How Can You Tell That Your Bookkeeper And Or Controller is Overworked?

Many small businesses find out that their bookkeeping staff is, instead, utilized for money earning tasks that take away their ability to complete money saving tasks. They help with marketing pieces instead of invoicing. They complete sales proposals instead of making collection calls.

In many small, privately owned businesses, this is the right thing to do: Make money first, count money second. This does not relieve us from paying our obligations, payroll and vendors - without whom we could not survive.

It is easy and appropriate to outsource payroll, tax payments, bookkeeping and even payables check writing. Talk with your financial services professionals. They usually work with several payroll companies that will ease your bookkeeper's workload. These companies also help outsource your bank reconciliation and/or Accounts Payable check writing - a great improvement to internal controls - without you losing control of your money. Design and build proper systems with proper controls and your bookkeeper and/or controller will be more productive and your company more profitable.

Some business owners have been with the "Big 2" payroll companies and switch every year because the service does not meet their needs. They say "there are no other decent payroll companies." That's like saying, "I've owned Fords and I've owned Chevys, neither fit my needs, but there are no other choices." This is ridiculous.

There are great payroll companies, all over the country, who can provide all of the service and products you need: Online Payroll, Time clocks, Biometric Time clocks, Online Employee Service, Multi-state & Multi Local companies, Certified & Union Payroll, everything. You should demand better service and more response from you payroll provider.

As with everything in a company, the owner must dictate the direction and force of any idea or change. Set the tone of your company to improve productivity in this area. Set the tone to improve efficiency and internal controls. Demand that your staff follow the rules. Most importantly, you must follow the rules. If expense reports are due a certain day, get it done. If notification must be given to get a check, give notification; don't just tear a check from the checkbook. If you break the rules, everyone breaks the rules.

These are simple and inexpensive changes to make. You don't have to implement everything at one time. Start now and make one change every two months. In twelve months time you're likely to have more money, time and a happier bookkeeper and controller.

Practicing Good Horsemanship - Staying Connected - The Advantages of Not Tying a Horse For Saddling

Tying a horse for saddling is a commonly practiced convenience. With the horse tied, your hands are free. Your trips in and out of the tack room (or trailer) for gear are easier to make. And you spend less effort keeping track of the horse. There are occasions, however, when holding the lead rope--instead of tying it--offers advantages.

With the young horse - By "staying connected" through the lead rope, your major means of communicating with the horse is maintained. This can be especially important to a young horse still new to the saddling routine.

With the lead rope in your hand, the back and forth exchange of information between you and the horse can continue. In this way, you are better able to "support" the horse should he become concerned, troubled, or startled. You can easily direct his attention back to you or allow him to move his feet to defuse his angst, should he show the need. By providing this support, you help the horse become more confident, comfortable, and secure in your relationship.

With the fidgety horse - Having hold of the lead rope allows you to better address the habits of a fidgety horse. For example, you are able to work on having him remain "centered," head and neck aligned about wither height, feet still. If he moves a foot without being asked, through the lead rope you direct him to move that foot back to where it was. If he looks off, you use the lead rope to bring his head and neck back in align with his body. If he paws, you direct him to put weight on the pawing foot--which ever foot that may be at any given time.

Yes, a fidgety horse will keep you busy fixing at first. But through the lead rope, you are able to address his movements and provide structure. Think of the time spent as an investment in helping him learn to stand centered, content, and quiet later on when tied.

To test your skills - You can use holding the lead while saddling as an opportunity to test you and your horse's communication skills. As you go about getting equipment out of your tack room or trailer, the horse must keep track of you as well as wait on you. When you step inside, he must move forward to stay close. While you are gathering your gear, he must wait. When you emerge with your hands full, he must step back out of the way.

In other words, the horse needs to "feel" of you through the lead--and respond accordingly. Saddling is simply another opportunity for you to test and polish your communication skills as you strengthen your relationship.

Six Conversations for Team Success - The Key Questions

Intelligent conversations for teams help them to focus on what really matters. Team development events, away days and team meetings are all opportunities to review how the team works. The danger is that the team only focusses on what they are doing, a project review approach, rather than thinking how the team works and how they can better deliver. The most value comes from making sure the team is best equipped to satisfy their customers' and stakeholders' expectations rather than just updating each other on what has or has not been done.

The Six Conversations for Success ensure that the focus is not just on how the team works together but what the outside world thinks and feels about them and their work. In the commercial realities of today's world, teams and organisations are entirely dependent on the support and investment of outsiders. This may be in the form of financial investment from shareholders, loyalty from customers, or the tacit support of sponsors and stakeholders within the organisation. Unless the team provides what the customers and stakeholders want, they will seek other sources for a return on their investment of time, money or energy.

There are fundamental questions that any successful team or organisation pays attention to on a regular basis. These twelve questions cover six areas and together ensure a balance between an internal and external focus. Both are important in sustained success and if the team doesn't know the answers this should act as an early warning signal that the team's performance is out of line with stakeholder expectations.

Success Criteria

Who are our sponsors, customers and stakeholders and what are they looking for from their investment in us? What criteria are they using to compare us with other ways of achieving their objectives?

Stakeholder Management

What are we doing to keep interested parties up to date with developments? How do we engage stakeholders in what we are doing so that they feel part of our work?

Delivering on Promises

What is our track record for delivering against what is expected? How consistent are we in delivering on time, on budget and in line with expectations?

Structure and Organisation

How do our processes and structures make delivering our outputs easy or difficult? How does our structure help the customers and stakeholders get what they need from us?

Working for Each Other

How are we supporting each other in our work processes and delivering to customers? How do our working relationships and processes increase our customers' confidence and trust?

Continuous Learning

What feedback are we getting that tells us what we need to do more or less of? What new skills or capacity are we developing that helps us consistently deliver quality outputs?

The answers to these questions provide a rich source of feedback and information which helps the team make sure they are on track, not just with their current processes, products and projects but that their future is supported by all the interested parties who are key to their success.

What Type of Scrapbook Should I Make?

Only the imagination can limit the types of scrapbooks that can be made by the scrapbooking enthusiast. Any special event in any person's life can be the inspiration for a scrapbook. Here are some ideas for themes for a scrapbook album.

Do you have photographs around the house in drawers and shoeboxes? Most of us do. But you can't enjoy your precious photographs if they are lying around in drawers, boxes and in disorganized piles. Get them organized so you can enjoy them by putting them in a scrapbook. You can put them in chronological order, from the earliest times to the most recent photographs, or you can group them by theme, event or person. Be sure to use acid-free paper, glue and embellishments to preserve your memories. Especially be sure to use acid-free ink to label and date each photo for future reference.

A person's entire life can be chronicled in a scrapbook. If you are a parent or grandparent, you can use scrapbooking to keep a history of your child or grandchild's life. And because most communication and photos are shared electronically these days, sharing information via email is a great way to collect photos and newspaper articles to use in a scrapbook.

If the thought of chronicling a person's entire life seems like too much for you, consider scrapbooking a person's life year by year. Parents would certainly enjoy receiving an album per year of each of their child's life as a priceless, much treasured gift.

Did you or your family go on a special vacation recently? Think about saving souvenirs for a travel scrapbook to make when you return. The basis for each page can be pictures taken of places you visited while travelling. The album can be of one trip, or of the travel history of a family. If you know you are going to go on a trip, you can collect post cards and other bits of memorabilia as you travel to include in your scrapbook. When you return from your trip, you can re-live the good times and exciting places you experienced on your travels.

Scrapbooks are great ways to keep the memories of special events that occur in you or your child's life. You may become the family historian by being the family scrapper. Baptisms, Bar Mitzvahs, concerts, parties, birthdays, weddings, and family reunions are only a few of the many reasons to scrapbook. Whether choosing a category or theme for a scrapbook, or chronicling a life through pictures, scrapbooking is an important part of preserving history.

Stop Stuttering - Ways to Treat Children and Teens

Of the millions of people who suffer from stuttering, the child and youth population are the ones which are affected the most. This speech disorder can have great impacts on the life of a child so stopping it as early as possible is a necessity. There is a step-by-step procedure in order for a person to stop stuttering.

The first step is to properly diagnose the disorder with the help of a speech-language pathologist. Referring to a health professional specializing on the field of language is very important because stammering is mostly confused with simple disfluency. Simple disfluency, however, is simply outgrown by those who have it and if children with stutters are diagnosed with this, their speech disorder may be left untreated until it is already too late.

Generally, stuttering has been connected with abnormal breathing patterns so doing breathing techniques are sometimes recommended by professionals. After it has been diagnosed, the next step is to determine the best method which can help stop stuttering.

For children, one way to stop stuttering is by practicing their speaking abilities with every chance possible. The parents should also provide children with this disorder a good environment in which they will not be stigmatized just because of their stammers. There are also some therapies which can help stop stuttering for the case of teens. Most of the therapies are centered on providing different ways to focus on speaking. Therapies such as this include exercising single-syllable responses until the person can already respond with complex sentences without the stutters.

There are also some drugs which can help stop stuttering. Even though the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not legalized the use of any drug to treat stammering, there are medicines for other health problems like epilepsy, depression, and anxiety which are said to be effective in treating stuttering. Using drugs, however, are highly prohibited because they cause some negative side effects making them harder to use for long periods of time.

New Era Of Cement Mixers

There are various types of cement mixer available in the market these days. All these mixers have their unique features and differ in their usage and functionality as well. There are more advanced versions as well as more simplified mixers also. However, which one should a builder opt for, depends upon the requirements of the construction.

Basically the mixers are divided into three broad types. They are two shaft mixers, vertical mixers and drum mixers. The drum mixers are used for production of large volumes of cement. While the two shaft mixers are preferred when the workers require high quality cement in less time. On the other hand the vertical mixers are used when the workers have to deal with colored cement or when they require various discharge outlets for the cement or when small amounts are needed.

The vertical mixers are also termed as Pan or Planetary mixer. This is because of their two main types. The Pan mixers are losing their popularity in the market these days. While the more efficient and quality prone planetary mixers are gaining more momentum. This approval for planetary type vertical mixer is owing to its additional and more advanced features of concrete mixing.

The drum mixers have been dominating the market of ready-mixed cement since a long time. Their high demand has been attribute to their great speed of production. They are also preferable for slump concrete or in situations where the production of concrete as a whole is significant. This type of cement mixer also is easy to maintain and it requires low cost in operating as compare to the other types.

However, all the types of mixers are useful in their own unique ways and serves different demands of the cement buyer population. The three basic types of cement aggregators are being used by the world market at a large rate. This is due to their user friendliness and time efficient results. The ever increasing demand rate for the cement industry has been nowadays matched up with these high quality equipments.

Apart from these cement mixer varieties, there are some special types of trucks that are used to transport concrete. The special attribute in these trucks is that they are made not only to transport the cement but at times of requirement also mix it on the way. These special trucks are called the in-transit mixers.

All the distinct diversity of solid aggregators is very helpful in their exclusive modes and they furthermore assist well the building commerce with their exclusive features. The most broadly utilized diversity of cement mixer is the major three categories. This is because they are not only client amicable but furthermore offer high value outcomes in befitting allowance of time.

These are also utilized when the concrete has to be transported to long distances and therefore a constant mixing is required to prevent the hardening. These concrete trucks along with the various types of cement mixer have given a new dimension to the growing industry of cement. These instruments have made the cement production a lot more standardized and easier task. These cement aggregators also range on a wide spectrum of price but you will have to search around to make sure that you are ending up with a quality product. As a little investment for the sake of quality is a wise decision, indeed.