edited by: Tracy Coenen,
Accounting Editor
In a blog post about hiring leaders, Wayne Floyd asks, "How would you describe the most important skills or qualifications that you bring to the position of leadership?" He then gives the standard list: "experienced, responsible, reliable, organized, competent, skilled, likeable, supportive, flexible, collaborative, knowledgeable, proficient" [...] 
You, the software vendor, are making your pitch. It breaks down into three sections:
Reading all the resumes was depressing. We're hiring a new manager and I was going through a stack of them with the human resources consultant. The resumes looked remarkably similar and there wasn't a decent cover letter in the pile. "We should have required applicants to have" [...] 
Karen was the accountant for a client of mine. She had twenty years of experience, starting as the receptionist and working her way up to become an indispensable part of the team. She was quiet and dependable, keeping the invoicing and payroll systems going through changes [...] 
Here's the official patron saint of accounting, Saint Matthew:
My son is in the throws of selecting a university (no, he has no intention of studying accounting!)We are doing the usual rounds of visits to campuses, going to the university fair and my son is attending the events sponsored by the colleges at his school. [...] 
Small companies are nimble and respond quickly to their customers' needs. Big companies can take on large projects and provide a wide range of products. But what happens when a big company downsizes to become a small company? Does it regain its nimbleness or does it' [...] 
Yes, yes, I know. ALL of the travel tips tell you to travel light. Pack one bag. Make it small enough to be carry on. That way you can take your laptop and your suitcase on the plane with you. They don't get lost. You don't [...] 
With the pending retirement of the Baby boom generation, we are about to lose a lot of hard won experience. Many of the Boomers are retiring early. They have the money they need. Why stay in the daily grind if you don't need to? But let's [...] 
An article in the Life section of the Globe and Mail caught my eye this week: "When love hurts you know it's good - It should be a raging inferno, not a firelight glow . . . if it doesn't cause you pain . . ." [...] 
"Bill, I'm not sure what you're asking the committee to do with the material you sent out for the meeting." The man on the phone was the committee Chair and he wanted to be sure he understood what was being asked of him before going into [...] 
Today's Globe and Mail newspaper had an article about a woman who clearly needed to be taught a lesson that would serve as a deterrent to others:Bela Kosoian, a 38-year-old mother of two, says when she didn't hold the handrail [on the transit escalator] [...]
Recently, I have been twittering under the name AccountingWEB as we build the readership to that web site. I have found over 1,000 professional accountants on Twitter, arguably the most cutting edge of the new social networking tools. You guys rock!
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the last show of Accounting Idol. We started with 50 eager bean counters and now it's down to the final three. Tonight one, two or all three of you will be eliminated. Who will it be?
Deloitte has just started a new newsletter called "A State of Change" for Canadian charities and not for profit organizations. Its goal:
The picture on the screen was your average warehouse, but it wasn't your typical Microsoft corporate shot, i.e. it wasn't a perfect company with gleaming boxes on pristine shelves, where you'd swear you could eat off the floor. This one looked real. It was even a' [...] 
At 7,000 attendees, Microsoft Convergence was the biggest convention I have ever gone to. With that many people, connecting to the ones who are important to you becomes a challenge. The people going to Convergence are from different parts of the country, different industries and [...] 
Knowledge workers. The hype is everywhere, from Microsoft commercials to Gartner reports. This is the age of the knowledge worker. Just what does that mean? How has the job of the typical Accounts Payable clerk been transformed?
Tucked away in the middle of the Latin Quarter of New Orleans is a hole in the wall dedicated to music. Not just any music, but jazz as it was played way back when. "Nawlins" is full of songs and this band knows them all. The [...] 
Two manufacturing customers were comparing notes as I sat down at the lunch table at Convergence, the Microsoft customer convention. Customer A was considering Microsoft software and Customer B was close to "going live" (i.e. stopping their old system and using the new one exclusively). [...] 
How do you network if you're in a crowd of strangers and you're not particularly good at it anyway? I'm sure that's a question that the organizers of the Microsoft Convergence conference for their accounting system customers thought long and hard about.
How do you get the attention of the people who developed your accounting system? How do you let them know the new features you would like to see or what you find really frustrating? If you had five minutes alone with the chief programmer, what would [...] 
Which new technology should you invest your time in? Which of these self-titled experts and gurus should you follow? My simple approach to these questions has been to try before I buy. Even with free internet tools, it takes a lot of time to get set [...] 
Wouldn't it be nice to find someone who has seen it all before and is willing to share their experience with you and show you the ropes? Or maybe it would be nice to find someone young and eager to apply their book learning to the' [...] 
Convergence is Microsoft's annual invitation to all of its business customers to meet and talk about accounting software. Yep, that's right. It's a giant convention of computer geeks and accounting nerds. Being a bit of both, I feel right in my element, but that's not [...] 
The woman beside me and I were looking at the travel expense in the General Ledger and in the report before me. They didn't match. My report was in a different format than the GL. I made the comment that if we reorganized the cost centers' [...] 
When you see a new version of your accounting software, does it feel like Christmas or April Fool's Day? Is your mood one of happy expectation or is your cynical side just waiting for disappointment?
Here's the situation: you're a large software company and you own several competing software packages. You want to keep your customers. In fact you want to build a relationship with them so they keep updating their software instead of holding on to one version until it's' [...] 
This is how a team falls apart: Remove a key player, and the social bonds that keep their friends on the job weaken. Before you know it, you've got a group of employees collecting paychecks, not a team working for a goal. Bugs go unfixed; servers' [...]
Is this your image of a conductor, someone who insists on being called "maestro", someone with a whim of iron who can quell opposition with a single insult, someone who makes trained professionals quake in their boots?
When I looked up "Business Management" on the Amazon web site, I was greeted with more than 171,000 titles. How do you decide which ones are worth while? What I do is wait. Most of the management books I read are five or six years old. [...] 
Microsoft has just announced two new Excel functions to be included in the Microsoft Office 2007 suite, Service Pack 2 (SP2) expected to be released 04/01/2009. I'm sure they will prove to be indispensable tools to accountants, particularly those involved in budgeting, financial reporting or financial' [...] 
It takes a lot of talent to be a consistently funny writer for your whole career, but John Cleese has done just that. I was a Monty Python fan and watched the TV show every week. I quoted Python skits in high school (Say no [...]
