If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you know that I use Google Reader to pull content from all over the Internet and read it all in one place.  My friend’s situation made me wonder if a Craigslist search could be pulled into Google Reader.  Indeed, it can be done and it is very easy.

For example, after selecting my location (Las Vegas), I can go to the For Sale – Computers section and search for a tablet (not that I’m looking for a used tablet on Craigslist, but it makes a good example for this blog post).

When I scroll to the bottom of the page, there is a small RSS button on the right side.

After I click on the RSS button, I copy the resulting page’s URL.  In Google Reader, I click on the subscribe button and paste the URL.

How do you use Craigslist for business, if at all?  I am curious to know, so please leave a comment below.

One of the most useful abilities of Go To Special is selecting blank cells.  For example, I first select all of the cells in a table (A1:D6 shown below).  In the Go To Special window, I select the Blanks option.  After clicking on OK, the empty cells in the table are selected.

With the empty cells selected, I can then change the cells’ background color to yellow, for example.  I can also enter a value for the cells, such as zero, making the value apply to all of them at once by holding the Ctrl key while pressing enter.

The Errors option (under Formulas) in the Go To Special screen will select all of the cells with errors.  It’s a fast and effective way of making sure a spreadsheet is error-free.  After all, few things are more embarrassing than giving someone a spreadsheet with errors where there are supposed to be numbers.

How have the other Go To Special options been helpful for you?  Please share by leaving a comment below.

I don’t log in to Pinterest often, so I follow my friends’ boards in Google Reader.  I use Google Reader to subscribe to blogs, news websites, and other RSS feeds.  It’s my way of consuming social media content all in one place.

Subscribing to Pinterest boards in Google Reader is a simple process.  For example, to follow my Tax & Accounting board, copy the URL of the board (http://pinterest.com/dustinwcpa/tax-accounting/).  In Google Reader, click on the subscribe button and paste the URL into the box.  Then, type “rss” at the end of the URL and click on the add button.

Some of the accounting related boards I have subscribed to are Jody Padar, Bill Sheridan, FreshBooks, and the CPA firm of Alpern Rosenthal.

To make an adjusting journal entry, click on the Settings tab.  That seems strange to me since I don’t consider journal entries to be a setting in accounting software, but where else would it go?

Under Wave Setup, click on Journal Transactions.  Then, a screen appears with a layout that will be familiar to accountants.  Wave Accounting has some nice features here, including the ability to create a new account by clicking the plus button, and yes, debits must equal credits (so much for my attempt to corrupt the system).

Moffsoft FreeCalc’s tape feature is far more useful than the paper that comes out of 10 key machines.  The figures on a tape can be copied, saved, printed and cleared.  Some CPA firms are using FreeCalc to copy and paste the simulated paper tapes as annotations within PDF documents.  Numbers on a tape can be “re-used” when double-clicked.  As an added bonus, you’ll never have to replace the paper rolls or ink.

When I enter “Dustin Wheeler” in the search box, Google suggests the following:

The first one listed is Dustin Wheeler, CPA.  Yes, that’s me!  The next two are not me (though “Dustin Wheeler Chevrolet” has a nice ring to it – it’s a dealership in Hinton, Oklahoma).

Next, I went through the alphabet adding a letter after my name to see how Google autocompletes it.  Here is the letter L:

Las Vegas is one of the few cities that comes up.  People could have searched for me using the city where I live to narrow the search results.

Moving on to Q…

Yes, I am a member of the QuickBooks ProAdvisor program.

Another fun activity is entering a company or product followed by the word “is.”  Searches for “Google is” and “Facebook is” produces some really funny autocomplete suggestions, though they are mostly negative in nature.  Google’s algorithm has some kind words for FreshBooks, however.

Hopefully, Google’s autocomplete will say the same about me someday.

• Chrometa, which I reviewed for the CPA Practice Advisor, runs in the background and automatically tracks the amount of time a computer user spends on active program windows.
• FreshBooks has an easy user interface for online invoicing and accounts receivable management (including tracking when customers have viewed and paid invoices).

Setting up the integration was very easy.  It was so easy, in fact, I intuitively figured it out without having to search for help.  In Chrometa, go to Account, then Integrations.  Enter your FreshBooks URL in the input box as shown below.

Chrometa exports invoices to FreshBooks, but not time entries.  A user integrating the two programs will have to use Chrometa for timekeeping and creating invoices.  The user would then use FreshBooks for sending the invoices to customers.

In Chrometa, click on the Time button.  Assign time to a project (in my example, the client is “Test Client” and the project is “Tax Return”).

Click on the Invoices button, then New Invoice.  Select the client and project name.  Enter the start and end dates for the time you want to invoice for.  There is also a cool feature here to round time to the nearest minute, six minutes, fifteen minutes, or hour.  In my example, 14 minutes and 42 seconds rounds up nicely to an even 15 minutes.

Then, click on the Get Time button.  Click on Save to generate an invoice.

Click on the Invoices tab.  Click on the drop-down arrow in the Action column and select Export To FreshBooks.

Now, log in to your FreshBooks account.  Under “Recent Activity” on the home page, the newly imported invoice should be listed.  Click on the link for the new invoice to view it.

With the invoice open in FreshBooks, I can edit it and choose among several options for sending:

• print it.
• convert it to a PDF document.
• e-mail it.
• snail mail it.

*Obviously, this invoice is completely fictional.  I do not prepare tax returns for $100/hour, nor does it typically take 15 minutes.  The name “Test Client” is completely made up, and any similarity to a real person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Apparently, Intuit has recognized the value of these social media tools for marketing and added them as a means for QuickBooks users to connect with prospective customers.  It is cool to see accounting software become a little more social.

The SUMIF function adds the values in cells specified by a given condition or criteria.  Tim Gavin, a fellow CPA blogger, wrote a great blog post last week for the Sikich Technology Blog explaining how the SUMIF function works.  I won’t reinvent the wheel here, so check out his post for a tutorial.  I simply want to give an example of how I use it.

Let’s say I’m cruising along in Excel making journal entries.  Each entry is designated by a letter.  Some entries have multiple debit and credit adjustments.  Work comes to a screeching halt when I check the column totals and realize that my journal entries are out of balance by $200.  It may be easy to spot the difference with only four entries in the screenshot I’ve provided below, but just imagine that I’ve exhausted the alphabet and am up to entry z.  With so many adjustments, finding the discrepancy could become a painful and time-consuming ordeal.

Here comes the SUMIF function to the rescue.  First, I enter the letters of the alphabet for each journal entry down a column (using the fill handle to drag down the letters sequentially saves some wear and tear on the keyboard).  Then I enter the formula shown below and copy it down for each letter.  The formula adds the amounts for the debit and credit column that correspond to each letter of the alphabet.

The results are in.  Adjustments a, b, and c balance out.  It was adjustment d that threw me off my game.

We brainstormed a few possible ways to reverse the page order.  In the past, I had just used the pages navigation panel to rearrange the page order for small PDF files of five pages or less.  However, for a long document of about 100 pages, this idea didn’t seem practical.  We also could have printed off the entire document and resorted the pages by hand, but that didn’t sound like fun.

Naturally, I turned to Google.  I searched for “reverse page order in Adobe Acrobat” and ended up in this Adobe forum.  The sixth post in this forum provides Javascript code, which I saved to my Acrobat Javascript Folder.  After that, a new item called “reverse” appeared under the document menu (see screenshot below).

Within a few seconds, the script put the pages in the right order, and I literally saved one accountant’s world from turning upside-down.