probably one of the most essential parts of any business. Single sign-on (SSO) is the practice of consolidating someone’s identity on the Web to one single account. In other words: Instead of logging in to 10 accounts, you place all of the account credentials into a central application that will sign you in. By eliminating the need to remember more than one password, SSO allows you to make different complex passwords for each online account. Two very highly-reliable services for SSO are SmartSignin and Okta. We’ve recently covered this topic here, if you want more.

Teach Employees Proper Security Etiquette

Aside from your own Internet habits, you also need to make sure that your employees have the street smarts necessary to prevent any data breach. Have a conference with your employees about network security, teaching them best practices such as being wary of email attachments and regularly updating the software on their personal devices. It’s best if you get a network security professional to speak at the conference.

Planning on opening a Wi-Fi hotspot Don’t connect your computer to it.

This is particularly popular with cafes and restaurants. If you’re planning on offering free Wi-Fi to your customers, be aware that this adds an enormous security liability in your network. Make sure that your computer isn’t hooked up to the same router that the Wi-Fi network is in. Otherwise, anyone can sniff out the data coming in and out of the network adapter.

While You’re At It, Look Into Unified Threat Management

If you think you’re up to shelling out the bucks, get yourself a unified threat management (UTM) router rather than a normal one. These hunks of metal offer gigantic benefits! Besides acting as a hardware firewall, they also prevent viruses, intruders, and spam. They also participate in load balancing, which is useful if you have more computers that download bulky amounts of data. If “UTM” is attached to the router’s name, you should really spare the cash for it. They’re an excellent investment.

We’re Done, Folks!

If you follow this small checklist and adopt all of the solutions, you’ll have a very well-armed fortress protecting your data, your employees, and your customers. Nothing feels better than knowing you’re operating a squeaky clean network with no worries.

Critical Watch FusionVM

FusionVM from Critical Watch offers both vulnerability management and configuration policy auditing in either a physical or virtual appliance or as a full, cloud-based SaaS option. If the SaaS option is chosen, customers can receive external scanning without any additional hardware or software needed. If scanning internally, the customer must install an appliance that connects to the cloud service for scanning.

This product offers many vulnerability and risk assessment options, including web applications, databases, third-party applications, and workstations and many others. It also includes a full compliance module that scans and reports on many compliance standards, such as Sarbanes-Oxley, GLBA, HIPPA, ISO 1779 and PCI DSS.

For our evaluation, we ran the product in the SaaS model with a physical scanner installed in our lab. The setup of the appliance was quite simple and only took a few minutes. We first plugged in the appliance and connected a monitor and keyboard. After the appliance was booted, we were able to login and configure the network and IP settings. Once those were completed, the scanning appliance was up and running with a connection directly to the Critical Watch cloud VPN. To launch a scan, we simply had to log into the Critical Watch web portal and set up a scanning job. We found the web portal to be quite easy and intuitive to navigate with a nicely organised layout. Scanning jobs can be set up to run on-demand or be scheduled to run at specific times.

Overall, we found Critical Watch FusionVM to be quite flexible and to have many features. Built in to the web portal is a remediation manager section, which allows for administrators to assign and track remediation tasks after a scan has completed. Also available are several charts, graphs and reports for viewing scan results based on hosts scanned, risk data and open services.

Documentation included a full PDF user guide that covered how to deploy and use the product. This was well organised and included many screenshots and detailed explanations of features and functions. Also included were many examples that helped illustrate more complex scanning and reporting procedures.

Critical Watch offers full 24/7 phone- and email-based technical support to customers as part of the SaaS subscription fee. Customers also have access to an online FAQ section, but that is about it for online-based support. At the current time, Critical Watch does not provide a web-based knowledgebase.

At a price starting at c£280 per month for 100 IPs for the SaaS service, or around c£26,887 for 1,000 IPs for the on-premise scanner, we find this product to be good value for money. We found the hybrid SaaS/appliance architecture to offer flexibility for deployment while providing a good amount of features and functionality.

ManageEngine Security Manager Plus v5.5

ManageEngine Security Manager Plus (Professional Edition) is a network security scanner that proactively reports on network vulnerabilities and helps to remediate them and ensure compliance. With vulnerability scanning, open ports detection, patch management, Windows file/folder/registry change management and vulnerability reporting capabilities, the tool protects the network from security threats and malicious attacks.

According to the company's website, ManageEngine, an external vulnerability aggregator, draws vulnerability information from various security sources through email and RSS feeds. Patch information is vetted and correlated into a vulnerability database. This database is published to clients in an effort to keep the database at the client end current. All scanning, patching and reporting is done by the Security Manager Plus at the client end. Agents are deployed to address systems that are behind firewalls or where configuration settings on a remote machine do not allow direct interrogation and remediation.

Product features include vulnerability scanning, open port detection, hardware and software inventory, Windows users and groups, scheduling and scan automation, patch management (includes specific Linux distributions), trouble-ticket mail generation, Windows change management, audit reports, PCI DSS compliance, CVE cross-reference and the vulnerability database.

The tool is often installed on Windows Servers and does not require the installation of any other third-party software for Windows (installation on Linux requires Samba-TNG to be installed additionally). It has been validated to run under a number of Windows systems, as well as Red Hat Linux, Debian, CentOS and open Suse. For our evaluation, Zoho provided a CD for installing the product. The install went smoothly and configuration took minutes to complete and a scan was initiated. ManageEngine found all 11 test systems.

The system has a clean graphic dashboard that we used to look up support documentation, including the community website. The admin tab provided a dashboard for managing settings and an array of other functions. Email reporting was configured and CVE vulnerability reports were produced.

PCI reports were generated through automated reporting. The risk and correction functions were easy to use and provided some easy remediation recommendations. Finally, change management tickets were created and processed. Overall, the product performed well.

Documentation included web-based assistance, including installation and user instructions, FAQs, troubleshooting tips, a document library, tutorials, user forums and more.

Basic no-fee support provides 24/5 telephone and email assistance for the evaluation period. Fee-based options are covered in the product cost for the first year. During subsequent years, fees cost 20 per cent of the licence fee.

We found that as an entry-level vulnerability management system, the value provided by this tool is good for its cost.

Core Impact Professional

The people at Core Security are at it again. We found this version of the product to contain more automation, more wizards and more options than previous versions we have tested. For those that are unfamiliar with this tool, Core Impact is quickly becoming the standard in penetration testing and vulnerability scanning. It features many types of penetration tests, including network-based and remote host-based, as well as many other tools, including Wi-Fi network and web-based penetration tests.

When we first saw this solution a few years ago, it was small and simple to install. Installation took just a few minutes and was run from an executable installer. As the solution has grown over the years, it has gained a lot of functionality, but it is still just as simple to install and use. The installation package, as well as the decryption key needed to open it, was delivered as a download via our email. Once we downloaded the installer and decrypted it using the decryption key, we were taken through a short installation wizard to configure some basic settings for installation - and that was it. The installer took care of implementing all of the necessary components, including Microsoft SQL Server Express and the Crystal Reports engine.

Once installation was complete, we launched into the application and found that the interface still has pretty much the same modular layout, but with one big difference. Ready to use straightaway were quite a few wizard-based options for many types of penetration test.

Along with the many wizards and automation features, this solution has come a long way over the years in vulnerability scanning. When Core Impact was in its early stages, it was basically a penetration tool and not much more. That has changed significantly. It can now run vulnerability- and risk-based assessment scans, as well as validate results from many other scanners by taking the logs and outputs of those scanners and comparing them with its results. This offers - from one application - a full overview of the entire network security posture.

Documentation included a full PDF user guide, as well as a couple of supplemental reference guides. The user guide covers the product from installation through advanced use. We found this to include many screenshots along with easy-to-follow instructions and descriptions on how to use the various product features. A module reference guide features in-depth descriptions of exploit modules, as well as many integration options and operations.

Core Security offers both standard and premium support to customers with Core Impact Professional. Standard support is available at no additional cost and includes 12/5 phone- and email-based technical assistance, along with access to a customer portal that includes resources, such as a knowledgebase, user forums and user-training materials. Premium assistance offers all of this, but phone- and email-based help is available 24/7/365. This aid level requires the purchase of a plan with an annual cost of £2,250.

With a price tag of £25,000 for the software, this offering may seem quite pricey. However, we find it to be excellent value for the money based on its solid ease of use, powerful penetration and vulnerability assessment tools, and overall automation.

Gary McGraw on evolution of BSIMM maturity framework

SAN FRANCISCO -- The man who wrote the book on software security best practices said that while it was once difficult to measure an organization's secure software development capabilities, the invention of the Building Security in Maturity Model, or BSIMM, has created an effective "measuring stick for software security."

Gary McGraw, Cigital Inc. CTO and co-author of Building Secure Software, the industry's first book on software security, said BSIMM now makes it trivial for an organization to determine whether its developers have the right training, tools and processes in place.

"The BSIMM knows all that," McGraw said, "and it's a beautiful way to measure software security."

In this interview, conducted at RSA Conference 2013, McGraw discussed the creation and subsequent evolution of BSIMM, which now measures more than 100 different software security benchmarks, as well as why some organizations continue to ignore software security, and how major software vendors like Microsoft and Adobe are addressing obstacles that are preventing secure software development.

Gartner conference: Integrate IAM and SIEM to prevent APTs

Properly integrated identity and access management (IAM) and security incident and event management (SIEM) can assist in combating modern targeted attacks, as well as doing the traditional functions.

Speaking at the Gartner IAM conference in London, Gartner research managing vice president Mark Nicolett said that while the threat of self-propagating has come back, security is driving IAM and user activity monitoring.

He said: “The whole point of that malware is to compromise accounts to steal data. One example is individuals in mid-sized businesses with access to cash accounts were targeted with a 'business' email. That sequence followed and [the criminals] waited until as many accounts were compromised as possible and the criminals drained them and until they realised, 160 companies were hit and the money was not touchable. In that case it was not intellectual property, just cash in the bank.”

Nicolett said that the lessons from ten or 11 years ago still matter - protecting the perimeter to narrow the surface of attack, management of and fixing vulnerabilities to be more resilient to attack. “Some attackers are opportunistic and if they find a soft environment and hit the roadblocks, they will try and find a softer target, so there is value in hardening the perimeter,” he said.

“Some systems can only take it so far. They need to be good at early detection and this is an area we are particularly bad at.”

He also quoted the Verizon 2012 data breach investigation report, which said that 80 per cent of breaches were due to this cause, so there is a 20 per cent success rate to improve on in this area.

He said: “A targeted attack can take a week or more to unfold as the attacker figures out a way to find to take the data, so we need to monitor user activity, application activity, data access and device access, also profiling and anomaly detection.

“If you deploy SIEM you need people who know databases, networks and Active Directory, as you need to ready your event sources and know your deployments to spot anomalies.”

Asking the audience of 26 people if they had deployed SIEM, around half raised their hand, while only one had integrated IAM with SIEM. He said that the correct technology should do 'specialised threat detection', including: threat intelligence; be good at recognising targeted malicious code; and recognise advanced threat communications.

Gartner predicted that by 2016, 30 per cent of SIEM deployments will have an IAM integration in addition to Active Directory. “Many SIEM vendors are improving their IAM integration,” Nicolett said.

“It is complex as you need log management and SIEM deployed first before you deploy anything. You can use SIEM for change detection, to know what has been authorised. Reporting on exceptions, database auditing, privileged user monitoring, rules-based correlation - but if it doesn't tell you about new types of attacks, that is where you need anomaly detection.”

10 Tax and Technology Tips for Growing Companies

As the tax deadline looms, small business owners are turning to technology to make the April 15 cutoff. Whether you use a packaged software or a tax preparer, chances are technology can make tax season a little easier for you. Before you tackle this year’s tax return, here are a few technology tips to help make tax season easier this year…and in years to come.

I am blogging on behalf of Visa Business and received compensation for my time from Visa for sharing my views in this post, but the views expressed here are solely mine, not Visa’s. Information and opinions are presented solely for informational purposes, and are not intended, nor should they be construed, as a substitute for legal, accounting or tax advice.  You should consult an attorney or tax advisor for individual advice regarding your own situation. Visit http://facebook.com/visasmallbiz to take a look at the reinvented Facebook Page: Well Sourced by Visa Business. The Page serves as a space where small business owners can access educational resources, read success stories from other business owners, engage with peers, and find tips to help businesses run more efficiently. Every month, the Page will introduce a new theme that will focus on a topic important to a small business owner’s success. For additional tips and advice,and information about Visa’s small business solutions, follow @VisaSmallBiz and visit http://visa.com/business.

As the tax deadline looms, small business owners are turning to technology to make the April 15 cutoff. Whether you use a packaged software or a tax preparer, chances are technology can make tax season a little easier for you. Before you tackle this year’s tax return, here are a few technology tips to help make tax season easier this year…and in years to come.

1. Research. Tax preparation services and online services should be researched thoroughly before entrusting them with your tax reporting. Check online reviews and determine that the service can handle your specific needs before making your choice.
2. Track deductions. Consumer Reports’ Tobie Stanger recommends ItsDeductible, a site that keeps up with your charitable deductions throughout the year. It interacts with TurboTax, but it can also be used independently.
3. Track expenses. Expensify allows you to scan your receipts and register credit cards for automatic expense tracking. Once the information is imported, expense reports can be submitted through e-mail and reimbursed online through QuickBooks.
4. Automate payroll. Payroll automation software like RUN allows small business owners to run payroll from any device. The software ensures the correct amount of tax is taken out of each employee’s paycheck as the year progress to avoid underpayments.
5. Access information. CPA Practice Advisor recently reviewed this tax app and gave it five stars for its access to a variety of law topics. Business owners can get answers to their most pressing tax questions with just a few taps on a mobile screen.
6. Collect sales tax. Avalara automates the sales and use tax collection process to take the burden off of you. There are more than 11,000 tax jurisdictions in the U.S. and many of them are unpredictable and confusing. Avalara helps businesses figure out which rates apply to their particular region to make “sales tax less taxing.”
7. Utilize free resources. Former IRS officer Michael Raanan swears by IRS2Go for his business, Landmark Tax Group. Raanan states that business owners can type in simple questions like, “Where is my refund” or, “How should I file my return”and get immediate answers.
8. Use the Cloud. Rebecca Berneck of Officeheads recommends Cloud-based accounting services like Hosted QuickBooks to keep your data safe and accessible from any device.
9. Seek help. Sometimes even the most adamant do-it-yourselfer needs help. As a small business owner, your time is money. Don’t be afraid to seek the help of a tax professional, which will free you up to spend time on your business.
10. Keep data safe. Cybercriminals know that tax season is the prime time for swiping information, with so much data sailing back and forth. Be sure you use trusted tax preparation software and change passwords to online accounts frequently. If you receive an e-mail claiming to be from the IRS, take caution. The IRS emphasizes that it never sends out e-mails requesting personal information. If you receive one of these e-mails, review the IRS’s warnings before responding with any information.

Tax time can be one of the most stressful times of the year. But thanks to modern technology, preparing and filing taxes has never been easier.

10 Tax and Technology Tips for Growing Companies

As the tax deadline looms, small business owners are turning to technology to make the April 15 cutoff. Whether you use a packaged software or a tax preparer, chances are technology can make tax season a little easier for you. Before you tackle this year’s tax return, here are a few technology tips to help make tax season easier this year…and in years to come.

I am blogging on behalf of Visa Business and received compensation for my time from Visa for sharing my views in this post, but the views expressed here are solely mine, not Visa’s. Information and opinions are presented solely for informational purposes, and are not intended, nor should they be construed, as a substitute for legal, accounting or tax advice.  You should consult an attorney or tax advisor for individual advice regarding your own situation. Visit http://facebook.com/visasmallbiz to take a look at the reinvented Facebook Page: Well Sourced by Visa Business. The Page serves as a space where small business owners can access educational resources, read success stories from other business owners, engage with peers, and find tips to help businesses run more efficiently. Every month, the Page will introduce a new theme that will focus on a topic important to a small business owner’s success. For additional tips and advice,and information about Visa’s small business solutions, follow @VisaSmallBiz and visit http://visa.com/business.

As the tax deadline looms, small business owners are turning to technology to make the April 15 cutoff. Whether you use a packaged software or a tax preparer, chances are technology can make tax season a little easier for you. Before you tackle this year’s tax return, here are a few technology tips to help make tax season easier this year…and in years to come.

1. Research. Tax preparation services and online services should be researched thoroughly before entrusting them with your tax reporting. Check online reviews and determine that the service can handle your specific needs before making your choice.
2. Track deductions. Consumer Reports’ Tobie Stanger recommends ItsDeductible, a site that keeps up with your charitable deductions throughout the year. It interacts with TurboTax, but it can also be used independently.
3. Track expenses. Expensify allows you to scan your receipts and register credit cards for automatic expense tracking. Once the information is imported, expense reports can be submitted through e-mail and reimbursed online through QuickBooks.
4. Automate payroll. Payroll automation software like RUN allows small business owners to run payroll from any device. The software ensures the correct amount of tax is taken out of each employee’s paycheck as the year progress to avoid underpayments.
5. Access information. CPA Practice Advisor recently reviewed this tax app and gave it five stars for its access to a variety of law topics. Business owners can get answers to their most pressing tax questions with just a few taps on a mobile screen.
6. Collect sales tax. Avalara automates the sales and use tax collection process to take the burden off of you. There are more than 11,000 tax jurisdictions in the U.S. and many of them are unpredictable and confusing. Avalara helps businesses figure out which rates apply to their particular region to make “sales tax less taxing.”
7. Utilize free resources. Former IRS officer Michael Raanan swears by IRS2Go for his business, Landmark Tax Group. Raanan states that business owners can type in simple questions like, “Where is my refund” or, “How should I file my return”and get immediate answers.
8. Use the Cloud. Rebecca Berneck of Officeheads recommends Cloud-based accounting services like Hosted QuickBooks to keep your data safe and accessible from any device.
9. Seek help. Sometimes even the most adamant do-it-yourselfer needs help. As a small business owner, your time is money. Don’t be afraid to seek the help of a tax professional, which will free you up to spend time on your business.
10. Keep data safe. Cybercriminals know that tax season is the prime time for swiping information, with so much data sailing back and forth. Be sure you use trusted tax preparation software and change passwords to online accounts frequently. If you receive an e-mail claiming to be from the IRS, take caution. The IRS emphasizes that it never sends out e-mails requesting personal information. If you receive one of these e-mails, review the IRS’s warnings before responding with any information.

Tax time can be one of the most stressful times of the year. But thanks to modern technology, preparing and filing taxes has never been easier.

10 Tax and Technology Tips for Growing Companies

As the tax deadline looms, small business owners are turning to technology to make the April 15 cutoff. Whether you use a packaged software or a tax preparer, chances are technology can make tax season a little easier for you. Before you tackle this year’s tax return, here are a few technology tips to help make tax season easier this year…and in years to come.

I am blogging on behalf of Visa Business and received compensation for my time from Visa for sharing my views in this post, but the views expressed here are solely mine, not Visa’s. Information and opinions are presented solely for informational purposes, and are not intended, nor should they be construed, as a substitute for legal, accounting or tax advice.  You should consult an attorney or tax advisor for individual advice regarding your own situation. Visit http://facebook.com/visasmallbiz to take a look at the reinvented Facebook Page: Well Sourced by Visa Business. The Page serves as a space where small business owners can access educational resources, read success stories from other business owners, engage with peers, and find tips to help businesses run more efficiently. Every month, the Page will introduce a new theme that will focus on a topic important to a small business owner’s success. For additional tips and advice,and information about Visa’s small business solutions, follow @VisaSmallBiz and visit http://visa.com/business.

As the tax deadline looms, small business owners are turning to technology to make the April 15 cutoff. Whether you use a packaged software or a tax preparer, chances are technology can make tax season a little easier for you. Before you tackle this year’s tax return, here are a few technology tips to help make tax season easier this year…and in years to come.

1. Research. Tax preparation services and online services should be researched thoroughly before entrusting them with your tax reporting. Check online reviews and determine that the service can handle your specific needs before making your choice.
2. Track deductions. Consumer Reports’ Tobie Stanger recommends ItsDeductible, a site that keeps up with your charitable deductions throughout the year. It interacts with TurboTax, but it can also be used independently.
3. Track expenses. Expensify allows you to scan your receipts and register credit cards for automatic expense tracking. Once the information is imported, expense reports can be submitted through e-mail and reimbursed online through QuickBooks.
4. Automate payroll. Payroll automation software like RUN allows small business owners to run payroll from any device. The software ensures the correct amount of tax is taken out of each employee’s paycheck as the year progress to avoid underpayments.
5. Access information. CPA Practice Advisor recently reviewed this tax app and gave it five stars for its access to a variety of law topics. Business owners can get answers to their most pressing tax questions with just a few taps on a mobile screen.
6. Collect sales tax. Avalara automates the sales and use tax collection process to take the burden off of you. There are more than 11,000 tax jurisdictions in the U.S. and many of them are unpredictable and confusing. Avalara helps businesses figure out which rates apply to their particular region to make “sales tax less taxing.”
7. Utilize free resources. Former IRS officer Michael Raanan swears by IRS2Go for his business, Landmark Tax Group. Raanan states that business owners can type in simple questions like, “Where is my refund” or, “How should I file my return”and get immediate answers.
8. Use the Cloud. Rebecca Berneck of Officeheads recommends Cloud-based accounting services like Hosted QuickBooks to keep your data safe and accessible from any device.
9. Seek help. Sometimes even the most adamant do-it-yourselfer needs help. As a small business owner, your time is money. Don’t be afraid to seek the help of a tax professional, which will free you up to spend time on your business.
10. Keep data safe. Cybercriminals know that tax season is the prime time for swiping information, with so much data sailing back and forth. Be sure you use trusted tax preparation software and change passwords to online accounts frequently. If you receive an e-mail claiming to be from the IRS, take caution. The IRS emphasizes that it never sends out e-mails requesting personal information. If you receive one of these e-mails, review the IRS’s warnings before responding with any information.

Tax time can be one of the most stressful times of the year. But thanks to modern technology, preparing and filing taxes has never been easier.

Companies Tap Into and Encourage Innovators by Offering Free Work Space

In an ever-changing world of technology, ideas are a hot commodity. Especially if those ideas come from people who know how to put them into action. To capture some of this entrepreneurial energy, one major corporation is providing free work space to innovators.

Electronics giant Samsung announced that it will be opening offices in New York and Silicon Valley to allow techie minds to put their ideas into action. The space, which Samsung calls the Samsung Accelerator, will encourage start-ups to develop software for Samsung devices. In doing this, Samsung believes innovators will be allowed to focus on creating great technology without worrying about coming up with funds or negotiating leases with building owners.

“Do you want access to the largest device footprint in the world, and the people, power and resources that make it all happen” the company asks on Samsungaccelerator.com. “You bring the product vision; we’ll bring the rest (including the fresh-squeezed, organic juices).”

As technology has redefined the “workplace,” start-ups and freelancers are looking for spaces to work. Samsung’s “co-working space” option is just one of many options available to enterprising minds across the country. The following co-working spaces are more than just a place to set up your laptop eight hours a day. They encourage collaboration, bringing communities of tech workers together for learning and networking.

• Wix Lounge. This free workspace is located in the heart of New York City in the Union Square area. The Wix Lounge encourages networking and collaboration through special events, held Mondays through Thursdays at set times. The special sessions are held at night to avoid interfering with the workday.
• General Assembly. With eight locations worldwide, General Assembly provides a variety of classes to help start-ups learn and network. Classes feature a “learn by doing” model that connects instructors, entrepreneurs, and innovative thinkers to come up with great ideas. The workshop is based on the concept that by working together, communities of technophiles can often accomplish more than they could alone.
• Alley NYC. This membership-only coworking space is filled with established start-ups. “Our focus in starting the alley was to create an environment where people actually wanted to come to work in the morning,” Alley NYC founder Jason Saltzman says in a video on the company’s site. “And we did it. And we did it in the heart of New York City.” Because the community is made up of a variety of technology start-ups, most businesses are able to find the resources they need to grow their business inside the workspace, which is open to members 24 hours a day.
• Google Campus. If you live in London or Tel Aviv, Google has workspaces available for entrepreneurs. While the space isn’t free, it does provide rental options if you regularly travel to the area. For your rental price, you’ll have free wi-fi, comfortable workspaces, teleconferencing facilities, and access to printers. While this doesn’t appear to be an option in America yet, if workspaces continue to be popular for small technology businesses, it likely will be an option Google will explore.

Co-working spaces aren’t only about providing a better work option than the local Starbucks or a home office. Through collaborating and networking, app developers, hardware creators, graphic designers, and writers can collaborate on projects in an environment that is both comfortable and professional.

Companies Tap Into and Encourage Innovators by Offering Free Work Space

In an ever-changing world of technology, ideas are a hot commodity. Especially if those ideas come from people who know how to put them into action. To capture some of this entrepreneurial energy, one major corporation is providing free work space to innovators.

Electronics giant Samsung announced that it will be opening offices in New York and Silicon Valley to allow techie minds to put their ideas into action. The space, which Samsung calls the Samsung Accelerator, will encourage start-ups to develop software for Samsung devices. In doing this, Samsung believes innovators will be allowed to focus on creating great technology without worrying about coming up with funds or negotiating leases with building owners.

“Do you want access to the largest device footprint in the world, and the people, power and resources that make it all happen” the company asks on Samsungaccelerator.com. “You bring the product vision; we’ll bring the rest (including the fresh-squeezed, organic juices).”

As technology has redefined the “workplace,” start-ups and freelancers are looking for spaces to work. Samsung’s “co-working space” option is just one of many options available to enterprising minds across the country. The following co-working spaces are more than just a place to set up your laptop eight hours a day. They encourage collaboration, bringing communities of tech workers together for learning and networking.

• Wix Lounge. This free workspace is located in the heart of New York City in the Union Square area. The Wix Lounge encourages networking and collaboration through special events, held Mondays through Thursdays at set times. The special sessions are held at night to avoid interfering with the workday.
• General Assembly. With eight locations worldwide, General Assembly provides a variety of classes to help start-ups learn and network. Classes feature a “learn by doing” model that connects instructors, entrepreneurs, and innovative thinkers to come up with great ideas. The workshop is based on the concept that by working together, communities of technophiles can often accomplish more than they could alone.
• Alley NYC. This membership-only coworking space is filled with established start-ups. “Our focus in starting the alley was to create an environment where people actually wanted to come to work in the morning,” Alley NYC founder Jason Saltzman says in a video on the company’s site. “And we did it. And we did it in the heart of New York City.” Because the community is made up of a variety of technology start-ups, most businesses are able to find the resources they need to grow their business inside the workspace, which is open to members 24 hours a day.
• Google Campus. If you live in London or Tel Aviv, Google has workspaces available for entrepreneurs. While the space isn’t free, it does provide rental options if you regularly travel to the area. For your rental price, you’ll have free wi-fi, comfortable workspaces, teleconferencing facilities, and access to printers. While this doesn’t appear to be an option in America yet, if workspaces continue to be popular for small technology businesses, it likely will be an option Google will explore.

Co-working spaces aren’t only about providing a better work option than the local Starbucks or a home office. Through collaborating and networking, app developers, hardware creators, graphic designers, and writers can collaborate on projects in an environment that is both comfortable and professional.