Blumer & Associates, CPAs, PC - Certified Public Accountants

Do you have your customer portal with us yet? Do you know what a portal is? First of all, thanks to those of you who have jumped on the portal bandwagon with us. We’ve been using SmartVault for our secure online customer portals for well over a year now with great success.

For those of you who need an explanation, portals are basically a secure online filing cabinet between us and you. No one else has the key to this filing cabinet but the CPA firm and the customer. We can deliver documents to you, and you can deliver documents to us. And we can do this from our desks or even our smartphones! Portals are secure, free, easy to set up, convenient, and always available. We are in portal heaven over here, so much so that Jason interviewed Eric Pulaski, the CEO of SmartVault for his recent THRIVEcast (a podcast Jason hosts for his CPA network, THRIVEal). You can listen to that here.

The benefits of portals:

1. Portals are easy to set up. Just email Jennifer to get started. .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) She will set up your portal, and SmartVault will send you an email with a link to access your portal. You’ll create your own username and password, and then you’ll be uploading documents by the end of the day. It’s so easy! And we are here to help if you hit a bump in the road.

2. Portals are safe. You can read more about SmartVault’s bank level security features here.  We will never email you a tax return or anything else that contains sensitive data. (In some states, there are regulations that prevent CPAs from using email to deliver financial data without proper encryption.)  We care about our customers and we want to protect you! With portals, we don’t have to worry about accidentally hitting the “reply all” button or making some other stupid email error. Also, only you know your individual username and password.

3. Portals are available 24/7. You don’t have to wait until we are in the office to access a copy of your tax return or other pertinent data as long as it has been uploaded to your portal. You can also upload documents to your portal any time of day instead of having to deliver items to us during your busy work day. It’s the filing cabinet that is always with you as long as you have internet access.

4. Portals are convenient. We know it’s a pain to gather every little tax document you receive in the mail and then to mail them or hand deliver those to us during tax season. With a portal and a scanner (we recommend ScanSnap scanners by Fujitsu, you can easily scan each piece as it comes in and just let us know when it’s all there. Or save it all and scan it all in as one PDF. Either way is fine with us! (Read Jason’s article I Dream of Digital.)

And once a document is in your portal, it’s ALWAYS there. Next time you need a copy of your W2 from 2 years ago, you’ll know exactly where to find it. You’ll save time at the end of the tax process as well when we deliver your tax return to you in your portal! (We want you to come see us because you WANT to, not because you HAVE to!)

5. Portals won’t cost you a dime. This is a free service to all clients of Blumer & Associates, CPAs. We are committed to going green with our clients and eliminating the paper habit. (Eventually, we will no longer accept paper from our clients, and we will no longer deliver paper. We definitely recommend getting on board with us now so that you won’t be left behind later!)

Any questions? Email Jennifer at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or give her a call at 864-322-6858, extension 102 to set one up!

Being innovative is all about trying new things. Not just because it’s fun to try new things though. It’s all about trying something that will improve upon what you’ve already got going on. It’s about providing the best products and services you can for your customers, even if they are already happy.

Recently, we took a step to be accessible to our customers from anywhere. We said goodbye to our landlines and hello to Verizon iPhones for every member of our staff.  We now have the ability to talk, text, email, fax, access our files, and make appointments from our phones! Sounds great, right?  Well, it is. And we have enjoyed being able to knock out a couple of emails poolside or upload a file to a client portal from the dentist’s waiting room.

But with any new innovation, there is risk.  And we ran into a little hiccup in our new phone system. We can’t transfer calls.

Uh oh.

We were not aware that this was an issue until we had signed on the dotted line.  If you call our office, your call first goes to our administrative staff person. Hopefully she can answer your question. If not though, you’ll have to call back and use the extension of the person you want to reach. Not cool. It can be a frustrating experience. We get that.

Someone called our office recently and was angry that we had such an “amateurish” phone system. We know it’s not perfect. But we think the good has definitely outweighed the bad. And we’ll keep searching for a solution to the problem. This is not the last phone system we will ever have!

The big picture is this: we’ll keep trying new things. Some will work, and sadly, some won’t. But we will always be trying to improve! I think the guy that was so mad at us for even having that phone system just didn’t get it. He didn’t get innovative thinking because in his mind, there was no room for error. And that’s just not how we operate.  We are willing to goof up in order to eventually find the BEST way to meet our clients’ needs. And for the record, this guy was not even a client. 

Now for some logistics:

It is best to communicate with us digitally, but sometimes a phone call is in order.  Here is who to contact, and how, for the best service from Blumer CPAs.

Call 1-864-322-6858 or toll free, 1-877-322-9939  

Jason: Contact for consulting, coaching, and business process help
Chief Innovation Officer, and Prez: (Ext. 101)
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Cathy: Contact for all tax related matters
Tax Manager: (Ext. 103)
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Stephanie: Contact for cloud systems support and financial reporting issues
Financial Reporting Manager: (Ext. 105)
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Lisa: Contact for all payroll issues
Payroll Administrator: (Ext. 104)
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Emily: General accounting, payroll, and cloud support questions
Staff Accountant: (Ext. 106)
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Jennifer: Contact to direct you to the right person, scheduling appointments, help with client portals, and other general administrative questions
Administrative Assistant: (Ext. 102)
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Wurd.

Our president doesn’t seem to be too sure which position he wants to take on innovation.

Way back in January, he seemed to think innovation would be just what America needed to help our economy recover.  He told a Wisconsin energy company, “That’s how America will win the future—by out-innovating, out-educating and out-building our competitors.”

Hot dang, I agree with him here.  Innovation is essential to growth. More recently, however, he seems to be blaming innovation for our economic woes.  “There’s some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers.”  He cited bank ATMs and kiosks at airports for being job-stealers. He is getting slammed for that now!

Really? 

Would you want to bank where you have to go inside just to make a $20 withdrawal?  Do you want to buy gas where you can’t just pay at the pump?  Do my clients from other states want to go to the post office to mail their W-2 to me at tax time instead of just uploading it to their secure portal?

I think maybe our president needs to remember a few things about innovation, technology, and efficiency before he gets too upset about those ATMs and airline kiosks.

• Businesses MUST meet the needs of their customers or risk losing them.  Providing kiosks, ATMs, client portals, etc. attracts more customers and helps businesses grow.  Our firm has become so efficient that we’ve attracted more clients and have had to hire a new person in the last week.  Did you catch that?  Being efficient has led us to HIRE an employee, not let one go!

• Innovation and technology may squeeze out some jobs, but they make room for new ones.  As our knowledge economy grows, new jobs come on the scene that did not exist 10 years ago, and innovation promises more to come. 

• It was innovation that led to pretty much everything we do here in America now… like turning on lights and driving cars.  I guess the candle makers didn’t appreciate electric lights and the guy that sold horse shoes might not have been a fan of Henry Ford, but their job changed just like yours will change.

Please don’t stop being innovative.  Don’t accept that something is right just because it’s always been done a certain way.  Don’t stop THINKING!  We don’t have to be robots that can’t have our own creative thoughts… though I’d like some innovative dude to build a robot that can wash and wax my car.

Are you innovative?  Leave it in the comments.

One the specialties of our firm is helping our clients to digitize their world, go paperless and redesign their business processes around operating in the cloud.  It’s often a bumpy road to get there, but the results are pretty cool.  Our clients become more efficient, are able to scale in size (often without new staff) and enjoy the benefits of being able to operate their company from anywhere in the world.

But it takes some retooling of processes, staff and cloud-based software.  And that is what we do well.  I spend hours each week involved in what I call “Cloud R & D.”  I read a lot about the cloud and I’m always researching new tools we could use in our own firm and for our clients.  It’s what sets our firm apart.

Cloud R & D is pretty exciting to me because I love all of the new developments I read about and how I can deploy these new efficient tools to my client’s businesses.  Some cloud products I like, some I don’t.

I’m convinced that you must do Cloud R & D in your firm or business so you can stay out in front of your competition.  Moving your processes to the cloud is going to make you more efficient, more agile and ultimately more competitive.  You have to know what is being built and how to use it.

I have a number of sites where I get my info, and I ain’t tellin’.  I would have to kill you, and the sight of blood grosses me out.

Need an alternative to QuickBooks?  Well, we’ve got good news for you.  Accounting technology has taken leaps and bounds since you came out of diapers…

We support an innovative and collaborative accounting system called Xero.com.  This system is enjoyable to use and looks beautiful.

But after getting back from New Zealand and their Xero Users Conference a few weeks ago, I’ve learned that their underlying accounting engine is truly a masterpiece.  They’ve been building this thing for close to five years, and now it’s time for North America to know about it (though they are already in over 50 countries, and multi-currency has been available for some time).

They are constantly adding new partners that want to sync to their system making Xero.com even more robust.  You can get:
-bank feeds
-inventory
-retail
-paperless components
-import/export of most data
-CRM sync
-time tracking
-ecommerce
-Paypal integration
-business intelligence reporting
-work flow

Dang, this stuff rocks!  We love Xero.com and the Accounting Revolution toward Social Accounting.