Dear Family,

This morning's e-mail started out on a very disturbing note - on more than one level. A dear friend, who went into the hospital for tests yesterday due to intense headaches, just learned that he has a brain tumor. Thank goodness, it's operable. That's disturbing enough.

What's even more disturbing are two things I really want you to think about in your own lives - and those of your family and friends. Please don't brush this aside. It's important.

Please read Two Points of Darkness, below.

A nice thing happened yesterday. My friend dropped in to pick up some stuff and was telling me about her new bookkeeper. This part-time lady stepped in to help after some personnel disasters and started looking at their various bookkeeping systems. (One of their personnel disasters had installed a cumbersome, complicated billing system and had refused to teach anyone how to use it, thinking it was job security for him. The fool!)

Anyway, this fresh, young lady took one long look at the idiot system that required a dozen complicated steps to deal with invoicing and receipt of payments, then declared that it could all easily be handled in QuickBooks, their main accounting system - and it would only take one step to accomplish what he'd done in a dozen steps. AND it would be a part of the main books, where it belonged, instead of having to duplicate information. (Yeah, I had commented on how odd it was that it had been set up separately, too...but was too busy solving the immediate problem to look at the larger picture.)

Anyway, the nice thing about it all was, suddenly, the personnel disasters of the last month or so, and all the resulting discoveries of the under- billing and other errors - well, they're turning into a windfall. As a result of all the problems, income will probably rise by about 10%, once all customers start getting billed properly, or having their credit cards charged - and costs will go down. [That fool was overpaid for what he was (or wasn't) doing anyway.]

This reminds me of when I used to do temporary work, back when I was in college. (For about 10 years.) I'd tell AccounTemps and Accountants Overload to send me on the jobs that other temps had walked off of. (They'd pay me premium fees for taking the undesirable jobs.) And it would usually turn out that the reason they'd walk off the job or project because the employer was expecting the work to be done right - and the temp couldn't figure out some fool system in the company that wasn't working properly. I was always pretty good about pinpointing the systemic problem; finding a way to fix it - or to work around it. Like this young lady, I rarely just used the system, as is, when there was obviously a better, or easier way to get the job done.

Why bring this up now? Because this is a good time to look at your systems. All of them. Your accounting system. Your reporting systems. Your company's network, or intranet. And all the ways that information flows between you, your staff, your clients/customers, your vendors, the government; even your advertising.

Are there things that are taking you longer than they should? Are you duplicating effort? Can you spend less to acquire your customers? Or target higher quality customers? Can you speed up your computer or your network, without a lot of cost, or sacrificing quality?

Take a look.

Another thing my friend learned was that her company's network could be speeded up and secured for only about $3,000. Pretty cheap. AND that too many of her staff were downloading music and files into software tools like Real Player and other high bandwidth tools.

Uh, why are staff compromising ANYONE's system at work with that kind of stuff. If your staff really wants to listen to music - it's MUCH cheaper to just buy a transistor radio, or a plug-in radio, or even a portable CD player for each office - and let them listen to whatever they like - like back in the low- tech days, without slowing down your whole network - or running the risk of picking up a virus.

Look at your staff's habits. Look at your own.

That's your mission for this week...should you choose to accept it.

And remember, if you are caught or captured, TaxMama's office will disavow all knowledge of you and your impossible staff.

Best wishes,
Eva Rosenberg, EA
Your TaxMama is watching...out for you.

President Bush and Social Security
If you want to express your own opinion on Social Security to President Bush and your legislator's, please feel free to use the link at the bottom of this letter.