All posts by Arjen Lentz

Dad, parallel entrepreneur, cook, gardener, explorer, philosopher, tinkerer....
Enabling Innovations

Finding a new Accountant

Most accountants “get” small business, but what is commonly regarded as small business is probably rather larger than what you have in mind. Most likely you’re a micro-business, but that terminology is not generally well known outside our tech sphere. Anyway, asking an accountant whether they’re familiar with small business is likely to get you an answer in the affirmative, but you’re not actually talking about the same thing. I don’t have a magic solution for this, I think it’s important you speak to a prospective accountant in person and essentially interview them as if they were applying for a job (in essense they are).

For our bookkeeping/accounting, my company actually moved to Xero.com which -apart from many other advantages- enables admin people to work from home (I might do a separate post on Xero some time). It also enables a Xero-aware accountant to have better access to your books for tax reporting but also practical questions.

Which brings me to the accountant him/herself. I recommend looking for someone really local, as in within your suburb or the next one over. Grabbing the phone is one thing, or enabling easy access to your books, but seeing them face-to-face every once in a while can be a great benefit. It also tends to keep people better tuned in “out of sight, out of mind”. I’ve worked with an accountant in other town, and although they’re good with email and such, it’s really not optimal.

So, I’d suggest to make a little checklist of specific things you’d like your accountant to be, do or know about (be way more specific than “understand small business” – for instance, if you are fully self-funded, that might be a relevant topic). Pick a couple of accountants in your local area and go and interview them. Even if you meet one you really like, meet at least one other so you have something to compare with.

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Most economical purchases: Printers

When setting up an (home) office or maintaining an existing one, there are always bits that can cost a little more. A printer is a key example.

You can get an inkjet for almost nothing, but the replacement ink cartridges cost more than their weight in gold, so the effective cost-per-page becomes rather high. Years ago already I concluded that as long as I didn’t need colour printing on a regular basis, a B&W laser was much more cost effective – and it has been. You can always walk into a local copyshop with a USB stick to get a few colour pages done, which of course works out more expensive for those few pages, but cheaper overall.

When replacing that first laser printer, I actually went to a B&W laser multi-function with a document feeder. Copying becomes easier, and scanning possible. With the document feeder the amount of manual effort required goes down, so that saves time = money. In addition it allowed me to send faxes. I despise faxes but sometimes they’re essential for some interactions. My company has a virtual fax number that just makes a PDF show up in email, but sending is separate matter.

Having the printer on the network (wired or wireless) tends to be a great advantage also – it saves hassle and time when using it as it doesn’t rely on any particular machine being on.

Now with that device aging too, and the increased need for colour, I once again did the maths. You can now get a reasonable colour laser (not multifunction) for less than $100 (for instance the Konika Minolta 1600W) and the running cost (toner and even electricity) is such that it works out well below that of an inkjet. Now there’s an important lesson: do not buy an inkjet any more, people!

But given the particular needs of my home office, I’m going for a colour laser multi-function this time. In additional to the document feeding, it now scans to PDF and emails it to you. That’s nice. That might actually negate the need for connecting up the fax to a phoneline (which is a VoIP port anyway) as generally I can then scan a document and email it. Easy and again time-saving. And duplexing (double-sided printing) is now affordable, which of course saves paper with multi-page documents. For most multi-function lasers, the cost-per-page for colour is still a bit higher than that of the cheapest print-only colour lasers, but since you don’t use colour all the time, it works out ok. It’s cheaper than a colour copy at the local shop, and saves time/hassle. I think it’s a winner.

Note that if you have a home office, you may find that your kids also can also make great use of the colour printing capabilities for school work. I dread to think what that would cost if you were to use ink. Time moves on!

It’s been an interesting evolution, and all the above has happened within say the last 10 years. So that means that I only buy a new printer about every 3-5 years, which is actually very moderate for technology. I probably keep using a model well until it’s become annoying in terms of extra effort, in relation to the cost of the then-available new technology – difficult to easily identify such work-changes over time, but it’s still relevant. So there’s a lesson for me too.

As for prediction of future needs/development: I think the next step after this will be A3. of course, not needed by all. Perhaps the tech has reached its natural feature peak and will focus back on other aspects such as speed or quality. We’ll see.

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Seventh Annual Future of Open Source Survey Results Show Culture, Quality and Growth Driving an Open Revolution | Black Duck

http://www.blackducksoftware.com/news/releases/seventh-annual-future-open-source-survey-results-show-culture-quality-and-growth

Black Duck Software today announced the results of the seventh annual Future of Open Source Survey. The 2013 survey represents the insights of more than 800 respondents – the largest in the survey’s history – from both non-vendor and vendor communities. Survey results reveal the cultural impact of open source software and its influence on everything from innovation, to collaboration among competitors, to hiring practices, is revolutionizing the way organizations work and do business.

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You Bought It, You Own It | EFF

EFF reports on a recent (US) Supreme Court ruling You Bought It, You Own It: Supreme Court Victory for Common Sense and Owners’ Right

In a long-anticipated decision, the Supreme Court held today that the first sale doctrine applies to works made outside of the United States. In other words, if you bought it, you own it—no matter where it was manufactured. That’s a major victory for consumers, and also libraries, used bookstores, and all kinds of groups that depend on the right to lend or resell the goods they’ve legally purchased.

It’s important that copyright law is applied and upheld in a sane and sensible way, and this ruling does that very well. Nice to see, given all the nonsense in recent years around copyright abuse by corporations (including the repeated “Mickey Mouse” extension of the copyright term).