Buying Time - Technology Information

Home Office Computing, Jan, 2001 by Helen Bradley

Technology equals time for home-based workers

DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME, FIRST SUGGESTED BY BENJAMIN FRANKLIN IN A humorous essay in 1784, was adopted temporarily by the United States during World Wars I and II and finally formalized by the Uniform Time Act of 1966. But it's not actually about saving time--as its wartime roots indicate, it's about saving energy by reducing the demand for artificial light between sunset and sleep.

By contrast, most home office workers have plenty of energy, but never enough time. That's where labor- and time-saving innovations come in--from old standbys like the photocopier and calculator to the past few years' boom in e-mail and Internet use. People talk about "Internet time" as pressure to make faster decisions in briefer business cycles, but the Internet also lets home-based businesspeople do everything from sending documents to making purchases or travel plans faster. Like other high-tech tools, the Net helps you make the most of your most important asset--time.

To help show how the latest hardware, software, and services have changed today's schedules, we spoke to a variety of home-based professionals about their old and new ways of getting work done. We found that although it's not always as easy to quantify saving time as it is saving money, there are endless ways to free up your hours and serve your business better.

ACCOUNTING

Historically, balancing a home business's books involved, well, books--financial ledge?s that were filled in and totaled by hand. At tax time, the entrepreneur delivered the books to his or her accountant for annual reports and returns to be prepared and filed. Nowadays, the whole process takes a fraction of the time, thanks to PC-based accounting.

Geni Houston of Sebastopol, Calif.-based Elephant Ear Enterprises sees the savings firsthand--she installs accounting software and trains home office users to take advantage of it. One of her customers, Houston says, used to write 200 statements a month by hand: "It probably took her four days a month to do it. Now, using Intuit's QuickBooks, she does it in minutes."

While accounting software records transactions and analyzes business financial data on your desktop, you can even run your business finances--everything from writing checks and creating invoices to reconciling accounts and handling employee payroll--from your Web browser by using an online accounting service like the HOC 100 Award-winning NetLedger (800-638-5334, www.netledger.com).

Similarly, time billing software makes it easy to track hours worked and produce invoices for time-based projects. Timeslips Express (800-285-0999, www.timeslips.com) for instance, automates the processes of entering time and expenses, tracking invoices, and getting paid. If you're doing business on the road, ExpensAble products from Managemark (888-536-6200, www. expensable.com) speed up the chore of collecting receipts and preparing expense reports, whether you're using an Internet access kiosk or Palm PDA.

Other software and online tools can even help you file your taxes. TurboTax Home and Business (650-944-6000, www. turbotax.com) guides you through the process by asking simple questions, putting your answers directly into the proper IRS forms, and doing all the calculations for you. A Home Office Expert educates you about new tax laws and walks novice entrepreneurs through concepts such as depreciation, ratio analyses, and business deductions. At the end of the process, filing is just a click away.

BANKING

In the olden days, banking was done in person, after some time waiting in line for a teller-- and until your statement arrived each month, you had no idea of the day-to-day balance of your accounts. Today, business owners can prepare their own company financials instantaneously as well as save trips to the bank by accessing their bank online.

Santa Rosa, Calif.-based Web developer Caroline Fox explains, "My bank charges for counter service, so I either have to visit branches where ATMs are available to avoid penalties--and queue to use the machine--or do my transactions online. It's far quicker and easier to do the latter."

Nearly all banks now let you access your business and personal accounts, download statements, transfer money between accounts, and pay bills online, saving the time you would have wasted waiting for a teller to perform a service you can easily do yourself. First Union (800-654-1276, www.firstunion.com), for example, gives you a choice of accessing your accounts through the Internet or through your personal financial management software (it works with Intuit's Quicken Home & Business). You can also try banks without brick-and-mortar counterparts, such as ETrade (800-ETBANK1, www.etrade.com), which provides both brokerage and banking services online.

POSTAL SERVICES

You're proud to be your own boss and wear all the hats of a growing business, but your time is too valuable to waste in lines or in traffic, waiting for a chance to perform simple administrative chores. Not long ago, taking projects to other professionals for completion or running to the local office supply store ate up entire workdays and kept workers from running their businesses efficiently.