Year-end helpHopefully, you've already begun your year-end financial tasks - but if you haven't, ADP Employer Services can help you kickstart the process. The payroll processing company has set up a Web site called Year End Central that's packed with information to help you save time and work smarter at the tasks that make December and January such joys, like compiling financial records, verifying withholdings and ensuring correct W-2 data.
The site includes updates to state and federal employment tax laws, year-end checklists, payroll calendars and calculators, forms and more. Launched in November, the site will be up until March 15.
ADP Employer Services
www.yearendcentral.adp
Can't have a hammock?
We have long felt that both our productivity and our health would improve if only management would recognize the benefits offered by hanging hammocks in the workplace. Until they see reason, however, we're going to plead for a ZackBack Posture Chair. Designed by a former physical therapist from the Mayo Clinic, the ZackBack combines a scientist's knowledge of machinery with a yogi's appreciation of the body to create a "seating system" that relieves chronic pain, improves posture and stimulates better breathing. It won't do your work for you, the way a hammock will, but it's an impressive piece of office furniture.
Price: Starts at $895.00.
The YogaBack Co.
www.yogaback.com
(800) SITTING
Read less, know more
Our secret is out: At night, elves slip into our office, read all the business and accounting books we receive, and write the Books section of New Products for us. We give them cigarettes and cable TV. Lately, though, they've been demanding premium channels and beer, so we're glad to hear that SmartPros, a continuing professional education and training company, has introduced Book Digests.
The digests condense popular business books, boiling their core concepts down into short articles of 300, 600 and 4,500 words, so you can get the gist quickly. Right now, they have about 600 available as PDFs, with new titles being added. Looks like those drunken, lazy elves are in trouble.
Price: Annual subscription - $145; individual digests - $8.
SmartPros Ltd.
www.smartpros.com/bookdigests
