Software & HardwareAGENCY SERVICES
Thomson Tax & Accounting has added two new services to its Transaction Tax domain to help companies deal with state and federal compliance. The Corporate Registered Agent service meets state requirements for have a registered agent available to receive documents and notifications from state offices, and is good for all 50 states and the District of Columbia, while the Regulatory Compliance service provides audits, reports and filings to fulfill federal and multi-state regulatory requirements from a number of government bodies, and identifies outstanding reports, fees, fines and penalties.
www.salesandtransaction.thomson.com
REAL ESTATE TAX SAVINGS
Cost segregation isn't just for giant corporations anymore: Under the name "asset separation," it's now available for residential real estate investors through an application called DepreciateEm, from T-Rex Global. DepreciateEm takes the value of investment properties and the assets in them (such as appliances) and produces a Form 4562 so that the owners can accelerate the depreciation and reap significant tax savings.
www.depreciateem.com
THE PORTABLE YOU
Passwords prove who you are - but protecting them means keeping them secret. Siber System's RoboForm password management and form-filling tool makes reconciling the two easy, and now the company has taken the whole thing a step further with RoboForm2Go, a program small enough to install on a USB drive, but strong enough to let you log in to online accounts from strange computers, without your information ever touching them. Now you can be who you are wherever you are, without leaving pieces of yourself scattered around.
www.roboform.com
NOT SO FAST!
It's all well and good to protect yourself, but you also need to protect your company from people just like you, who may be tempted to use their portable devices to download and make off with sensitive information. DeviceLock V. 6.1 from SmartLine controls and audits activity at peripheral ports and removable device interfaces on Windows computers, so you can decide what level of access portable devices should have. The latest release also has a new option for handling and protecting audit records, and can detect USB keyloggers.
www.protect-me.com
TOUGH AS TR
The folded manuscript of a speech in his front pocket once saved Teddy Roosevelt's life from an assassin's bullet, and he was still able to deliver the speech from those same pages shortly afterward. We'd like to see a PDA, laptop or any other electronic device do that! Still, technology is getting tougher: Witness Twinhead Corp.'s DuraBook D13RY and D14RY notebook computers, which come with extra-strong magnesium-alloy cases, anti-shock mountings to protect the screen and hard drive, spill-resistant keyboards, and much more to protect them from the hazards of modern business life. They still won't stop a bullet, though, so you'll need to keep wearing Kevlar to staff meetings.
http://usa.twinhead.com
NEW AND IMPROVED!
CCH (www.cchgroup.com) has now built in seamless integration between its CertiTax address validation and tax calculation product and Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0 accounting software. ... SNL Financial (www.snl.com) has added Morningstar investment research reports and MarshBerry equity research reports to its online information service.
Books
HIGH SCHOOL WITH MONEY
The more we work, the more horrified we are to discover that the business world is really just high school writ large, which means that all the lessons we didn't learn then are going to haunt us until we retire. One of those lessons was the ancient art of rhetoric, which Getting Your Way Every Day seeks to revive. While the title makes it sound like a lesson in egotism, it is, in fact, an excellent primer in the crucial and underdeveloped skill of persuasive argument, with hundreds of great ways to sharpen your thinking and convince other people to let you keep your lunch money, or your job.
We also never learned how to navigate high school cliques, which is another way of saying we never learned to network. Replace jocks, brainiacs, glassy-eyed loners and cheerleaders with rainmakers, IT guys, chief executives and desirable sales prospects, and the parallel is clear. Make Your Contacts Count is the textbook here, with step-by-step guidance for building a powerful network that will keep you safe in the lunchroom and the boardroom.
Amacom; Your Way - $17.95, Contacts - $14.95
PUT THE EXPLOSIVES DOWN
For those who've dreamed of taking down the building where they work (and who hasn't?), we suggest the alternative of taking it apart, with Real Estate Cost Segregation. This guide to atomized depreciation shows how to channel your destructive urges into strictly imagining the deconstruction of a building into its constituent parts, and then bringing forward the depreciation for various elements. The emotional satisfaction may not be the same, but the tax savings can be enormous - and the prison terms are shorter.
Thomson RIA; $54.95 (volume discounts available)
THEORY AND PRACTICE
A business theory can be a beautiful thing, but dragging it down into the mud and dust of actual business practice can be a frustrating experience. Business Process Management and the Balanced Scorecard aims to reduce that frustration for those looking to apply the balanced scorecard model (or the Six Sigma model) to their companies.
With a how-to approach and plenty of implementation tips, the book shows you how to improve the business processes that drive your strategic performance.
John Wiley & Sons; $45
NEGOTIATING ENTRY
Having settled their salary and the terms of their employment, new leaders might be forgiven for thinking that their job negotiations are over, but in fact they face a whole new - and much more important - set of negotiations: to establish their authority and their ability to effect change in a network of relationships with various stakeholders, so that they create and capture the value there, both for themselves and for their company. Shaping the Game: The New Leader's Guide to Effective Negotiating shows how to get the most from this second, and unexpected, round of negotiations.
Harvard Business School Press; $26.95
ALSO IN PRINT
Fin 48 - Accounting for Uncertain Tax Positions (Thomson Tax & Accounting; $125) ... 2007 U.S. Master Human Resources Guide (CCH; $99.95).
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