Welcome to DiVITA Speaks!!

Productivity Boost

By Benecia Beyer

Looking for a new way to boost productivity for less than $500?  Toss on a second monitor to your PC and your productivity goes way up while your job strain goes down. As much as 30% increase for certain applications.

While multi-monitor computing used to be pricey and the industry standard used to be for high-end, data intensive businesses -- getting a decent flat LCD monitor costs less than $300 and video cards run half of that. So a second display is a real option for even the most frugal business. Or you could use a portable monitor output doubler (a device that splits the monitor feed into two signals, one for each monitor) for under $200 (displayed in the picture).

The effect of multi-monitors on your computing life is immediate and stunning: the second monitor extends the desktop across both screens. So your mouse -- and all things controlled by it --  simply flies from one monitor to the other. No clicks needed.

Every task is easier and faster. Every task. Will all users capture 30% improvement in productivity? No -- it depends on your applications. But -- and this is a huge "but" -- you will be less tired at the end of the day and your eyes and wrists will greatly appreciate the benefits of the increased ease of use and less lower click load. (Surely someone "out there" has figured out how much the average user clicks on their mouse on a daily basis!)

Setting up dual-monitor PC's can be a pain. You are routing two monitor feeds from one computer -- you must master "Display Settings" in the control panel of your PC. It's not really that big a deal -- but many otherwise intelligent people have gotten pretty darn cranky getting multi-monitors to work. So be patient. And know your patience will be rewarded.

Emergency! Emergency!

By Chloe DiVita

I should be starting the New Year off by wishing everyone well, but since I’m a bit at late at that I’m going to jump right in to one of my pet peeves. (But I really do hope everyone is jumping into 2007 with a fresh new outlook!)

One of my bigger pet peeves is the abuse of the red exclamation meaning “high importance” when sending emails. I do believe there are times when it is appropriate to use the exclamation. Say if there is something that needs urgent attention, immediate action, or ignoring it could result in major consequences. If that’s the case, by all means use it.

But, if you are simply providing information - even if it’s important information - if your work day (or the recipient’s work day) is not going to explode by not immediately reading and reacting to the email, then it’s not an emergency. It doesn’t warrant the red exclamation.

The main issue I find with the abuse is that the individuals who choose to use it over and over when it doesn’t seem appropriate end up crying wolf. So, if you abuse it, you end up negating its purpose anyway. There are a few individuals I work with who I don’t flinch when I see the little red exclamation attached to the email because experience has shown me that it rarely is an emergency.

I know I’m not the only one who feels this way because I’ve had several conversations about it. If you think you might be an abuser, it’s not too late to change!

Quickbooks Customer Master File

By Benecia Beyer

In beginning a new process for one of our clients with Quickbooks -- I thought we had hit a brick wall. We were transitioning to sending all invoices and statements to the client via email and also allow the customer to go online and pay the invoice directly.

I was forced to look at the size of the customer master data file as we would be synching Quickbooks on a daily basis using Billing Solutions. Wow - was I surprised to learn there were over 6300 customers in the customer master data file. (Do you know how many are in your file? With Quickbooks open, hit F2 - on the right hand side of the screen you will see List Information).

In researching how to reduce the size of this file I quickly realized two things:
1. Quickbooks never, ever - ever allows you to delete a customer record as long as there is a transaction attached to it.
2. Quickbooks Pro (the version my client is using) has a limit of 14,500 customer names. That's it. And when you reach that limit -- you're stuck (or you could upgrade to Enterprise- but do you have an extra $3,000 or more just hanging around?)

I spent considerable time researching and exploring the paths that others before me had tried to resolve this problem. There seemed to be two valid options and they were both from third party vendors. I tried both and was so overwhelming impressed with the "fix" that Mark Robinson from The Energy Grid came up with -- that I just had to share it with everyone.

Mark has this other great website for Handicapped Pets - the true reason why his Quickbooks Customer file was growing by leaps and bounds as his company could post as much as 20 orders a day. You do the math: 20 orders a day x 365 days x 2 years = 14600.

So Mark has spent considerable time and effort into resolving this particular problem within Quickbooks and has created a website just for this problem: Quickbooks Pro 14500 Club.  The concept behind the program is simple: to mark customers as inactive (the ones that no longer do business with you) and then merge those into one particular customer file. You will still retain all the invoices, payments and transactions that were attached to the customer (so your P&L's and Balance Sheets are correct) but now they are merged into one customer record instead of thousands.

I must admit, I was skeptical at first, but contacted Mark and asked for the program. I got an immediate repsonse and the program and the next day, I had the time to dig in and play with the program.

As my client still used Quickbooks Pro 2005, I knew it might not work as Mark had specifically written the program for 2006. But -- my client needed an upgrade anyhow, so when I interfaced the program with Quickbooks Pro 2007, it worked just fine -- except it seemed to "hang" on a particular screen and required my input. I didn't think this was how the program worked -- and emailed Mark with my question. Within minutes he responded that he would be more than happy to work with me and we set a time for a phone call.

I shared with him our company's delight in LogMeIn, (see previous post by Chloe) and he signed up immediately so that I could give him access to my computer screen so he could see first hand, how the program worked. As he watched the program run, he agreed that it was getting "stuck" at a certain point and wondered what the 2007 version was doing different than the 2006 version. He had me explore a couple of options and after fixing a setting in "preferences" the program flew on it's own wings -- and was merging customer files without any intervention from me. It was a miracle !

I can't begin to tell you how refreshing it was to experience such incredible support and a genuine desire to help from another person in business who had experienced some of the same difficulties and frustrations that I did. I don't think Mark is going to become a millionare with this program he wrote -- but all the same, he went the extra length with me in making sure it worked. I do appreciate that.

Mark, it was a real pleasure doing business with you ! Thank you.