Said "Black Sheep black, do you got some wool?"

It's nice to be able to respond "Yes I do, man, my bag is full." But how do you know how full that bag is? Not too long ago, we could only determine what our financial situation was by sitting down with our (printed) bank statements and our check register. Now everything's online, and life's much easier. Your paycheck gets deposited directly to your checking account, and your kids spend it directly with the debit card. And your employees have the same situation.

However, you still get your check deposit advice as a paper copy. This has a number of drawbacks. First, it's easy to lose your check stub. This takes up valuable administrative time when employees - especially around tax time - begin to ask for replacement paystubs.

Secondly, the hard costs to processing and mailing these check stubs are not small. A dime for a blank paycheck form here, forty two cents (and climbing) to mail the form, and it all adds up.

Finally, it's not very green. Sooner or later, all of those paystubs end up in a landfill somewhere. Add to that the fact that your personal information on that stub passes through many hands on the way to the landfill, and you've got one more reason.

The solution is ePaystubs from Kerr Consulting. Utilizing a secure website, your employees can view their current pay advice, including deductions for insurance, taxes, or defined contribution plans.

Ask for a demo!

Back Up your Data, Run for your Life

Although hurricane season is off to a slow start this year, there is no better time than the present to protect your valuable company data in the event a storm comes your way this year. Last year after Hurricane Ike, we lost power at our business for over a month. Fortunately, we were able to run things on generator power - and we had all of our critical business data backed up nightly. As a result, our continuity was flawless.

It's not only hurricanes that you need to worry about, however - wildfires, earthquakes, floods, and any number of other events can easily cause you to lose power for long enough to cause data loss. Our data backup partner, GlobalDataVault, has a collection of historical disaster maps that shows a variety of causes of loss. Surprisingly, places like southeast Missouri have had major earthquakes, as well as major floods.

You can take steps to remedy that, however. By implementing an automated backup regime for your business, your data remains safe. Better yet, in the event of equipment damage, some backup services (GlobalDataVault is one example) will provide you with temporary hardware while you get back up and running. So if your on-premise server is damaged by floodwater, they will provide you with access to a virtual server at no additional charge.

So, check them out.

Certify: a better way to manage your expenses

I'd like to tell you a little about our newest business partner, Certify. We recently entered into an agreement to market and provide support and training for them. This is the result of a long search for just such a solution. Kerr Consulting has a wide range of software products to increase productivity for the small to medium business. We offer everything from contact management software to enterprise resource planning software, and we're always looking for pieces to fill in the gaps.

One thing we have had trouble finding has been an expense management and reporting solution. We've evaluated a significant number of different providers - online, hosted, and on premise solutions. After a great deal of consideration, we visited with Certify in June. We decided that they were the best fit for our clients based on the following criteria (among others):

• Price. There's no setup fee; the Personal edition is just $4.95 per month and the corporate version starts at around $10 per month and volume discounts are available.
• Ease of use. Certify currently has eight ways to enter data - you can send in the information from an app on your Blackberry or iPhone. You can fax it in. You can send in the information on a text message.
• There's no software to install; if you can access the internet, you can prepare and file your expense reports.

There are many other reasons we chose Certify - integrity, data security, innovation - and we hope you'll give them a try. Visit our website to learn more, or sign up for the free demo.