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Cloud Accounting with Freshbooks
By Mark Frank - Thursday December 6, 2012
You provide your service or product to your farm clients and you are ready for the fun part which is getting paid, right? Not so quick, you still have to prepare an invoice for your transactions, send it to clients and then hope you get paid in a timely manner. The work involved in invoicing and waiting to be paid takes the fun out of getting paid. When it comes to handling billing, the range of solutions can be anywhere from using a sophisticated accounting system to something as basic as an invoice template in a word processor. Each approach has its advantages and disadvantages. In addition to the high cost of implementing a high end accounting system, the learning curve involved in mastering the system and the accounting... -
Square Up For Easy, In-the-field Payments
By Mark Frank - Thursday November 8, 2012
My son is in Cub Scouts and loves to take part in the annual popcorn sales fund raising program. He has always done well but I felt could have done better if we had a way to accept credit cards, so this year we down loaded the Square Credit Card App on my iPhone and improved his sales by 20% which is roughly the amount of revenue we brought in by credit cards. Square is an amazing service that works with your mobile phone, you simply down load the free app onto your phone, signup, and plug in the free card reader. There is a 2.75% fee when you do a transaction, so for every $100 you bring in there is a $2.75 fee. This is very low fee compared to most traditional credit card processing companies. For companies that have large... -
Has Your CEO Seen the ROI of the VOIP?
By Mark Frank - Thursday October 4, 2012
Ten years ago I switch our home phone service that Qwest provided to a VOIP service, which stands for “Voice Over Internet Protocol.” The VOIP service works the same as the old-fashion phone except it used high speed internet to carry the conversations vs. the traditional phone line. Five years ago I was so pleased with how the home phone VOIP service was working that I subscribed to the service in our offices. This new technology costs a fraction of what traditional phone services cost and comes with many amazing options to help you’re ag business communicate with clients and employees. One of my favorite features are Answering ruleswhich route calls based on the time called, caller ID or the number called. Imagine having a... -
Web Meetings: Work Smarter Not Harder
By Mark Frank - Thursday September 6, 2012
TODAY'S AGENDA Meeting with John Doe in Waterloo to go over grain contracts Meeting with Bob Doe in Valley to go over 2012 grain programs Board meeting in Main Office to discuss new storage facility All company safety meeting at Duncan location Present 2013 Budget to General Manager in Main Office Does this type of schedule look familiar to you? It’s hard to get much done in a day when you are running all over the country. Today, you can become more efficient if you utilize the new communication technologies that provide web meeting services. A Web meeting will work great to conduct your meeting with John Doe, discuss his existing grain contracts by sharing the screen on your computer with him or let him take... -
Organize Your Online Life
By Mark Frank - Thursday August 9, 2012
Today agricultural professionals spend more time than ever before on the computer reading email, searching the internet, working with software applications and entertaining themselves. Keeping your digital life organized continues to be a challenge with emails you want to keep, web pages you want to save and documents that need filed. EVERNOTE is a software application that has made its way to the top of the digital organization industry. EVERNOTE can be installed on your smart phone, tablet, laptop and desktop. Once installed you have access to all the digital information you have organized in one convenient place no matter what device you are using. So when you get to work in the morning and you receive an email with a detailed...
