Interesting interview with the founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman. He talks about his path from academia to social media.

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• It’s okay to be brief
When people ask me about work/life balance, I just laugh. But I try to be time-efficient by scheduling meetings in appropriate increments –15 minutes or less sometimes. I’ve also tried to build a culture that understands writing brief e-mails is not emotional coldness.

• Be willing to change course
Entrepreneurs tend to believe, “I’ve got my idea, I’ll go until I die.” But I advise them to take seriously the questions about whether their [business] plan is irredeemably flawed and whether they need to change what they’re doing. Be diligent about failing fast so that you don’t spend five years doing something that’s just going to fail.

• Don’t be a perfectionist
I frequently tell Internet entrepreneurs, “If you’re not somewhat embarrassed by your 1.0 product launch, then you’ve released too late.” There’s value in launching early, getting engaged with customers, and learning from them. That can direct your progress.  

Since the first PCs were brought into the workplace over 20 years ago people have talked about the paperless office. It has been a long time coming but we now have the tools necessary to make at least most of the back office paperless. Accounting systems kill trees, but they don’t have to. Most accounting programs (including QuickBooks) have available tools that can automatically catalog and file the registers and reports your accounting systems are generating as .pdf files. These programs include a database for filing and a tool to find and view your reports. Some will also allow you to file scanned document, like invoices from vendors, as attachments to registers.

Here some of the benefits of implementing a paperless system:

Save on hard costs: Take a look at your printing costs: paper, toner, printer service, and eventually replacement. Electronic storage space, on site or remote, is a fraction of your printing budget.

Save time filing:  Either you or your staff members are spending time each month standing at the filing cabinet sorting papers that may never need to be seen again. Over the course of one year, you may find your payroll is funding a full-time salary for all of the time spent filing.

Save time finding: The papers you are looking for are always the one that didn’t make it in the right file. By storing the documents electronically, each file can be retrieve instantly. Even if it is filed in the wrong directory, electronic files can be found using search tools like Google Desktop.

Save on real estate: How many square feet of your office is dedicated to file storage? Some business are paying monthly fees to store paper offsite.

Save time restoring: Paper is susceptible to fire, water, and theft. With your month end processing, write your paperless directories to CD or some other  removable media and take it off site so you have multiple copies in different locations.

Save time destroying: When the time comes to purge your paper files, you either burn up your shredder or hire a vendor to dispose of your files. When the time comes, you can destroy your CDs and erase your electronic files. Talk to your IT resources first.

Save your mind: The stacks of paper to be filed that were previously collecting on your desk won’t continue to be the last item on your to do list. Without moving from your desks, those papers will be cataloged and filed as soon as you approve them.

 Aside from purchasing and installing a integrated application, a system can be hacked together inexpensively. Of course you will need an application for to create .pdf files. The price of Adobe Acrobat Pro has increased dramatically but several low-cost or free .pdf converters are available; we have used both CutePDF and doPDF.

Your structure may differ, but by creating a hierarchy of directories on a network hard drive that is being secured by your regular backup procedures, you are ready to take your first steps away from the filing cabinet.

Root Directory: Paperless

Sub Folders: Accounts Payable/Check Register; Accounts Payable/Invoice Receipts; etc.

Paperless files

Create a naming convention that includes the date, for an Accounts Payable Check Register, perhaps APCR042109 so it can be identified if it is inadvertently relocated to another folder. Making the default printer in your accounting application to the .pdf converter to save redundant mouse clicks. You are ready to GO PAPERLESS! When you’re ready to take the next step, expand your folder structure and begin scanning vendor invoices, packing slips and contracts too.

Some of our customers feel uncomfortable initially after their implementation and promise to continue printing hard copies. You may choose to do the same thing but after a few days of staring down the papers to be filed or a few trips back to the cabinet, the feeling passed for them as they learned to trust the systems we put in place. In the end, they admit that going paperless had a dramatic impact. It could change your life too.

Spreadsheets are great for calculating interest but they are not an effective way to generate reports. Use your software.

Today every business management software package has some kind of custom report writer, yet many businesses are creating their business critical reports using Excel. Learning your system’s custom reporting tool and creating your reports using these tools will provide companies with huge return. Once custom reports are created, and all transactions are completed for that accounting period, then reports are generated at the touch of a button and the report contains actual data.

Spreadsheet reports require too much time for data entry, possibility for data entry error and probability of formula corruption. Spreadsheet reports lack timeliness, integrity and the ability to reproduce historical reports.

In a recent issue of The Peachtree Insider, the tip of the month addresses keyboard shortcuts: a way to keep your hands on the keyboard rather than slowing down to move to the mouse for a couple of clicks just to go back to the keyboard. If you are unfamiliar with reasons why you might want to leave your mouse alone, read this.

While the short list included is a fine start, it hardly scratches the surface on ways you can keep your productivity up by keeping your fingers on the keyboard. Going beyond mere keyboard shortcuts, other tools are available to help with text substitution. Text substitution is a system in which a user creates a hotstring (specific characters) that when typed are automatically replaced with a longer string of text. For example, rather than typing the entire name of our company, I can simply type A-S-L to get Acuity Solutions, LLC.

I recommend Texter from the folks at Lifehacker.com which works across all Windows applications so you can use it in Peachtree, Word, Excel, Outlook…you get the idea. Texter allow users to include date and time variables in text replacement and punctuation can be used in hotstrings. By the way, it’s free.

If you’re using text substitution, let us know how it works for you. We also want to hear any others ways you avoid the mouse.