Information management and technology assurance

August is traditionally a lighter time of year for CPAs, and in that spirit I’m offering another reader challenge designed to test your Excel skills. I’ve published an Excel workbook at carltoncollins.com/stockchallenge.xlsx that contains weekly stock price information for 10 stocks during 2013. Here’s the challenge: Download the workbook, start

Q: I was recently asked by a large client if I considered myself an Excel PivotTable expert, and I wasn’t sure how to respond. I have used PivotTables extensively, but by definition, it is difficult for anyone to know what they don’t know—if that comment makes sense. Is there some

Q: When hiring a new QuickBooks bookkeeper, what’s a good way to evaluate a candidate’s proficiency with QuickBooks? A: It is easy to evaluate the knowledge of a QuickBooks consultant, because Intuit makes his or her history of certifications public. You can access this information from the QuickBooks Help menu

What technology would you like to see more of?

Q: How should I deal with people who don’t have a clue what they are doing with their computer but constantly want me to help them resolve their petty computer issues? A: Being known as a tech-savvy professional has its drawbacks. Specifically, we are frequently expected to help novice computer

Q: Does Excel 2013 provide the option to produce Gantt charts? A: No, Excel does not produce Gantt charts out of the box, but you can create one with a bit of Excel trickery, as illustrated in the following example. 1. List your tasks. Start by entering a list of

Q: I subscribe to Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus, which includes five product licenses. I’ve installed three of those licenses on my office, home, and mobile laptop computers, and I am wondering if I can allow other family members to use my remaining two unused licenses. I don’t want to do

Q: I received an error message in Excel stating that my workbook had “Too many cell formats, Excel encountered an error and had to remove some formatting to avoid corrupting the workbook.” What would cause this type of error, and how do I avoid it in the future? A: Copying

Q: What type of technology should I give my employees to keep them happy? A: It’s been my experience that if you want happy employees, then hire happy people. I discovered this simple concept as a Little League baseball coach. While all the other coaches were evaluating the kids’ speed,

To further feed your tech-savvy appetite, you may want to check out these five interesting TED Talks featuring various technology topics: “Fighting Viruses, Defending the Net” (Mikko Hypponen, 2011) (17:35). “All Your Devices Can Be Hacked” (Avi Rubin, 2011) (16:56). “Tracking Our Online Trackers” (Gary Kovacs, 2012) (6:39). “Welcome to

Q: Our two website domain names are coming up for renewal soon, and our current domain-name-hosting company charges a renewal fee of $37.99 per year per domain name. (We use another company for web hosting.) This seems high compared with other advertised domain-name-hosting fees I see, so we are considering

Q: We provide smartphones to our 120 sales reps, who primarily use them to send and receive thousands of text messages to and from their overseas customers. However, these customers often use other carriers, and, as a result, the text messages exceeding a relatively low messaging-plan threshold cost us a