Your Accounting
■ Time to put your books in the cloud? Want to save time and money on bookkeeping in 2016? If your company hasn’t already made the switch to a cloud-based accounting system, it may be time to migrate. Here’s why: with a cloud system, you can outsource your bookkeeping, saving you staffing costs as well as office space. Plus, your team saves time dragging files back and forth and keeping current versions backed up and secure. And an added plus is that you and your team can enter expenses on the go via smartphone. Popular apps include QuickBooks Online, Xero, Zoho Books and FreshBooks. Choose based on robust feature sets, solid support, ease of use and, of course, time and money saved.
Your Time
■ 3 Ways to End Holiday Overwhelm. This holiday season, skip the stress with these time-saving tips: 1) Do your homework before hitting the stores. Catch coupons on sites like dealcatcher.com, couponcabin.com and retailmenot.com. Quality-check gift ideas at Consumerreports.org for expert reviews, or sites with user reviews such as Amazon.com or Cnet.com. Then, rather than drive all over town for the best deal, check out Pricegrabber.com. 2) Plan a trip — it’s a great way to share experiences rather than acquiring more things. 3) For those on your list who already have plenty of “stuff,” give a Good Card. The Good Card lets users give to their choice of over 1.2 million charities.
Your Health
■ Eat, drink and be healthy this holiday season. Here’s how: keep the pounds down by knowing your number. Visit heart.org/explorer for a quick read on your recommended daily intake of calories. Think of it as your expense-account limit for holiday gatherings, and choose how much you want to spend on drinks, appetizer, entree, dessert, etc. You could even keep a food diary to help stay on track with your target weight goal. At parties, wear snug clothing and keep one hand busy. With a drink in your dominant hand, you’ll be less likely to grab goodies. And your snug-fitting outfit will keep you so busy pulling your tummy in, you won’t have time to feel hungry.
Please choose from the following two articles:
Your Computer’s Operating System
■ Windows 10, Thumbs Up… As even Microsoft admits, Windows 8 was a flop… So why make the leap to Windows 10? (By the way, in case you were wondering, for reasons we may never know, Microsoft decided to skip Windows 9.) To start with, the Windows 10 user interface just makes a lot more sense than W8’s UI. It brings back the Windows 7 start menu, and key functions are accessed from the taskbar. It features a more refined design — for instance, smaller window borders. And, at least until July 29, 2016, you can upgrade your Windows 7 or 8.1 OS for free. So unless your Windows device is an RT version or is about tapped out on memory, we think you can feel pretty good about upgrading to Windows 10.
