TAX SEASON IS HERE - THE FUN OF FILING OF INCOME TAXES THIS YEAR

 Got some tax returns out to clients.  It has not been easy this year.  In addition to the usual problems – missing papers that clients have to get to me after the sending the rest of the papers, etc.  I have been having unusual problems this year.

A business client was ill and needed surgery – so had to get an extension for her business as the returns for same were due March 15.  Then sales tax was due March 20 – luckily she was back at work part time by then and was able to mail me (she does not use a computer at all) a list of her sales so that was out on time.  

I keep a copy of last year's returns for clients on paper and scan all returns (and many other papers) into the computer to be able to store them in much less space and it is much easier to find and access what is needed.  I have been using 2 different software programs which make pdf files to do this.  We had to get a new “all in one” (printer, scanner, fax) during the past year – this is the second one we have bought – returned the first one due to scanner peculiarities and bought this one, a different unit from a different manufacture, which seemed to work fine.  But it has developed peculiarities also – I cannot add pages to a saved pdf file.  So I was making different files and copying the pages into the older one from the newer one.  Did that on a return recently and suddenly – all the pages are there, but I can only print the pages from the original file.  Husband found software to combine files – it took over my computer making itself the default not only for scanning, but also for printing (and we did not even know it printed.  Husband took it out today, but it still seems to be default for scanning and printing – I will have to have him reset the default programs for me.  (Yes, I could do it myself – in college he would copy my computer programs, but it gives him something to do and if anything goes awry, at least I will not get blamed while he repairs the problem.)
    

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

Tax time is here (in the USA) – don't forget to file on time or get an extension.  Don't give Uncle Sam (or his friends the states) a reason to charge you penalties and interest – you KNOW you pay them too much to begin with.  Only 19 days left to file (due April 18 this year Federally and in most states).

WELL I THOUGHT MY EMAIL PROBLEMS WOULD BE BEHIND NOW - BUT NO, NOW I HAVE TO DELETE SOMEWHERE AROUND 90% OF WHAT HAS COME INTO MY COMPUTER

 Sorry about missing last week.   My main computer and email are still not completely back up and running from the email software problems I have been having. I really depend on my computer(s) to stay organized.  

What do YOU do with your email to read and keep track of it?

We did have to delete the software and do a clean install of the new software.  By doing this we then had to do a new setup of all my email accounts.  Okay – you have one or two or three email accounts – but as part of my organizing I have somewhere around 15 accounts.  15 accounts – why?  

Well I have my basic account – my family, husband's family and maybe 3 or 4 close friends have this email address – this way I can respond to the most important people in our lives quickly.  

I have an account for my accounting practice for my clients to contact me.  

One of my business clients – a woman in her 80s who still owns, runs and goes to work at her business every day – does not use a computer.  Her alarm company only bills by email.  So I opened up an account for her business to deal with this.  Before the pandemic when I was going in every month I would print out the bills when they came in, bring them with me to her and write the check for her to pay the company.  Since the pandemic I print the bills and mail them to her to pay as I have not being going to her – she mails me copies of the info I need.  

I have an account for the craft business which husband and I have for matters related to the business.

I have an account for my cell phone so it works.

I have an account for my embroidery club – it is used for things related to the club and me.  I have a second account for this club – but this account I have as the treasurer of the club – when I am no longer treasurer the new treasurer will get this account and have records of what the old treasurer (me) sent out, received, and did.  

I have an account for our reenactment unit – it used, for things related to the unit and me.  I also, again, have a second account for the unit as I am, again, treasurer of it.  (When one is an accountant one always ends up being the treasurer.)  This is used for business of the unit and will, again, be passed along to the next treasurer at some point.

I have an email account for this blog – any of you who want to me contact – feel free to do using the blog's email address.

I have 2 email accounts which I use when doing things online – such as various online groups/sites I belong to.  

I have 2 email accounts which were used with other clubs I used to belong to and I have kept for when I send an email and not be known.  

I also have one email account which has a different start to it as when I give the email address by telephone (something I used to do often when making hotel reservations back at the end of 20th century) my normal format has an “f” in it which people hear when talk as “s”, so when I need to give my email address by telephone I use this address as it does not have that problem.

My poor husband sat for 2 days entering all of these accounts into the new software and making sure they work properly.
Biggest problem is that when we talked about wiping out the old program and installing the new I asked him if this would result in just the unread emails being brought into the computer or all of the ones in the accounts.  He assured that only the unread emails would be brought into my computer/the software.  Wrong guess – one email address brought in something like 32,000 emails!!  (And that is one of my junk accounts.) While I might like to have them in my computer I don't NEED emails from 2018 – or more importantly don't even WANT emails from 2008!  

So I spend a good part of every day going through the email accounts in the software and deleting old emails – by the single email or more generally by the page.  I also have to sort some of the ones I am keeping into special folders to be able some emails more easily (such as the emails from USPS telling me what mail was to be delivered to me each day – if you haven't signed up for this service, it is very good to have).  When deleting emails – even single ones – they take quite awhile to be deleted which is annoying and slows the process down.  I figure this could take a month or two or more to finish doing.

I have also found that some – not a lot, but some – emails came through scrambled or unformatted and in at least one case the name in the list does not match the text in the email – it being one of the ones from USPS by title, but not the text in it.  

In addition we made the changeover just before I was due to email out the monthly newsletter for my embroidery club.  I had finished the newsletter just before husband started dealing with all of this – it was written and saved in a text processing program so what I had written was not affected by all of this.  I went to last month's newsletter and copied the list of who it was sent to and pasted that into the email for this newsletter.  Instead of showing the showing the emails it only showed the member's names!  I could not send it out using the information from last month's newsletter.  I hate to push my work off onto someone else – but had to as it serves as the meeting reminder and I wanted it out a month before the meeting – so I sent it the club president (who knew I was having email problems) and asked her to send it out for me.  I send out 2 other copies – one to those who asked about our club and one to certain people in the region management who I am required to send it to.   Those went out a couple of days after I hand copied their information into new address books in the new program.  I have been told that there was problem with this – attached files (including the newsletter) cannot be opened as before – they have to be copied first.  

Throw into all of this – husband set up the program to automatically download emails when I sign on.  At some point I have this changed to wait until I check for emails as if I sign after having checked emails for the day earlier in the day – it will download any new ones when I do not generally want them as if I am back in the account it generally means I need information from something I have already read.  The other problem with this is if I do need to check for email again in ONE account – all of them are downloading any email which has come in.  

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
This will be an ongoing project for some time.  There is nothing else I can do to get it all cleaned up.  I am trying to do it logical way – in my case I started with the first email account in the list – not the most important one.  I figure if I have all my emails from the start of 2022 in my computer I can always refer to older ones in my online account if needed.  Only somewhere around 40,000 emails left to sort through!

What do YOU do with your email to read and keep track of it – no really, I am curious what other people do?

COMPUTER PROBLEMS CONTINUE TO PLAGUE US - HAVE YOU UPDATED EVERYTHING FOR THE NEW SECURITY STANDARDS?

 This is my computer problem which has been set aside for the past couple of weeks since it started as husband's computer was much more important than mine.  

I use a software program to check my email – but like most to all of the programs I use, I have not updated it.   I hate adjusting to the assorted changes to programs which invariably come with the update and will put off updating unless necessary for the program to run.  

At the same time husband had the problems with our Win 10 computer the recent security changes to online caught up with me.  I could not use my email program to check my email as I did not meet the new requirements.  Normally I would have had husband deal with the changes – but he was still dealing with the computer problems he had.  So I did what I had to – I started checking email by signing into each email account separately and checking email that way.  I have a number of emails accounts – my general one for family and friends, a couple for when I don't want to be known and may need to drop the account if it gets hacked, one for groups I go to online, one for me for my embroidery guild, another one I use as treasurer of my chapter of same – which I consider to be an email of the chapter and I can pass along to the next treasurer to use, one for me for our reenactment unit, a similar email address for the treasurer of the unit – again, can be passed along to the next treasurer, one for a client – she does not use a computer and her business's alarm company only bills by email – so I set up an email account for her and I monitor it for her, an email for this site, an email address for me for the craft business husband and I have, and about 5 or 6 more for various purposes – some of which are gone and I have the kept the address for junk use.  

I knew I could not sign in and out of all of these accounts daily. I picked the ones most important to check daily and I do so.  The remaining ones I am checking once a week.  Unfortunately for some reason my computer does not like me signing in and out and in and out… one after another.  So around the 4th email address – it gets hung up and I end up having to reboot the computer, same after a few more email checks – I am not talking a lot of emails here – most have none, others might have 3 or 4 at most – but the computer is not happy.  So checking email has become an extended chore.  

Yesterday I asked husband if all was okay with his computer and it was running as before and as needed and it was.  So I asked him to help me setup my email accounts to meet the new requirements.  We spent 3 hours today trying to do so.  It has not happened – not even with one account – and worst of all -  I did not get to check ANY email accounts today – though I am sure I did not miss anything.   We set up an account and then it is rejected when we try to check email.  Latest idea is that we delete the email program and start all over with a new copy and enter each account as it needs to be for the new standards.  

Well – at least we have something to do.

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

Don't be like me – keep your programs updated to avoid problems – and don't wait for the last minute to make needed changes.

COMPUTER REPAIR - PART 2

 Everything was not okay with his computer.  When it came back using the backup there were no speakers and other problems.  He decided to use an older backup – from March – and then the entire process went blooey!!  He worked it on for hours and hours.  Last Friday we gave in and took it to the chain computer store we used – and bought the computer from – to see what they could do.  

Of course there is a diagnostic fee, which with tax was over $40.  They contacted us back on Monday morning with all sorts of suggestions that he should add to the computer.  I don't remember if I mentioned this – but the computer is 14 months old – 2 months past the end of the warranty – of course.  They wanted to take out drives and add drives – and none of the drives were damaged.  They also wanted to update it to Win 11 – we are barely into using Win 10 and hate it compared to Win 7.  Their price for the repair was coming to more than we paid for the computer to begin with!  He told them no to what they wanted to add and to just reinstall windows as the hardware was not damaged per them.  We picked it up yesterday, Tuesday, and he has been working on reinstalling software and putting back a backup.  Seems to work well again.  He got different backup software to use – though we have used what he had used for years, if not decades.

This was the first desktop computer we actually “bought as a computer” since maybe the last century.  Husband has been building our computers with my help since then.  We buy the parts at the same computer store and then assemble the computers – well he assembles them, I just help.  Before these computers we have made we have bought computers since before we were married (close to 50 years) starting with Atari 800.  We have never had problems with a computer such as we had with this.  None of them stopped working – we stopped using them due to change in type of computer or when the computer was actually too antiquated to keep using – never due to a problem with them working.  The reason we bought this computer instead of assembling this one  was that it was cheaper and the computer was being used only for software which needed Win 10 while we kept using our old Win 7  computers which we like.  


THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

KEEP BACKING UP – OFTEN.  Make sure that you make the backups separate each time and if you can – onto alternating drives and other media also so if a problem occurs one can go back a backup if needed.   (And remember “the Cloud” is just “someone else's hard drive”).

ARE YOUR FINANCES - CHECKING ACCOUNT - UNDER CONTROL?

Boy has my financial juggling gone astray today!  We live on limited income from a variety of sources and sometimes we have a timing problem (bills due out this week, money coming coming in next week type of thing).  As an accountant I am pretty good at this juggling. 

I had it all planned out.  We have dividends coming in on Monday which would cover almost all of our bills due out in the next week – except our RV payment and that is due out this week.  I knew that later in February we would need to take money out of husband's IRA to cover our car insurance, but had time until same. 

Well, the money to cover the RV payment was to come from the monthly client I have and she pays me quarterly when I go and do her books, etc. and I was due for a check in January.  I tried to go to her last week, but when I called on Monday she was going to the doctor on Tuesday and did not expect to come into her place of business on Wednesday or Thursday either – maybe Friday she suggested?  Friday it actually was suppose to be nice weather here and in Pennsylvania and husband was ready to go to Pennsylvania for the day and I could not disappoint him – who knows when the weather would be right in both places again as it has been so long since they were.

So I said that I would be in this week.  I telephoned her on Monday to go yesterday, Tuesday, but she still was not feeling well so today, Wednesday it had to be.  In addition to needing to do her bank rec, payroll taxes have to be filed by the end of January so I had to go there now!  I was glad that weather stayed nice and no snow or rain.

I planned last night to deal with my problem – I wrote out a deposit slip for her check.  I checked where  branches of our bank are near her. I checked where a post office was near her.  My plan was that when I finished doing her books I would take the check from her, deposit and mail out the RV payment. 

When I got there she had a bad month and not only could not pay me, she could not pay her rent either.  I did her books.  I had her sign her payroll tax forms.  I dealt with a couple of problems she had which are not related to what I am suppose to do, but I do things for her – she is in her 80s. 

Well, I have my check – but cannot deposit it until she calls and says okay.  I need to get that RV check out tomorrow, so we will have to go and take the money out of husband's IRA now and hope that she says I can cash check when the bills that were to be paid later in February with the IRA money come due.   Just when I think I have it all taken care of….

I am sure that all of you have had similar problems.  The important thing to do is keep track of it all – accurately so that nothing bounces – and if there is that rare occasion that something goes wrong and it does bounce – both the bank and who you paid will look at your records and say “hey, this never happens with you – of course we understand and will waive the fees for the bounced check/late payment”.  (Yes, I did mess up badly once a few years ago and the fees were waived by both by the bank for the bounced check and by the company I had paid with the check as our record was so good that they could excuse the one error.)

To help keep my records accurate I use a software program to help me – Quickbooks (Quicken it's non- business alternative is good also).  I keep my checkbook by hand and also in the program – and the two of them better agree or I have a problem to look for.  The software lets me memorize the payments and when they are do and will remind me when I open it what bills need to be paid and what money should be coming in.   It also lets me keep my personal expenses separate from our various businesses and each of them separate from the others.  Lets me set up accounts for our tax related expenses and income to keep track of them for the taxes when they filed the following year. 

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK – Now is the time to get started so that next tax season will easier for you to deal with your income taxes (presuming that you are in the US and need to do so).  It is also a good time to start keeping better financial records in general as we all need to do same and it is easier to start with the start of a year than in the middle of it.