I came across "LogMeIn" last week which is really helping us develop our new admin project quicker.
LogMeIn is a free download utility that allows you to access your computer from any web browser from anywhere in the world.
So we set up LogMeIn on two of our office computers which is allowing us to work on our admin project away from the office.
There is a free version of LogMeIn which will allow you remote access and full control of your computer and is available from here
Saturday 28 April 2007
Thursday 19 April 2007
The Power of Blogs - Sage Part 2
The power of blogging fairly hit home today when we received a telephone call from accounting software giant Sage. Readers may have read a previous post on this blog from April 10th, when we were experiencing problems generating our end of year employee P60 and P14 forms.
We eventually had to pay for support cover from Sage for them to look into our problem which turned out to be because we were running Payroll for 2005 and not the 2006 version, hence causing some technicality problems when generating new employee returns for the year end 2006 - something which we did not anticipate happening, since we only bought the package in March 2006, one month before the new tax year began.
Anyway, we payed for Support Cover and within an hour, we had downloaded the updates from Sage and the problem was fixed.
Today however, we received a phone call from Sage regarding our previous post on this blog.
Now half expecting a rollicking from Sage, because we had blogged about them, I put on my tin hat and body armour and spoke to a gentleman called Mike Green.
But my expectation of a telling off could not halve been further from the truth.
Seemingly Sage trawl the web, looking to see what people are saying about their company. They had come across my blog post and after reading about the problems that we were encountering, called us up to offer advice. Before they knew that we had already upgraded, they kindly told us that the problem that we seemed to be having, was likely to be linked to an out of date Sage package and they recommended we upgrade.
Now, I'm sure like all company's Sage have various policy's and ways of working (eg support prices and call waiting times) that can irritate people at times, but in this instance I would say that in calling us today deserves 100% praise for this type of customer service.
Sage were more than happy that I was discussing my issues with their software online, which in turn allowed them to find out the problems people were having, allowing them to seek to address these problems, either by calling us like today or by using the feedback to enhance future software releases.
So there you have it, a small company in Stirling, starting a blog only a few weeks ago and already we have had the mighty Sage knocking on our door.
Before I sign off - once again well done Sage and Mike Green for your foresight in calling today.
We eventually had to pay for support cover from Sage for them to look into our problem which turned out to be because we were running Payroll for 2005 and not the 2006 version, hence causing some technicality problems when generating new employee returns for the year end 2006 - something which we did not anticipate happening, since we only bought the package in March 2006, one month before the new tax year began.
Anyway, we payed for Support Cover and within an hour, we had downloaded the updates from Sage and the problem was fixed.
Today however, we received a phone call from Sage regarding our previous post on this blog.
Now half expecting a rollicking from Sage, because we had blogged about them, I put on my tin hat and body armour and spoke to a gentleman called Mike Green.
But my expectation of a telling off could not halve been further from the truth.
Seemingly Sage trawl the web, looking to see what people are saying about their company. They had come across my blog post and after reading about the problems that we were encountering, called us up to offer advice. Before they knew that we had already upgraded, they kindly told us that the problem that we seemed to be having, was likely to be linked to an out of date Sage package and they recommended we upgrade.
Now, I'm sure like all company's Sage have various policy's and ways of working (eg support prices and call waiting times) that can irritate people at times, but in this instance I would say that in calling us today deserves 100% praise for this type of customer service.
Sage were more than happy that I was discussing my issues with their software online, which in turn allowed them to find out the problems people were having, allowing them to seek to address these problems, either by calling us like today or by using the feedback to enhance future software releases.
So there you have it, a small company in Stirling, starting a blog only a few weeks ago and already we have had the mighty Sage knocking on our door.
Before I sign off - once again well done Sage and Mike Green for your foresight in calling today.
Sunday 15 April 2007
New Admin Project Begins
Work Begins on Exciting Project
We have begun an in-house project that will revolutionise the way the company does business. As the growth of our company continues and in order to maintain the highest levels of customer service to which we base our whole business idea around, we are completely reviewing our whole administration process.
The project will involve implementing new job/scheduling systems and analysing and improving our whole process of customer service.
We recognise that as the growth of our company continues we must look at ways to improve our service and once the initial stage of this new project is complete in 8-10 weeks we believe the whole process of doing business with Stirling Electrical Services will be one of the best around and will take our current good customer relations to another level.
We will keep customers aware of the progress of the project by posting here and on our website.
Its an exciting time to be involved with Stirling Electrical Services, and it will continue to be an exciting time to be a customer of Stirling Electrical Services.
Scott McLean
Director
We have begun an in-house project that will revolutionise the way the company does business. As the growth of our company continues and in order to maintain the highest levels of customer service to which we base our whole business idea around, we are completely reviewing our whole administration process.
The project will involve implementing new job/scheduling systems and analysing and improving our whole process of customer service.
We recognise that as the growth of our company continues we must look at ways to improve our service and once the initial stage of this new project is complete in 8-10 weeks we believe the whole process of doing business with Stirling Electrical Services will be one of the best around and will take our current good customer relations to another level.
We will keep customers aware of the progress of the project by posting here and on our website.
Its an exciting time to be involved with Stirling Electrical Services, and it will continue to be an exciting time to be a customer of Stirling Electrical Services.
Scott McLean
Director
Tuesday 10 April 2007
Sage P60 problems
Like a lot of companies its end of tax year time, so our accounts staff have been busy doing all the necessary tasks. This year we thought we would take advantage of the Inland Revenues incentive to file our employees end of year returns (P60 & P14) online straight from our Sage Package which is Instant Accounts Plus. If you file the forms online you will receive a £150 reduction from your employer return this year and £100 next year, so we decided to register and look forward to paying the government less for once.
But alas, no such luck. We started two new employees within the last tax year and even though they appear on every other report in Sage , when you print the P60 report (which goes to the employee and the P14 which gets sent online to the Inland Revenue), the forms for these two employees are not generated, so we have no P60's to give to the employees and the Inland Revenue will not accept the online sending of the forms because it knows the forms are missing.
Sage want nearly £100 of our money just to speak to us, yes we found this out after being on hold for 45 minutes today on the phone. Even though we are sure everything has been done correctly when we created these employees into sage when they started, it all points to a sage glitch but they are not having it. So it will be back to the drawing board tomorrow to find out if we can find a fix ourselves, or most of the governments first years £150 incentive will unfortunately be on its way to Sage just so they can say - "hello welcome to Sage - how can we help you solve your problem"
Saturday 7 April 2007
Avoiding the Holiday Traffic
I mentioned in previous posts about our company being very busy at the moment, especially this past week leading up to the easter holiday where we had two deadlines to meet on large jobs - a major refurb of a tourist attraction and a new install on a holiday lodge - both of which were successfully completed on time leaving satisfied customers behind as our sparks headed off for a well deserved Easter break.
Now I'm not the one to take holidays at this time of year, preferring to take time away from the business in autumn or over the winter, so I volunteered to be the one minding the tools over the next few days.
I had planned to start a job at 10am this morning wiring and installing an electrical supply to a garden shed and kit it out with sockets and lights, but a call late yesterday from one of our main customers, who urgently required a visit first thing this morning to one of their locations to investigate loss of power in a kitchen, got me up bright and early and off to Aberfoyle, about 20 miles away.
I was only on site in Aberfoyle for 30 minutes before I headed back to Stirling and already I knew my decision to choose work over pleasure this Easter weekend was the right one.
The road from Stirling to Aberfoyle is a very popular tourist route and even just before 10am in the morning, traffic was building up as families or more to the point husbands were being dragged out by their wives (or vice versa), to do what everybody else was doing - getting in a car and driving somewhere just for the sake of it being Easter. The point of a holiday is to do something to relax you away from the rigors of your work but all they were doing were getting more stressed as they took to the roads in their cars, what with more cars taking to the road - then caravans joining in which make the queues worse as motorbikes whiz pass at a hundred miles an hour, darting between traffic with death defying maneuvers.
Where were these people going?, some just like to drive which is fine as I like the same thing on occasions as well, but not on a bank holiday weekend - some like to go to the local safari park, fine again if you have a family, I like a safari as well, but the Kenyan variety - but where do most of these annoying people on the roads go at this tine of year? - yes, the garden and DIY stores - why? well i aint a clue. Give me a shed to wire any day rather than buy a plant or some paint ( and don't get me started about Mr Public having easy access to electrical accessories at these stores )
So I crawled through the traffic and eventually got to my job of wiring up the shed - 4 hours later it was all done - yes it was work, yes it was a Saturday - but was it stressful? No it wasnt, now go and ask that to the people in the long bank holiday traffic queues, or trying to shop in these awful Garden and DIY stores.
Bank Holiday Monday's coming up and I will be hiding well away from the roads in our office working on the business as I listen to the sounds of very stressful people outside on the roads - people who are supposed to be having a relaxing short holiday.
Now I'm not the one to take holidays at this time of year, preferring to take time away from the business in autumn or over the winter, so I volunteered to be the one minding the tools over the next few days.
I had planned to start a job at 10am this morning wiring and installing an electrical supply to a garden shed and kit it out with sockets and lights, but a call late yesterday from one of our main customers, who urgently required a visit first thing this morning to one of their locations to investigate loss of power in a kitchen, got me up bright and early and off to Aberfoyle, about 20 miles away.
I was only on site in Aberfoyle for 30 minutes before I headed back to Stirling and already I knew my decision to choose work over pleasure this Easter weekend was the right one.
The road from Stirling to Aberfoyle is a very popular tourist route and even just before 10am in the morning, traffic was building up as families or more to the point husbands were being dragged out by their wives (or vice versa), to do what everybody else was doing - getting in a car and driving somewhere just for the sake of it being Easter. The point of a holiday is to do something to relax you away from the rigors of your work but all they were doing were getting more stressed as they took to the roads in their cars, what with more cars taking to the road - then caravans joining in which make the queues worse as motorbikes whiz pass at a hundred miles an hour, darting between traffic with death defying maneuvers.
Where were these people going?, some just like to drive which is fine as I like the same thing on occasions as well, but not on a bank holiday weekend - some like to go to the local safari park, fine again if you have a family, I like a safari as well, but the Kenyan variety - but where do most of these annoying people on the roads go at this tine of year? - yes, the garden and DIY stores - why? well i aint a clue. Give me a shed to wire any day rather than buy a plant or some paint ( and don't get me started about Mr Public having easy access to electrical accessories at these stores )
So I crawled through the traffic and eventually got to my job of wiring up the shed - 4 hours later it was all done - yes it was work, yes it was a Saturday - but was it stressful? No it wasnt, now go and ask that to the people in the long bank holiday traffic queues, or trying to shop in these awful Garden and DIY stores.
Bank Holiday Monday's coming up and I will be hiding well away from the roads in our office working on the business as I listen to the sounds of very stressful people outside on the roads - people who are supposed to be having a relaxing short holiday.
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