It’s a huge challenge for some people to stop procrastinating. No matter how many excuses you might use, in whichever profession you are in, procrastination is procrastination, and leaves you to rush around at the last minute, ultimately producing sloppy work. Putting off work to the very last minute in exchange for some more time on reddit never makes sense in hindsight. But when procrastination takes hold, illogical choices are made and the hole you stand in is dug deeper.

Just as an alcoholic must decide to accept that drinking alcohol isn’t healthy, the first step to stop procrastinating is really admitting that you have a problem, and that you need to do something about it. Once you’ve admitted you have a problem, it’s time to defeat it! Here are three helpful and fun tools that we use around the ProOnGo offices to help us stay on task.

3 Tools to Help You Stop Procrastinating

#1: CARROT

At first glance, CARROT, with its rib-tickling humor turns into more than just an app that is designed to help you stop procrastinating. Simply put, it is a to-do list that you can download from the iTunes Store for your iPhone. You assign tasks, pick a time limit and CARROT will help you stay on task by expressing joy or frustration in how much time it takes you to complete the task.  One word of caution, when using CARROT: do not upset “her”.

#2: RescueTime

As the name suggest, you will rescue your time using this app that is a Web app. RescueTime monitors your activity on your computer so you can see just how much time you’re actually wasting. Seeing the breakdown of what you do everyday should surely be a motivation to change your ways, as well as spot inefficiencies in your schedule.

#3: Remember the Milk

We’ve been using this app since the beginning of ProOnGo in 2008. Remember the Milk is a simple task app that let’s you schedule tasks in advance so you’re always up-to-date on the next important thing you should be working on. Signing for a basic account is free but the pro account costs $25 a year. You can sync this app with Microsoft Outlook, Android and Apple devices, as well as Google Mail and Calendar.

Keep your data! How to set up an automatic backups in QuickBooks 2013:

The fact is – bad things do happen to good people. Man and machine are not perfect and mistakes, even catastrophes happen. One such catastrophe for small businesses are computer crashes.

The business data is the heart and soul of the business, it goes hand in hand in the operation. Loss of data, even if the data is just temporarily inaccessible, can lead to profit loss, hurt your reputation, and even lead to litigation.

Even though most of us business owners know that we need to do regular automatic backups, the fact is that many, if not most, don’t do it. So let’s take a moment how to perform these backups on a regular basis using your QuickBooks 2013:

QuickBooks offers 2 different automatic backups

1. IDP – Intuit Data Protect (online automatic back-up – subscription based)
2. Local Backup – automatically backup your data when you close your QuickBooks company  file.

The following will show you how to backup your QuickBooks company file locally and set up a recurring backup, so you can trust that your data is always backed up.

How to setup QuickBooks to automatically protect data locally

Follow these instructions to have QuickBooks back up your company file daily or on specific days and times. You can schedule an automatic backup to a network drive, USB flash drive, or Zip disk.

Important: For a scheduled automatc backup to take place, the computer you use to run QuickBooks must be on, but the company file you want to back up cannot be in use. Be sure to schedule your automatic backups accordingly.

First, browse to File->Back Up Company->Create Local Backup to open the backup wizard.

Click Options to set your backup defaults (such as where you want to save your local backup) and then click OK. The backup defaults you set when you click Options are for manual and automatic backups only. You will set your options for scheduled backups in the steps that follow.

Select Next, then make sure to select ‘Only schedule future backups” and then click Next.

Under “Back Up On a Schedule” click New.

If you don’t want to keep a lot of backups so you can conserve space on your hard drive, click the checkbox to limit the number of backups and enter a number in the field provided. For example, if you choose to keep three backups, QuickBooks deletes the earliest backup when it goes to save the fourth backup. If you don’t specify a number, QuickBooks saves all of your backups.

Next, enter a Description for your scheduled backup. This name appears in your list of scheduled backups so you can easily find it later. The description is mainly used by bookkeepers that have multiple company files. Then, click Browse to select the folder where you want to store your backup copies. This can be on a network drive or on portable storage media such as a USB flash drive or Zip disk.

Then, you’ll select the time, weekly frequency, and day(s) for the backup to take place. For example, if you want to run your backups daily, select every day of the week and run the task every “1″ week.

After you’ve set the frequency, click Store Password and enter the requested Windows login information. QuickBooks requires the Windows login information so it can run the scheduled backup. If you don’t enter login information for the backup location you selected, the backup fails due to a Windows permission failure.

Click OK to return to the previous window. The backup appears in the list in the Backup on a schedule section of the window. Click Finish to close the wizard.

Note: Scheduled backups will automatically include the date and time the backup was created in the file name. The date and time stamps are necessary for QuickBooks to manage the number of scheduled backups to retain on the system.

Having to write off bad debt is one of those common business scenarios everyone. If you find yourself in a situation in which you need to write off bad debt from one of our customers, the first thing you should do is make sure you’ve exhausted all resources in attempting to collect.

Bad debt doesn’t necessarily mean you have a customer that is out to get you. Your customer may be going through a bankruptcy, so it’s important to reach out to your customer, obtain as much information about the situation, and see if you can come to an agreement to pay part of the debt, work out a payment plan, or get in line behind other creditors.

If all of that fails, there are two methods of writing off bad debt. Which one is good for you largely depends on how you currently do your accounting. The two options are:

1) Cash Accounting
2) Accrual Accounting

The following will detail how to write off bad debt for each of these situations.

Write Off Bad Debt – Cash Accounting

Void Invoice

The main difference between accrual accounting and cash accounting when writing off bad debt is how you count your income; with cash accounting, an open invoice is not considered to be income yet.

So to write off bad debt with cash accounting, all that needs to be done is to void the invoice.

Browse to Customers->Customer Center and select the name of the customer on the left hand side. Next to Show, select Invoices from the dropdown and double click on the invoice you wish to write off. Once you’re looking at the invoice you’d like to write off, just select Void.

Write Off Bad Debt – Accrual Accounting

Credit Customer with Bad Debt

With accrual accounting, as soon as an invoice is sent out, it is counted as income. So in order to write off bad debt, you must issue a Bad Debt credit to cancel out the invoice income.

Before you do so, you must make sure you have Bad Debt listed as a Product/Service item. To do so, browse under Company->Lists then choose Products and Services List. Then select New and enter ‘Bad Debt’ next to name. Choose ‘Bad Debts – Expense’ (or similar) next to Account and select Save.

Now that you’ve added Bad Debt as a Product & Service item, you’re able to write off the bad debt.  Select the Customers tab, then under More, choose Refund or Credit. In the pop-up, choose Credit and make sure “Give credit for something already billed to the customer” is selected. Then enter in the Customer name and under Product/Service, choose ‘Bad Debt.’ Enter in the description that you’re writing off bad debt and in the Rate column, enter in the amount you’re writing off. Select Save and you’ve successfully written off the Bad Debt!

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As with all accounting practices, it’s always best to consult your accountant before you make any changes to your books. Speak with your accountant or a QuickBooks Pro Advisor to ensure you’re using the best method for your business.

Studies have shown that a sedentary lifestyle, which includes sitting for long hours, is actually just as detrimental to the longevity of life as opposed to smoking and drinking. And for those of us who put in a lot of time at the office, it would be unthinkable to do so without a sitting desk. They’re everywhere, and just as necessary as computers these days.

However, a new trend is taking over in the offices of cutting edge companies like Apple, Chevron, Intel, Allstate, Boeing and Google; introducing standing desks into their office place. While these standing desks may look funny, and at first blush seem uncomfortable, standing desks have proven to be a healthy solution to the growing problem of obesity.

The Facts on Sitting

We’ve all been sitting at our desks for the majority of our working life, but did we know it was so bad for us? Pennington Biomedical Researcher, Marc Hamilton, found that calorie-burning rate immediately plunges to about one per minute, a third of what it would be if you got up and walked. He also found insulin effectiveness drops within a single day, which limits our cells’ ability to allow glucose to be turned into glucogen. This means that we end up storing fat instead of burning it.

An American Cancer Society study found that men who spent six hours or more per day of their leisure time sitting had an overall death rate that was about 20 percent higher than the men who sat for three hours or less. The death rate for women who sat for more than six hours a day was about 40 percent higher.

Standing Desk – Should Your Workplace Have Them?

With the benefits of a standing desk at work apparent to many, it’s no surprise that there are several companies that offer numerous  models for the workplace. While some of these models include the ability to adjust the desk’s height, there are others that even have a treadmill attached to the standing desk. Popular companies that sell variants of the standing desk include TrekDesk, ErgoDesktop and SteelCase and so on and so forth.

If you don’t want to buy these desks which can range between $1600 to $4000, there are also DIY methods by which you can make one yourself.

But the verdict is out: Yes, a standing desk is the obvious cure to the sedentary lifestyle problem, and it’s probably a good idea for your workplace to consider using these desks. Even if you are unable to incorporate a standing desk, using little tricks like getting up and walking around for 2 minutes every hour have dramatic effects on your long-term health. The improvement in your health might not be life-changing upfront, but small investments have been shown to pay off big dividends in the end.

One of the more common questions in the QuickBooks community is how to make the transition from QuickBooks for Mac to QuickBooks Online. While QuickBooks for Mac is undoubtedly a beautiful program, the upside of having your information stored on a cloud and the ability to use third-party apps from Intuit App Center is just too irresistible for some users.

Moving from QuickBooks for Mac to QuickBooks Online does require the use of a PC for a crucial part of the step. So if you do not have access to a Windows computer or cannot run Parallels, BootCamp or another service that allows you to run Windows inside Mac, you might be out of luck.

The following blog post will detail how to transfer your company file from QuickBooks for Mac to QuickBooks Online.

Convert your QuickBooks for Mac file
Because QuickBooks Online only accepts company files from QuickBooks for Windows, we’ll have to first convert our QuickBooks for Mac into a QuickBooks for Windows file.

To do so, you must first prepare the company file for conversion. Because the move from QuickBooks for Mac isn’t a perfect process, we must fix all the known bugs ourselves so we don’t run into any trouble.

• Locate the company file in your file system and copy it to the desktop. You can find where your company file by opening up QuickBooks and choosing Help->Product information.
• Copy the company file to your desktop
• Remove all special characters from the name of the company file — special characters are the bane of every developer’s existence and generally causes errors, so we’ll have to eliminate all symbols like !@#$%^&*
• Open up the copied company file in QuickBooks and delete all memorized (i.e. recurring) transactions and reports. To do so, select Lists->Memorized Transactions and select Edit->Delete Memorized Transaction to delete each one of your memorized transactions. To delete your memorized reports, select Reports->Reports Center. You should see your memorized reports so you can highlight and select the red X.
• Resort your lists
• After you’ve deleted all memorized transactions & reports and resorted your lists, you’ll have to rebuild the company file.
• The last “bug” we’ll have to fix is are transactions that have memos longer than 50 characters.  To do so, you’ll have to run a report that enables you to locate these transactions and modify them.
• Choose Reports->Custom Reports->Transaction Detail
• Under Date, make sure to choose All and under Columns, make sure Memo has a checkmark next to it, then click OK.
• Expand the memo column and edit any memos that have more than 50 characters (including spaces) by double clicking on the memo.
• If you’ve edited any Memos, then you must rebuild your company file again.
• Now we’ll get to the meat and potatoes: actually converting the company file to a Windows format. Go to File->Back Up to QuickBooks for Windows
• Choose a name and location for the file and click Save. Simple. No sweat.

The next steps are done from a Windows machine. You’ll have to upload the Windows file from a Windows machine to QuickBooks Online.

• Move the file from your Mac machine to your Windows machine and save it
• Open up Internet Explorer and navigate to QuickBooks Online and login
• Choose Company->Import QuickBooks Desktop Data
• Choose Other versions of QuickBooks for Windows
• Follow the wizard to download ActiveX, browse your file system for the company file, and you’re all set!

If you have to rebuild your company file, it’s most likely to fix damage and ensure no damage to your company file & lists in the future. Rebuilding a company file has the potential to do a lot of damage, so before you rebuild your file, you must first make sure you have resorted your lists and that you have a backup copy of your company file. It’s very important to never cancel or abort the Rebuild Data Utility as it will corrupt your company file.

Here’s how to rebuild your company file:

1. Select File->Utilities->Rebuild Data and select OK to create a backup
2. Select Local Backup
3. Click Options and locate where you’d like to save the backup
4. Select Complete Verification and choose OK, then choose Next.
5. Enter in a name for your backup, making sure you do not include any special characters (!@#$%^&*) and click Save. QuickBooks will begin the backup and automatically start the Rebuild Data Utility.

That’s it! Now, you’ll no longer be stumped if anyone tells you to rebuild your company file in QuickBooks!

If you’re reubilding your company file, you may come across the instruction to resort lists in QuickBooks for Mac. Resorting lists in QuickBooks may not seem like something that is necessary as you might not notice any difference in the order of your list items. But resorting lists isn’t for you, it’s for QuickBooks. Resorting is often used to fix any damage to your lists that could hurt the process of Rebuilding your company file.

If you’re given instructions to Resort Lists, there are three lists to be concerned with: Master Name list, Chart of Accounts, and Items and Classes list.

To Resort Master Name List:

1. Go to the Banking->Write Check
2. Click in the Payee field and select Command (Apple Key) + L. That will bring up your Master Name list.
3. Make sure All Names is selected at the bottom
4. Go to Edit->Resort List and click OK.

To Resort Chart of Accounts, Items & Classes Lists:

1. Go to Lists->Chart of Accounts
2. Make sure All Accounts or Include Inactive is selected at the bottom
3. Go to Edit->Resort List and click OK.
4. Repeat steps 1-3, only for Items & Classes.

Once you’ve resorted your lists, you’re ready to rebuild your data!

How many hours do you work a day? If you’re like most Americans, you probably check in at 9 AM every day, take a 25 minute lunch, then call it quits around 5 pm.  If you’re frantically working those entire 7.5 hours, you must be pretty effective at adding value to your company everyday, right? Well, sometimes it doesn’t feel like it.

Maybe you jump on a conference call that eats up an hour and a half, you run down the post office to send out some checks, you answer some emails and start typing up the copy for your next press release, and *phew!* look at that! The day is done.

You may have had your stress capacity operating at 95% the entire day, but look what you did? Not much.

This is the difference between being efficient vs. effective.

Efficient vs. Effective

Let’s say you just spent the past 2 hours answering 60 emails — that’s a rate of 2 minutes per email. Not bad. Most would consider you to be efficient at answering emails.

However, what did returning those 60 emails actually do for your company? How much value did you just add by responding to questions you’ve answered a million times already?

Being effective means asking the question, “what’s the most important thing I could be doing right now? What task could I do that would immediately bring more value to my company?”

Chances are, spending 2 hours answering emails is not that task.

How to Be Effective

The question you should be asking yourself right now is, “well how do I find the most important thing I could be doing? I have to answer these emails, don’t’ I???”

First of all, shame on you for asking two questions when I only wanted one. Secondly, finding the most effective task isn’t all that hard.

Here’s a step-by-step process of making sure you’re being effective in your day-to-day activities.

1. Start off today by making a list of all the tasks you have done today and how much time you spent doing it. We want a complete list of the tasks you do everyday so we can see what to cut

2. Order your tasks by most time-consuming to least time-consuming. Once you make this list, it should be very obvious what’s eating up most of your day

3. Eliminate or Combine — Once you see the list of tasks and the amount of time you’ve spent, you can start eliminating tasks, delegating tasks, or combining tasks together to save time. Maybe you’ll delegate running the post office to your intern, or maybe you’ll hire a virtual assistant to handle ordering the movies for movie day from Amazon.

Once you start taking an honest inventory of the work you do, it shouldn’t become too difficult of a task to find out what is sucking up the time everyday. The key is honesty, however. Lying to yourself in terms how much time you spend on a task helps nobody, including yourself.

After you’ve eliminated your tasks, you can start applying those skills at being efficient to the “actually important tasks” in your day.

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A Note on Combining

Combining tasks is one of those underutilized productivity tools for business, yet we use it all the time in our day-to-day activities.

Take grocery shopping, for instance. If you need milk, butter, and bread, you don’t go to the store 3 separate times to pick up these items. You make a list, and kick it all out in one trip.

The same can be done for tasks like checking emails; if you know another 20 emails will be in your inbox by 10 AM tomorrow, why not combine the task of responding to emails to a few times a week instead of having it gradually eat up your inbox?

If a few times a week isn’t do-able, just try combining your email session into one or two times a day. By just waiting for a designated time period to check & respond to email, you will see instant results in your productivity.

Today we’re announcing Xero compatibility, and we’re proud to invite our customers using Xero to begin to sync expenses from ProOnGo to Xero, instantly via the cloud.

Most folks will probably find the setup steps intuitive. After all, we literally ask you if you want to sync with Xero when you register a new account. However, if you’d like a super detailed look at the steps for getting started, this post is for you!

Xero Compatibility: Step-by-Step

1. First, register a free trial account in ProOnGo.

2. As soon as you login, you’ll be asked to answer a few questions to determine whether you are a business or an individual expense user. The answer to this question helps us figure out what UI elements we should show vs hide (for example, if you are an individual, we unclutter by hiding the Employees tab).

Individual or Business?

3. Next, you’ll be asked about your accounting system. Select Xero.

Xero Integration

4. You will then be asked to login to with your Xero credentials and authorize a connection with ProOnGo.

Sign In to Xero

5. Once you have authorized ProOnGo to connect with your Xero package, you can then begin recording expenses and syncing them with your Xero account. Simply add a new expense, Submit it and then Approve the expense.

Authorize ProOnGo

6. Once you Approve an expense, a Yellow Bar will appear above your expense list. Click the Xero link and you’ll be taken to a page where you can review the expenses you’re about send to Xero.

Look for the Yellow Bar

7. Review your expenses, make any changes to the expenses, and select Reimburse All

Preview Your Expense Report

8. Now your expenses are sent off to Xero!

Success: Sent Expenses to Xero!

We’re continually working on improving this integration so if you ever have any questions, comments, or requests, we’re happy to hear them! Ready to try it out? Set up a trial account to get started!

Today, we’re proud to announce a huge revamp of credit card expense integration. Out with the old, and in with the new!

Back in the day (meaning last week) we were using an industry standard called OFX to access credit card transactions from banking institutions. The OFX standard is about 15 years old and has been a big problem to work with. Banks don’t really pay attention to their integration or the error messages they write. Not to mention, ProOnGo only had banking integration with approximately 1000 financial institutions.

Our new credit card system enables our users to integrate with over 19,000 banks and financial institutions, including brokerage firms and investment accounts in the United States and Canada. A 19x increase in our support should definitely help a few of our customers that were left out in the cold without credit card integration.

In addition to downloading the transactions, ProOnGo will also auto-categorize credit card transactions. This means that as credit card transactions are downloaded to your ProOnGo expense list, the Category of each expense will automatically populate based upon the Merchant of the expense.

Some diligent users will point out that the Category isn’t among the categories they have already set up inside ProOnGo. These may be special categories that correspond to QuickBooks or Xero accounts, or they may be categories that appear in your Custom Spreadsheet. This is because the banking institutions actually categorize the expense before ProOnGo receives the transaction.

However, we have developed a way for users to match the common categories banks use with the categories you require.

Under Settings->Credit Cards, users should see a button labeled ‘Categories.’ Once that is selected, users can map a generic category the banks use to the available categories you have already set up in your ProOnGo account. Once you map the category, the credit card expenses from that vendor will be labeled with your appropriate ProOnGo category.

In the next few weeks, we’ll be expanding our credit card support to include our QuickBooks customers. Coming up, users will be able to properly import credit card expenses into QuickBooks, as well as set up a new card from the iPhone, iPad and Android application.

Stay tuned to the blog for more updates and tutorials regarding credit card expenses!