Let Jeff Help

Discussions about telecommunications, technology & noteworthy topics I want to share with the world, all written in plain English.

Just The Bill, Please and Thank You

 

Accounting and I go together like mustard and cashmere. I absolutely can’t stand it. Over the past few years I’ve started using an Accountant for my taxes and that has made my life much easier… but until recently, I haven’t really needed to keep receipts for an extended period of time because I had an expense account through work and I couldn’t really write off anything else by the end of the year. So my Accountant has always had a pretty easy gig.

Now I’ve started a new role that requires me to record all of my own expenses, and until a few days ago, I was just throwing receipts into a large folder and expecting to sort out the mess at the next tax season. Note: I was expecting to pay my Accountant to sort out the mess.

Recently a friend introduced me to Just The Bill, an online filing system for managing receipts from multiple accounts. Simply take a photo of a receipt, send it to your custom email provided by Just The Bill (i.e. jtb_ljh_@justthebill.com) and sort it through the dashboard to the appropriate account & payment method. At the end of the month, year, or whenever, you can export the file to Excel or Quickbooks (Simply Accounting coming soon) and you (or your Accountant) can plug in the numbers for some good old fashioned crunching. Huge time-saver. Huuuuuuuuuge!

iPhone users will have to wait a bit longer for the app to be released unfortunately, but Blackberry users can start taking advantage of the service immediately. What’s different about using a native app instead of emailing the receipt photo? The receipts can be sorted over the phone, instead of having to login to your account over the web.

There is a catch, however: it’s free for single users and cheap for multiple-user accounts. Pretty sweet catch, IMO.

Like anything new, the biggest problem with Just The Bill I face is remembering to snap a photo of the receipt and send it in. Everything else is super easy from there on – I encourage you to give it a try!

 

Screenshot of receipt organization page

Screenshot of Dashboard

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1 Comment by Jeff on June 7, 2010
filed in Technology
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Welp, it’s been a while…

Rather than paint a picture with words, I’ll just post a pic of me walking Punky.

… and it might still be before I can get back into the swing of things.

I have been ridiculously busy with the new job, trying to ramp up as quickly as possible so that I can resume my regular routine of work/play/blogging. At the moment, the only form of play I have each day is taking my dog Punky out for a walk.

I’m still active on Twitter and LinkedIn so watch for me there, and when I do eventually pick up the blogging again I’ll start announcing it via those mediums. I’m hoping it’ll be sooner rather than later.

Cheers,

Jeff

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No Comments by Jeff on May 10, 2010
filed in Open Discussion

Jeff Rogers, Inc. – A Sales Training Spoof

Alright, time for a bit of humour. I dug this phone conversation up the other day after my buddy reminded me of it.

One of the things I enjoyed about BCIT was that we were provided with real-world training. One day, we were taken to a call centre in downtown Vancouver to work on our cold calling skills. On our calls, we were asked to inquire about the organization’s Sales training techniques and whether or not they outsourced the training. In the morning, we were to practice by calling classmates across the room; in the afternoon, we were given a list of companies to call. Our calls were recorded so we could review them in front of the class. Needless to say, had the instructor overheard this phone conversation when it was live, he wouldn’t have presented this to the class to critique.

This is a call I had with a classmate -- it’s 7 minutes & change, so hopefully you have the time to sit through it. I added the still photos for your viewing pleasure. My apologies in advance if it offends anyone! It was a lot of fun role-playing on this call. :)

 

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2 Comments by Jeff on April 20, 2010
filed in Open Discussion
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Email On iPhone Not Supported By Your IT Department? Maybe This Will Help…

At my last job, I was one of the first people in the company to get an iPhone. As cool as it was to be amongst the ‘early adopters’, it turned out to be quite frustrating because I endured the pain of having to go without a proper work email solution before many others (all the Blackberry users mocked me for getting a toy phone, not a business phone). At first I was able to get over this by contacting the IT department and requesting a hard-forward to a Gmail address – this sufficed, but I didn’t have my work calendar synced and any email replies I sent from my iPhone were sent from Gmail, not my work domain. I had to keep pressing for a proper solution.

Fortunately for me I worked with several tech-savvy fellas and one discovered a workaround. Instead of connecting to the MS Exchange Server, which required ActiveSync (not used by many organizations), we would simply connect to the webmail client (Note: if your office email does not have a webmail service i.e. Webex, this solution will not work). Because we had that service, it worked like a charm. Here’s how to set it up on your phone:

 

  • Within Settings, select the Mail, Contacts, Calendars icon. Click Add Account.
  • Select Microsoft Exchange.
  • Enter the following information:
    • Your work email address – I trust you can figure this one out.
    • For the Domain, Username & Password fields – enter the same information that you would find/use when logging into your workstation at the office (or work laptop). If you can’t remember, set up the iPhone email in front of your office computer for reference.
    • For Description, enter your work email address again.
  • Click Done.
  • The verification will fail – don’t worry, this is all part of the process. It will then ask if you would like to Cancel or Accept. Click Accept.
  • You will then be prompted to enter the Server Address. This will be the address of your webmail service, such as webex.companyname.com. Be sure to leave out the http:// and any extensions after the .com (or .ca). For example, webex.companyname.com/exchange will not work.
  • Submit this and Presto! You have your email client set up on the iPhone.

    •  

It’s up to you to set up whether you’d like to sync the email, contacts and calendar, as well as the Fetch/Push settings for your work email. If email is critical to the way you do business, I would recommend setting email to the Push function. Be sure to keep SSL certificates on (default setting is ON) if you want your Outlook email folders to be replicated in your iPhone.

A caveat to be aware of: depending on the security settings arranged by your IT department, you may be required to add an alphanumeric passcode to your iPhone. This is the case at my new company. Although it’s an inconvenience, it’s definitely not a large enough issue to prevent me from keeping this setup.

Please let me know if you try this and run into problems; I’d be happy to try troubleshooting with you for this. I just might not be able to get back to you quickly as I’ll be busy for the next few weeks setting up all the other iPhone users in my new organization… and now that many Blackberry users in my office are seriously contemplating the switch to iPhone, it could set me back a bit further!

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No Comments by Jeff on April 10, 2010
filed in Technology
tagged , ,

My Experience at the F5 Expo in Vancouver

Being a technology enthusiast, and working in the sector, I have always looked forward to the main technology trade show in Vancouver. It’s been a bit of a let down the past couple of years as the quality of the shows has deteriorated (sorry @techlinz, just my opinion). At first it was called Techvibes, then renamed to the Massive Technology Show (which became less massive year over year), and then renamed to the F5 Technology Expo this year.

Thankfully this year was different. I was thoroughly impressed by the show this year, and I didn’t even see any of the seminars or Keynote presentations like Malcolm Gladwell. I could tell there was much more money put into the show this year well before the show began so I knew ahead of time it was going to be better. There was even an iPhone app designed for the show which was very helpful.

Now, to the experience itself: There were too many booths to mention in one post (a list of exhibitors can be found here), so I will mention the ones that stood out for me.

 
M2O: I met Tristan Jutras, Director of Marketing & Business Development, who I was initially drawn to because he was holding an iPad. After speaking with him for a few minutes, I learned that the majority of the staff members at M2O were formally Chalk Media employees that started this venture. M2O is a Digital Agency that focuses most of their efforts around video, and branches out from there to tailor their solutions for their clients. Based in Gastown, they are a flexible organization that competes with the likes of Cossette, Rethink, and other advertising/media organizations. Keep an eye out for them as they expect to grow quite a bit!

 
Partnerpedia: I’ve worked with Geoff Mair, CEO of Partnerpedia before he rebranded from Constructive Media. It was great to catch up with him and find out what exactly Partnerpedia is all about. Although I’d glanced at the website in the past, it was good to hear from him directly. Partnerpedia is a B2B Social Media platform that allows organizations to collaborate with each other. Although SalesForce is a major competitor, he says Partnerpedia is much more aggressively priced and more focused on the service than SalesForce (it’s an add-on service for them). What’s more, Partnerpedia has the ability to work with clients already using SalesForce.

 
Yelp Vancouver: My friend Crystal is the Vancouver Yelp Mayor, so this one was easily one of my faves. Yelp is an online community for reviewing local businesses – users can write up reviews, connect with each other, and plan events online. In my opinion, it’s a far better service than FourSquare or other location-based applications… but I’ll save that discussion for another post.

 
eCrypt Technologies: With all the buzz about mobile devices storing sensitive data on email these days, I can see services like eCrypt becoming massively popular in the next 12 – 18 months. I was pleasantly surprised to hear the low cost of entry (a one time fee of $29.95 per device) and that this will soon be available for the iPhone. Since I plan to upgrade to the new iPhone in June, I’ll be signing up for this service soon. Blackberry users, fret not – the application is available for it today.

 
Also included with the cost of admission to the trade show ($0) were a plethora of workshops scattered throughout the room. I missed a few that I really wanted to see but I did manage to catch Rebecca Bollwitt’s (@miss604) presentation on Blogging for Business. It was brief, to the point, and mentioned some important info for beginners covering the Who, What, Where, When & Why of Blogging.

If you’re a Vancouverite or live nearby and didn’t make it out this year, I’d recommend setting aside the time to do so for next year. It was a great way to spend the day, meet some new people, and learn about what’s new and improved in the online space.

Well, I’m off to the post-show networking seminar at Steamworks now – I think I’ve earned a pint!

Check out the F5 Expo website: http://f5-expo.com

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4 Comments by Jeff on April 7, 2010
filed in Social Media, Technology
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