Category: Nonprofit

The LinkedIn Blog: The Engineering component | LinkedIn Company Profiles

Last week I revisited LinkedIn and updated my information. It got me thinking. I know my favorite head hunters like LinkedIn, but is this an effective way to network people for charity purposes? This week a board member working on a grant required some demographic data on each board member. I guess the donor wants to know a little more about us before they give us a chunk of cash. I realized that the data I just finished updating on LinkedIn was most of the data she needed for the grant. I decided to save a PDF version of my LinkedIn profile. It did not work right. So I did it the hard way. I took a few minutes to cut and paste together the profile, print off a PDF, and email her the copy. About half of our board members are already on LinkedIn. Hmm…

The LinkedIn Blog: The Engineering component | LinkedIn Company Profiles

Colligo Reader and Contributor – Your Offline SharePoint Solution

Colligo Reader is free for individual use and a great way to try the rich offline experience that Colligo for SharePoint delivers. Reader provides read-only access to SharePoint content offline, including documents, lists, and metadata. It is so simple to use that training is not required. Download Colligo Reader for free today!

Source: Colligo Reader and Contributor – Your Offline SharePoint Solution

The good news is that our board is asking me questions. The bad news is that I do not always have the answer on the tip of my tongue and I need to look it up. For the last year I had been bringing my laptop to the meetings so that I could answer those unexpected questions. About two months ago our nonprofit moved their board meeting to an offsite location. It is a nice conference room in a good location but it does not have public Wi-Fi access. This is where Colligo Reader has been a great help. I store all of my nonprofit reports, letters, and worksheets in a Sharepoint site I run. Before I go to the meeting I let Colligo synchronize the files. This is a great solution for the mobile workforce and especially for those people trying to keep their nonprofit work from consuming the rest of the day.

Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants #38-Nonprofit Management and Leadership | Aspiration

3. Marion Conway—Consultant to Nonprofit’s writes about, “Accountability and Transparency for nonprofits” and references Guidestar’s Accountability and Transparency article.

Source: Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants #38-Nonprofit Management and Leadership | Aspiration

I followed this jewel this morning and ended up at Guidestar.org site reading their article, Paper-Thin Transparency. In that article Guidestar defines transparency as:

At GuideStar, we think transparency means answering these questions for donors and funders:

  1. Is this a legitimate 501(c)(3) nonprofit?
  2. What social impact will my donation have?
  3. How fiscally responsible is this organization?
  4. What are this organization’s goals and intentions?

Effective means that address these questions are to state publicly, clearly, and concisely your mission, annual accomplishments, ways you measure success, and goals.

Recently the nonprofit I volunteer at has been trying to articulate these goals in writing. Some large donors are particularly interested in this information. Unfortunately this effort drops down on the priority list for the working board members as the problems of running the nonprofit bubble up to the top of the list.  The hard part is documenting the social impact. The words are easy to write.

Once you have words to say, a small part of the problem is making the data available to the public. The folks at Guidestar have a simple, low cost solution, eDocs Service. For a $35 annual fee you can keep upload:

  • Letter of Determination or Advance Ruling
  • Audited or Reviewed Financial Statement
  • Annual Report
  • Form 990(current)

This service looks pretty handy for large and small donors and the fee is nominal. I noticed that the latest 990 for my nonprofit at Guidestar is for 2003. That won’t do!

To budget or to not budget, that is the question?

I just got through making a comprehensive budget/cash forecast for our local Habitat affiliate. I made a budget for affiliate two years ago but I was dissatisfied with the results. I plugged the historical values from our income statement into a spreadsheet and after a few calculations I plugged the resulting values back into QuickBooks. QuickBooks integrates the budget into a couple of reports but the focus is on the income sheet. I published the standard QuickBooks Budget report for a year but we spent few words discussing it except for the fact that we were not raising enough funds to support our proposed construction plan. The budget accomplished little besides creating work for me because it focused on income and expense acoounts and the key Habitat board decisions concern asset accounts. Since then I have thought a lot about budgeting. What I consider to be key indicators for the affiliate led me to a refined conclusion. We need a budget to support board decisions on whether we should build houses, purchase land, and expand our building capacity by hiring personnel. Our capital expenditure plans are directly related to our ability to raise funds and our cash flow.

For a Habitat affiliate the most important cash flows, mortgages receivable, home owner principal payments and construction costs, are asset accounts and do not appear on the income statement. As a result a “useful” budget for a Habitat affiliate must establish goals not only for the income and expense accounts but for the mortgage receivable, construction in process, and land inventory accounts. The first time I made a budget I “winged” it in this area because the construction plan was not available. I knew this was important information but you cannot budget items you do not have a plan for. Since then I have convinced most of the board on the importance of this part of the planning process. Our cash situation is much tighter than two years ago so there considerably less wiggle room. The board placed a much higher priority on planning and executing the plan when I told them we did not have the money.

The budget is almost complete for this year. I modeled the format of the budget on the existing QuickBooks Income and Cash Flow statements. I did re-arrange the Cash Flow statement to highlight the essentials, fund raising/operating costs, home owner principal payments, and construction expenditures. I am going to use spreadsheets to create future financial statements for future time periods that look a lot like the existing statements. Although there are existing budget reports in QuickBooks, they do not model the cash flow adequately. Although I loathe to use reports outside of QuickBooks because it will take additional time on my part, the budget reports in QuickBooks do not do the job for us because of our cash flow forecasting needs.

I used this tutorial, Tutorial: Modeling and What if? analysis with pivot tables – 20 Jul 2006 , on pivot tables to provide me with an easier to use mechanism to summarize data. Basically I have a row with monthly values for all of the pertinent accounts I need to reconstruct the income and cash flow statements. I started off by modeling the first nine months of this fiscal year and making sure it matched existing accounting reports. Then I added three more rows for the last quarter and estimated the values. We should have a good cash forecast for the fiscal year end. My final trick is to model a minimal balance statement.

Putting together a construction plan for the next fiscal year is going to be difficult since the construction/fund raising plan is still in a state of flux. We have land we do not want to build on and land we cannot build on without significant capital improvements. This probably means we need to buy additional lots. The best I can do is guess on the plan. This should be beneficial to the board since they tend to focus best when I give them construction start and finish dates. By tying together the fund raising plan to our construction plan via the cash flow statement, the board should keep focused on the key issues.

Carnival #33: Communicating with Donors

This week’s edition of the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants, which is a joint edition with the Giving Carnival, is now up at Donor Power Blog and Tactical Philanthropy. You can read it either place. The selected posts are the same, but Jeff and Sean added their own comments to their versions. The posts take a look at what donors and nonprofits wish the other knew about each other and provide some fascinating scenarios for nonprofits to think about. What do donors really want to know? Are donors always right? Do donors even remember they’ve given to you? Check out the carnival.

More Resources from Kivi: How to Write a Nonprofit Annual Report – A Four-Week E-Course You Can Start Today

Link to Carnival #33: Communicating with Donors

The BusinessBlogWire pointed me at this site via their Blogtipping roundup. Kivi has some excellent nonprofit advice on her site. As Treasurer for a nonprofit I was modestly interested in her advice on how to write a nonprofit annual report. Our Development Director had mentioned he was interested in writing an annual report a couple of months ago. I liked the idea but loathed the fact that it would involve a lot of my time since I was the custodian of information. As Treasurer my plate has been overflowing for several months. My workload has forced me to beg off of strategic plan meetings even though I have a vested interest that this strategic plan be a plan that can be implemented. Strategic plans and annual reports go hand in hand. It is hard to plan for success if you do not keep score.

My problem with strategic plans is that board members try to be so nice. They never seem to say a bad word about strategic plans they think are unrealistic. In their hearts they want to be wrong and the strategic plan to work. Their dilemma is that they already know that there are plenty of situations that will cause them to say and act differently than where the strategic plan is pointing them. The words they speak and the actions they take will not mimic the hope in their heart. Breaking this status quo is the grand challenge.

Application publishing: 2X ApplicationServer for Windows Terminal Services

 

Publish any Windows application onto remote desktops and save on administration & support

With 2X ApplicationServer for Windows Terminal Services companies can reap the benefits of thin client computing without having to switch the network infrastructure to a thin client OS.

Rather than deploying particular windows applications onto all your desktops, resulting in an administration and support nightmare, install the application on one central server and use 2X ApplicationServer for Windows Terminal Services to seamlessly publish the application onto remote desktops.

Users will never know that the application is running remotely and you will be able to manage the application from a single location! Transmitting just the screen updates rather than the client server data is often faster too.

2X ApplicationServer features:

  • Publish applications, rather than installing locally
  • Tunnel an application, not a whole desktop
  • Seamless integration with local desktop & taskbar
  • Publish applications based on username, group membership or IP
  • Publish Windows applications onto Linux   and Mac
  • Publish applications to Web Interface (Windows clients only)
  • Publish applications to a terminal server farm
  • Integration with 2X LoadBalancer
  • SSL secure connection to Applications

Get your FREE 5 application edition of 2X ApplicationServer now! Free perpetual license!

Source: Application publishing: 2X ApplicationServer for Windows Terminal Services

The part that really got my attention was the free 5 user ApplicationServer. A person in one of the newsgroups mentioned that they were using it. I installed the ApplicationServer this week and am testing it with QuickBooks 2004 on an old W2K server. It seems to work fine. Its pricing for a larger numbers of users is pretty decent, too. I was putting together a terminal server quote for a small nonprofit. The have several Win98 computers they are gradually replacing with Win2K vintage computers. The non-profit pricing for the terminal server licenses via Techsoup was pretty low, $50 for the W2K3 server and 5 clients plus $30 for 5 terminal server clients. Combine these licenses with an entry level server and we have a nice manageable application platform that is practically independent of the workstations.

Comment on Office Live Collaboration Site

I am not sure it has much value for SBS customers. I setup a collaboration site and tried to envision our Habitat for Humanity affiliate using it. Although Office Live Collaboration looks like it has the potential to do the job, it would require a lot of customization to get board members to look at it on a regular basis. My first guess is that it would require too much customization work for the perceived benefit. I expected a bit more CRM, project tracking, and accounting features. I guess I was expecting something that looked like an integrated Salesforce.com and QuickBook Online application. Right now it looks too much like a standard Sharepoint site.

As the Treasurer for the last couple of years I have been keenly interested in making our affiliate make better operational and strategic decisions. Charities are competing for the same funds and volunteers. Donors and volunteers are expecting a better experience for their time and money. They can make a different choice. I do not think I am stretching things too much when I compare a charity’s donors and volunteers to a small business’s customers. A charity has key performance indicators and line of business(LOB) activities that are very much like a small business. Making timely operational and strategic decisions is key to survival. With a geographically dispersed workforce this decision making process becomes more difficult. The areas of improvement I feel there is the most potential for are:

  • Improve collaboration amongst the board of directors members.
    1. Collect committee reports in one location.
    2. Access a common schedule for meetings and other key events.
    3. Keep track of committee’s monthly objectives.
  • Identify and report on key indicators.
    1. Construction status by house/project
    2. Donation status by house/campaign
    3. Mortgage/Delinquency status
    4. Partner family application status
  • Improve operation
    1. Track employee hours.
    2. Track expense account forms.
    3. LOB activities reporting and approvals.

MistyLook Theme for a Charity blog

I got distracted again! The Development Dirctor for our Habitat affiliate was complaining about the stale content on the affiliate’s website. For some time I have been thinking about the appropriate format for a charity website. I have begun to believe that a blog style website is a natural fit for charity websites. The social networking advantage of blogs(e.g. comments, rss feeds) is probably a good tool at communicating with a diverse group of volunteers. Working off of this sketchy premise, I created a blog that I intend to offer to our affiliate.

Design Decisions

  1. My favorite blog software is WordPress.
  2. WordPress is generally available at most host providers and has lots of free themes to choose from.
  3. WordPress does not have licensing issues.
  4. I envision that most of the updates will be via posts. We need an easy method of posting with photos by non-Geeks. The ability to use multiple authors is a plus.
  5. We will need about six static pages(e.g. Volunteer, Donation, Family Selection, etc.). These will be updated quarterly to annually.

Implementation Decisions

The key for me was seeing the themes available at themes.wordpress.net. After browsing through a part of this immense collection I settled on MistyLook from the creators of WordPress Garden. It has a nice, clean, widget friendly, two column design with tabs across the top of the page for the static pages. Only the key pages are shown across the top. All of the static pages appear in the sidebar, too. I already have a widget template for Paypal donations. I don’t expect many PayPal donations but it will be easier and it requires almost no effort on our part to collect the money. The only drawback to the theme was that I had to tweak it a little to get it to work.
I added three WordPress plugins:

  1. Imagemanager to handle the photos. WordPress’s default features are pretty good but Imagemanager adds resizing and default sizes for thumbnails.
  2. Widgets plugin.
  3. FeedBurner plugin. RSS feeds are typically associated with a younger crowd. Since we have quite a few older volunteers who have just recently gotten comfortable with email, FeedBurner Email looks like a potential winner for us. Volunteers can get website updates via RSS feeds or Email.

So here is the fruits of my labor.

New Excel Macro to import IIF transactions

I got an email recently from someone who was trying to import QuickBooks IIF transactions. Although I could not help this person with the problem, I did get motivated to write an Excel macro to import IIF transactions. One of the more tedious tasks I do as Treasurer for our Habitat affiliate is inputting payment data for our home owners. Each payment is split into three parts, principal, escrow, and late fee. The actual breakout of the payment is determined by our mortgage committee when they enter the data into their mortgage tracking program. This is important financial data so I keep track of the data in QuickBooks, too. Every month I use a spreadsheet to reconcile the deposit journal with the payments recorded into the mortgage system to make sure we do not miss anything. Then I get to the tedious part. I have to enter the payment data for each homeowner into QuickBooks before I can calculate how much to transfer into the escrow checking account. The good news is that we “only” have 37 home owners. The bad news is that I have to make two or more transactions per homeowner payment. This is the most time consuming portion of my Treasurer’s tasks.

My partial solution to this problem is to create about half of the transactions, escrow and late fees, directly from the spreadsheet. In my case I enter QuickBooks invoices for every escrow and late fee payment. The problem is that the escrow and late fees payments change every month. Another problem is that you need to create three rows in an IIF for every payment. In the spreadsheet I use to reconcile the deposits, I use one row per payment. So here is how I solved the problem.

I select the rows I want to generate invoices for and then run an Excel macro that creates a new worksheet in the IIF format with the data from the payments. Then I save the new worksheet as a Tab delimited file with an iif extension and import it into QuickBooks. The logic is pretty simple.

  1. You create a new Export worksheet. You delete the old Export worksheet if it exists.
  2. For every row in the selection you check to see if was part of a deposit. My worksheet has all of the home owners listed. If a home owner does not make their monthly payment, this cell is empty. If a home owner makes more than one payment in a month I will have two or more rows for them.
  3. If it was part of a deposit and the escrow portion is greater than zero, you make an escrow invoice.
  4. If it was part of a deposit and the late payment is greater than zero, you make an late fee invoice.

So there it is. Since I track escrow liabilities by home owner, each home owner has their own QuickBooks “Item” that points to their escrow account. I used the “vlookup” command to fill out the invoice with the correct QuickBooks “Item” for each home owner.

The other half of the transactions is the data entered on the Customer Payment screen. Although there is an IIF transaction for customer payment it does not help me. The Bill Payment transaction is not helpful, too. It would be nice to automate this but I will settle for my small improvement in the process.

Microsoft FolderShare Beta Becomes a Windows Live Service

FolderShareTM allows you to create a private peer-to-peer network that will help you to synchronize files across multiple devices and access or share files with colleagues and friends. You no longer need to send large files via email, burn them to CDs/DVDs and mail them, or upload them to a website. FolderShare allows you to share and sync important information instantly with anyone you invite, making it the perfect solution for personal or small business use.

[Via ActiveWin.com Headlines]

I found this to be pretty interesting. I volunteer at a local Habitat affiliate and constantly are backing up data so I can access it from home/laptop. I am still investigating FolderShareTM but I will probably try it out.

TechSpot’s Low-end PC Buying Guide @ TechSpot

TechSpot’s Low-end PC Buying Guide @ TechSpot

Basic Configuration – Under $600
Plus Windows XP Shipping and Taxes (if applicable):

  • AMD Sempron 3000 – $87
  • ASRock K8NF4GSATA2 Micro ATX – $65
  • Onboard video – $0
  • 512MB (256×2) PC3200 DDR – $50
  • Onboard sound – $0
  • Stereo speakers – $7
  • 80GB 7200RPM SATA – $55
  • BenQ 17” (FP71G ) – $215
  • DVD-ROM 16x – $20
  • Basic keyboard, mouse – $20
  • Inwin/Powmax budget case – $35

Recommended Configuration – About $1000
Plus Windows XP Shipping and Taxes (if applicable):

  • AMD Athlon 64 3200 Socket 939 – $170
  • MSI K8NGM2-FID Motherboard – $90
  • NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT – $120
  • 1GB PC3200 DDR – $85
  • Creative SB Audigy – $30
  • Logitech X-220 2.1 – $40
  • 200GB 7200RPM SATA – $90
  • Hyundai 19” (B90A) – $300
  • 16x Dual-Layer DVD±RW – $40
  • Basic keyboard, mouse – $20
  • CoolerMaster Centurion 5 (380w PSU) – $60

***************************************************

I have to admit that I have been looking at the MSI combination for as an inexpensive motherboard upgrade. My old AMD900 motherboard is toast. It had a problem about a month ago and the problem returned this month with a vengeance. I originally thought it was a disk drive or drive controller issue. Everything in it is old. Now I believe the problem is a motherboard or video card problem since it will no longer boot Ubuntu and it fails on the video card probe. I am not in a big rush since this is my dogfood server/workstation. Just the same I would like to get it back running and with the least cost. This happens to be the philosophy of a lot of non-profits IT planning, too. They run Win98 because of the computers that they bought or had donated to them. Our Habitat affiliate recently bought some 3-4 year old refurbished computers for about $45 a piece. They run W2K which is a nice step forward. The problem is that buying a new $400 Dell makes more business sense from a support standpoint. Those old components are going to fail and the interruption to the “business” is much more expensive than the components.

RE: Summary of Quickbook problems

I copied this from the SmallbizIT newsgroup so I could find this easier. This summarizes a lot of what’s been going on with the latest version of QuickBooks. Enjoy! 😉

Summary of Quickbook problems

The following is information I have from various sources on some problems with the Quickbook programs.

Where I have comments from others on where they got the information or if they had the problem themselves I have mentioned.

I encourage anyone that has more up-to-date information or some correction to anything I have said to let me know.

I have not as of yet installed any 2006 Quickbook programs so I personnally have not had any of these problems except one that concerns needing Administrator rights in order to run the program. This issue has been a ongoing issue with Quickbook programs.

So in no particular order are the issues I am aware of:

  1. Quickbooks 2006 crashes the computer – At time of installation of Quickbooks 2006 the computer crashes. Currently we do not know why a particular computer (Intuit may know but I have not heard) will crash while other computers will not crash. It appears that the errors are based on problems when the program is making changes to the computer Windows registry. If someone wishes to install 2006 for any reason they should do a complete backup of any computer in which they wish to install QB2006 and do it prior to doing the install so that they will not lose any data or files on that computer if it should crash. I have heard that some recommend that just a full backup of the registry will allow a restore of the computer. This backup of the registry is not creating a restore point in Windows but doing an actual backup of the complete registry. It appears that the computers are crashing when QB2006 is installed so once you are installed and you can still use the computer then you are past this issue. I suggest you read further on other issues once it is installed.History of identifing the problem – In a email forward to me on Dec 6, 2005 and the email started from ADP (the payroll service used by Microsoft for SBA) stated “I wanted to relay a message regarding QuickBooks 2006. An accountant in San Diego had a client purchase the QuickBooks 2006 version and unfortunately discovered that there is a dangerous glitch in the software. This version crashed the client’s computer and was unable to get any files off the computer. The accountant called Intuit and the President of Intuit said that there have been close to 1000 computers crash, but Intuit still hasn’t taken the software off of the shelves.” Comments made by others that the sender was a reason not to consider this a valid statement but now it does appear to be a valid problem.On Dec 7 2005 I received this from Larry Hess, CPA of Albuquerque, NM and he states, “… I have been able to confirm with someone inside Intuit that the problem does in fact exist. Oddly, it apparently didn’t appear during the beta test phase. And, if it doesn’t happen upon the inital installation of QB2006, it won’t. The best advice to someone whose installation has failed and rendered their computer virtually useless, is to call QB support, who are familiar with the problem. Makesure the call is escalated to tier 2 or tier 3 support, although that should happen automatically. As of now, there isn’t a fix; and, maybe not even an understanding of the cause of the problem. I understand that Intuit has taken some fairly extreme measures to help affected customers recover from it.” Also in a second email that same day he further adds, “I can add that they said the problem messes up the registry not the hard drive or files other than the registry. One rescue approach apparently can involve lengthy editing of the registry. So, I think a bootable copy or mirror of the entire hard drive prior to installation of QB2006 would be the best insurance. By the way, if any beta testers are reading, so far no beta testers haveencountered the problem when installing the production release.”

    On Dec 8 2005 Larry Hess, CPA further reports, “For those who are wondering whether or not to install QB2006, one further piece of advice:
    Make a backup of the full registry (better than setting a restore point in XP) before installing QB2006. If the install causes Windows to go bad, Intuit Support can easily (they say) help you recover.”

  2. Quickbook needs local workstation Administrator rights in order to run. – Currrently Intuit says that this will be changed in the 2007 program. This issue is an ongoing security issue as malware can install programs on that computer. The Administrator rights I am talking about is the Windows user needing Administrator rights. The user of the Quickbooks and from inside the program may not be an administrator but to get into Quickbooks that person needs to have Windows Administrator rights.History – SANS NewsBites – Vol: 7, Issue: 59In response to Newsbites’ recognition, Brad Smith, senior vice president of QuickBooks, confirmed on December 2, 2005 that this problem will be fixed in the next major release (QuickBooks 2007), scheduled for delivery within 12 months. One of the main issues with needing Admin rights is that “You are administrator on your machine and that means that malware can easily get in too. Jesper’s Blog : Malware and administrative rights
  3. Multi-user Mode Quickbooks 2006 – Problems this year for multi-user use of the program. It is recommended the program be installed on the server. For a good article on installing Quickbooks 2006 for multi-use see http://www.cpa911.com/installqb2006.pdfHistory – From a Tech listserve one of techie posted on Dec 7 2005 that “… QuickBooks 2006 will not switch to multi user like previous versions. I have found out I have two choices; first to installQuickBooks 2006 on the SBS2K3 server or second it has a new alternate mode a workstation needs to start up switch to multi user mode then remain logged on until the other workstations running QuickBooks 2006 are finished. The alternate multi user mode is a pain, but workable.” and then later he further posts that “It is the premier edition. I called QB tech support and the ‘script’ also said to install it on the server. Also this version is running much slower than previous versions. Especially in single user mode.” Then the next day this individual posted that “I just finished a support call to my client that is having QuickBooks 2006 problems that I wrote about on the SBS list Wednesday. I did not install QuickBooks on the SBS server, but the data files are located in a server network share. The interesting thing now is that when my client is using QuickBooks 2006 in the back office it is taking down their Retailer POS terminals.” He began considering reinstalling a earlier version of Quickbooks becauses of the problems. But another individual posts that “The 2006 is a brand new Sybase SQLanywhere database version and it’s not roll-back-able.”

    Later another techie responds “I had a client with the same issue, she worked with Intuit for 2 days to get the alternate method to work but could not and they said she would have to put it on the server. I advised that as it is a new version and untested that I did not recommend it and could not guarantee that it would not cause issue.” Another posting by a techie was, “I could not agree more. This is not Enterprise, but Premier. I hate telling the client that every time they use this software in multi user mode they have to start it on one workstation switch to multi user mode then make sure to not log off that workstation until the other users are finished with the day. I see all kinds of issues. I would recommend to roll back to 2005 but the data is in 2006 format and that would mean reentering the data.”

    It was posted that you can read more on this problem at:

    QuickBooks Forums – Avoid QB 2006 network install

    To read a article on how to install see
    http://www.cpa911.com/installqb2006.pdf.

  4. Further it was stated, “Do watch out for the network install… it’s like SBA (Microsoft Small Business Accounting) and has to be installed ‘on’ the server now.”On Dec 19 2005 these comments were made that state, “I had my first install of qb2006 last week onto a SBS2003 box. I could no get the remote computers to open the company file on the server unless the server actually had quickbooks running with the file open, from reading the docs it seems like that should not be required, anybody else run into this problem, the error I was getting was that the file on the server could not be opened, to try and open the file on the server and try again. with the qb open and running the file on the server it works fine on the remote computers.” Another techie points out to solve the problem he stated, “The fix is to give the quickbooks service account full control of the directory where the quickbooks data is residing. Also, the quickbooks sevice account should be excluded from the password policy. The account should be set to ‘password never expires”. After you make the rights assignment you will need to stop and restart the quickbooks service.”

    This is another security problem for any computer running that way. It was stated that, “Gawd bless it…this is worse than local admin rights in my book now that they are having me hack up my server rights.” She further states, “When Accounting software is requiring this to be shared out on a network….quite frankly I’m getting a bit embarrassed by the lack of security planning and coding in our accounting applications. Is everyone aware that SANS listed Quickbooks as their first ever inductee into the Local Admin hall of shame?”

  5. ERROR: Connection Has Been Lost [99937] – When connecting to the company data file. As you may know, QuickBooks 2006 and Enterprise 6.0 are using a new network based database. This means that the programs rely heavily upon network connectivity to access the QuickBooks company file and to provide Multi-User access. Error 99937 is a generic error that will occur if the connection to the company file has been lost.SOLUTION #1: Restart QuickBooksIf this is the first time you have seen the error after connecting successfully in the past, restart the computer where the data file is stored and re-open the QuickBooks company file on each of the other computers. This will resolve most temporary network issues.

    SOLUTION #2: (Most Common) Configure QuickBooks 2006 for Multi-User Access

    SOLUTION #3: For more information on resolving this issue

    Possible Causes include:

    – The network connection to the host computer was interrupted. (For example if the host computer has been shut down for the day.)
    – The QuickBooks database manager (QBDBMGRN.EXE) on the host computer was unexpectedly terminated.
    – The QBDataServiceUser on the host computer does not have sufficient permissions to the folder where the company file is located. This is the user created by QuickBooks during installation that allows the program to successfully connect to the data file over the network.

    History – This is the broadcast email QB put out last week to alert proadvisers of this problem. Audience Affected: Some ProAdvisors and clients installing QuickBooks 2006 and experiencing “Error 99937” or “Error 1911” Action: Follow important steps outlined. A very small number of customers installing QuickBooks 2006 and Enterprise 6.0 have experienced a few issues of which you should be aware.

  6. ERROR 1911 – Error 1911 during installation (or Desktop icons turning white or missing after installing QuickBooks 2006/Enterprise 6.0)This issue is extremely rare, and it appears to be caused when program associations within the operating system are lost. This may be caused by viruses, corrupt files, or failing hardware. We are actively investigating at this time.If you experience this issue, where you get white or missing icons on your desktop, please do the following:

    — don’t go past this point, and stop installation immediately
    — run a virus scan
    — contact technical support immediately at 888-333-3451

    History – this is from the same QB broadcase email as mentioned under item 4 above.

    Conclusion

    So it appears that the 2006 version of Quickbooks has several installation and running problems that users of Quickbooks should be aware of before upgrading and installing this latest version.

    Some have said they do not recommend that their clients upgrade to 2006.

    For the professionals we may not recommend to our clients to upgrade but if any one client does then you will be forced into upgrading just to be able to support that client.

    Depending on these problems it is a question if Intuit can issue a “fix” for 2006 to solve these problems.

    So buyer beware and to be safe professionals may wish to consider not recommending their clients upgrade.

    Of course another solution is to see if the Microsoft SBA (Small Business Accounting) will meet their needs. (P.S. I have no relationship with MS other than having their programs – I get nothing for people buying or switching their programs.)

    So have a nice day.

    Jim

Filing the 990

Welcome to efile.form990.org

The 990 Online, developed by the nonprofit Urban Institute, provides nonprofit organizations with a simple and completely free way to prepare their returns and electronically file them with the IRS.

This is my second year using efile.form990.org to file the 990 return. It took me about four hours to enter, find the additional information, and make the corrections. Most of the data comes directly off of the Income and Expense Statement, the Statement of Financial Position, and last year’s 990. This year I used two templates to upload data into the return.

Reading the box helps you find security problems

Recently I was working at our local Habitat office and I noticed that our PCs could not see each other. After some research I discovered that they were using some unusual IP addresses(i.e. not private ips like 192.168.x.x or 10.x.x.x). Technically the PCs were on different subnets. I asked the guy who should know and he said that there was a router/firewall on the network but he didn’t know how to get to it. I tracked the cables back to the switch and found the switch connected directly to the DSL modem. There wasn’t any router/firewall! The box the switch came in was on the shelf. I was not surprised to find that it did not have a firewall. Well, that explained a lot of things! Both the guy who told me about the network and I thought the network box was a simple router with a firewall. Today I am donating and installing a new Linksys multifunction router. As treasurer for the affiliate I am not happy finding the network exposed like this but I know that will end today.