You are here: Home / 2012 / Archives for October 2012

Archives for October 2012

Self Employed Tax Returns

October 21, 2012 By

October 31 is coming soon and with it the deadline for Income Tax Returns for the Self Employed.

imagesCAQQ7W51This time of year is generally very busy for Accountants and the Self Employed as year end returns are prepared and submitted.

We have a small computer application that will help in preparing and submitting expense reports and claims.

InControl Expenses will allow you to quickly and simply calculate weekly expense reports and print out claim sheets suitable for submitting to your accountant for the preparation of year end accounts.

You can download a trial version of the application from our website – www.computech.ie or find more information in our datasheet – click here to download the datasheet.

A full license for InControl Expenses costs €50

 

Front Screen

.

Filed Under: Blog, News, Newsletter Tagged With: , , ,

GTD and Task Management

October 21, 2012 By

I have tried many different task management apps and I think that I have finally settled on the system that suits my needs.

Overview

I use a PC and Microsoft Windows as the operating platform but also have an iPhone and iPad, both of which I use constantly during the day.  I also implement the GTD methodology for managing the many tasks I have to do.  For those of you that do not know what the GTD methodology is I strongly recommend that you read the book – Getting Things Done by David Allen.  You can also get a lot more information from the GTDTimes website or on the David Allen website -  DavidCo.

GTD is described as the Art of Stress Free Productivity and is covered very well on Wikipedia – see here for details.

Because I am mixing both Apple OS and Microsoft OS in my daily life I needed a solution that allowed me to manage my task list on my PC, iPhone and iPad, keeping them all in sync and also allowing me to clear through my email (managed in Outlook), creating tasks as needed from emails.

 

Problems encountered

I encountered many problems and tried many solutions but found it very hard to find a solution that was efficient in managing my tasks, allowing me to add or delete an items on 1 device and the have this item automatically added to or deleted from the other device automatically. I also wanted something that allowed me to access reference materials and attachments etc. when I created an task from an email – one of the main objectives when using GTD is to keep all inboxes empty including the email inbox.  Once a task is created from an email in Outlook and then the email is deleted or archived it is not possible to open any attachment / supporting material when viewing the task on the iPhone or iPad.

 

Solution

I tried many solutions, centring those solutions around apps for both iOS devices (I carry either an iPhone or an iPad with me everywhere and so it made sense to start with apps that would work and sync across these devices first). I also wanted an app that allowed me to create a task from an Outlook email. The following is a brief summary of the main apps I tried and deleted for one reason or another:-

Omnifocus – Great app with lots of support and a large user community.  It would be my preferred choice but unfortunately it is not well integrated with other systems, lacks an import/export function and has no API.

Things – Another very good app but also lacks import/export, has no API and synchronisation was not great when I was testing apps.

ToDo – Has import/export ability by using Toodledo but I dropped it in favour of Pocket Informant

I tried many others – too many to list here and finally settled on a combination of Toodledo and Pocket Informant.

Filed Under: Newsletter