THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS "DIVA"

All returns out the door....

Many more returns efiled this year than last.....

One band-aided workstation that died on Friday....

One workstation that has a non functional mouse (ever try to drive a Windows workstation these days with no mouse?  It's not pretty... not sure what's up with that one.... the mouse just died or something)

Quite a few times where we needed to get tax information to a client who had no access to a fax machine.  So we took our copiers/scanner/printer and scanned in the tax info, went into Adobe Acrobat, secured/encrypted it, sent it via email, ensuring that we verbally gave the password to the client.

Earlier this year I was on a online committee that wanted to set baseline minimum standards for protecting data and one of the points that someone made was that a workstation that had identity information on it shouldnt' be attached to the Internet for surfing.  But look at all the ways that I needed the Internet today....

I needed the Internet to efile tax returns....

I needed the Internet to efile extensions....

I needed the Internet to email information... to receive information.....

I needed the Internet to research information.....

I needed the Internet to make online payments at www.offiicalpayments.com to pay tax due via credit card for clients.

We're a connected world.... so how do you help your clients stay connected? 

And by the way..just a heads up folks... maybe not tomorrow.. but the day after that... go call that CPA or that Accountant in the USA still running those 98 Peer to Peer networks and tell them to sign up for the www.microsoft.com/accountant program where he can sign up for the Action Pack.  There's no excuse for a CPA to be still on Windows 98.  There's no line of business application that you SHOULD still be on that can only run on 98.  I haven't met a DOS program yet that couldn't run on 98 ...but then again... I don't WANT to meet DOS programs anymore.  They have better alteratives.... change is good and we in the accounting industry need to realize that a DOS accounting application probably means that it was written with lousy security build in.

A Windows 98  machine in your network lowers the secure-ability of your entire network, forcing you to make adjustments to your network to get those 98s' to work.

June 30, 98, 98SEs and MEs are no longer going to get security updates.

After that date..they'll be your body counts...