January 2020

630.850.9039 Continued pg.2 We love this stuff! We are committed to helping businesses use technology to run their organization successfully and profitably. Your Image Here What’s New This monthly publication provided courtesy of Catherine Wendt, President of Syscon Inc. January 2020 Whether you’re happy to put 2019 behind you or not, here we are in 2020, ready to dig in and make it a great year! No matter what industry you’re in, there is a new W-4 form for 2020. This is a significant change, so we’re sure there will be refinements in the coming weeks. We have some info on page 4 to get you started. You’ll want to get educated, then start sharing with your staff. Maybe you’ve already met Beth, our Marketing Coordinator; or Jonathan may have helped you with a computer issue. Two of our new team members; Welcome! Wishing you a successful and happy 2020! - Catherine Wendt Face it, there will never be enough hours in the day to accomplish everything you need to do. But if you methodically review how you spend your days and instill focus and discipline while completing daily priorities, you will soon find more time to work on the long-term success of your business. Here are six ways to get it done: 1. CONDUCT A TIME AUDIT. Sit down and review three months of activity. The data from the analysis will show you where you spent your time (which projects, tasks, and priorities demanded your attention) and with whom you collaborated to get the work done. The audit will also shed light on areas where you were distracted, where you were the most productive, and which tasks/ projects took more (or less) time than anticipated. 2. ELIMINATE TIME DRAINS. These are the kinds of things that sneak up on you and steal time that can be better put to use growing your business. Look for these time drains: not delegating tasks, not managing meetings efficiently (Tip: always have an agenda!), and spending too much time writing/responding to email. If you’ve done your job as a leader, members of your team can handle a majority of meetings and email messages. You hired great people. Now let them do their jobs. 3. TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR CALENDAR. Remember: you drive your schedule; don’t let others drive it. Block time throughout your day and guard against changing your schedule to work on tasks that are not important or urgent. The way you allocate your time has a direct correlation to your effectiveness as a leader and, ultimately, the performance 6 time Management Tips Just In Time for the New Year -- 1 of 4 - All Things Tech January 2020 (continued from page 1) of your business. Prudent calendar management will also send a strong signal to your team that you take this seriously. 4. PLAN YOUR DAY. When you know your priorities for the day, you will be better prepared to reset your work schedule if the unexpected comes your way. Once your schedule is set, block off chunks of time to work on your priorities. Many authorities recommend 90-minute blocks so you can concentrate on the big-picture items or work on a group of related tasks. Stay disciplined and don’t allow yourself to go over that allotted time. 5. LIMIT INTERRUPTIONS. Now comes the hard part. Once you start working on each priority, you need to remain focused. Close the door and don’t answer the phone unless it’s a critical issue. Avoid checking email. Don’t let distractions slow you down. 6. HOLD YOURSELF ACCOUNTABLE. Share your tasks, priorities, and deadlines with a colleague. Meet with that person at least monthly to review how well you managed your time. The probability of success increases when you have someone watching your progress and coaching you across the finish line. Do You Have ‘Remembered’ Email Contacts? These Can Be Lost If You’re Not Careful! One of the most common panic calls we get is when someone’s ‘contacts’ are missing. More often than not, there is a foundational misunderstanding of how contacts, and remembered email addresses, work in Outlook. We get this call so often that the techs asked me to include this info in our newsletter— please pass it on to your staff! So here’s the scenario. You open up a new email message and begin typing the person’s name. The name(s) comes up and you choose it so you don’t have to type the whole thing each time—very convenient, for sure. Outlook remembers having sent to that address before and gives you the quick list to choose from. BUT, that doesn’t mean they have been added as a Contact; it just means the Outlook has it in a quick list. This list can ‘disappear’ for several reasons (new phone or computer), causing anxiety for sure. If the email address and person are important, you need to add them as a Contact in Outlook. The Contact record allows you to include not only their name and email address, but phone numbers and even address info. The ‘remembered’ email list is temporary and not related to Contacts. Saved Contacts are the best and safest way for you to hold on to this important information. If you just count on the ‘remembered’ look up, you may have good reason to panic one day.—CMW Cathy and Larry Sightings Catherine and Chris headed to Orlando for a 3-day industry event; They both met Marc Randolph, the co-founder of Netflix. Larry played French horn with several orchestras in the Phoenix area, including some holiday events. ‘All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.’ - Martin Luther King, Jr. 630.850.9039 I’ll say this—Jesse Itzler is out there! Who would invite a Navy Seal into their home to train for a month? Someone you don’t know, never met. This is the story of a Navy Seal and Jesse, man to man, pushing their physical limits, but the language distracted me and took away some of the fun of reading the book, although I doubt a Navy Seal (or Jesse) is worried about his language! Jesse breaks the chapters into a diary or log of sorts, outlining the training over the one -month timeline mixed in with stories about his company, his crazy history in business, and a little about his wife and son. He doesn’t divulge the name of the Navy Seal, he just calls him ‘SEAL’ throughout the book. The premise was an absolutely crazy idea, and he confesses it throughout the book! However, he also shares his amazement at his training progress as he follows this ridiculous regimen for the 30 days. SEAL’s rule was that Jesse would do whatever he said, period! As Jesse blasts past one ceiling after another, he learns a lot about himself, the messages we tell ourselves about our limits, and the truly ‘cushy’ life we live. - CMW Living with a SEAL by Jesse Itzler “Remembered email addresses can be lost, easily! Make them Contacts.” -- 2 of 4 - Shiny New Gadget Of The Month: Believe it or not, electric toothbrushes are all the rage right now — and they’re more advanced than ever! Electric toothbrushes have gone past just cleaning your teeth. Now, they connect to your smartphone and actually give you a report on your brushing! The Oral-B Genius X is a toothbrush for the connected era. The Genius X learns your brushing habits, and, through your smartphone, wirelessly offers personalized tips to brush in certain spots for longer, to apply more or less pressure or to spend more time brushing. With sensors built into the brush head, it can tell how well you’re brushing. It’s like having your own personal dentist right there in your own bathroom. The Oral-B Genius X is available now from most major retailers. Emailing More Than 20 People? Stop and Read This! Did you know that if you include more than 20 email addresses in your message, your email could be flagged as spam? If that happens, there are a couple of things that are going to happen that you probably won’t like and might not have anticipated. The message might end up in the recipient’s junk folder, or even be stopped by the anti-spam service which means they’ll have to ‘release’ it in order to get the message, if they figure out it was even sent. Another more risky situation is that your email address and the server you sent it from can be blacklisted. If that happens, not only will the original message be blocked, but ALL your email will be refused until you petition to have your domain released from that list. What to do? Use the free version of Mail Chimp or Constant Contact to send to groups of 20 or more addresses. Or, create multiple copies and send to smaller groups. BTW—this isn’t our rule. It’s the way the IT world works; software, service providers, anti-spam software. No one likes spam. Don’t risk your message never being delivered; use the right tool for the job. Not sure? We’d be happy to help. - CMW Congratulations Lenny! We’ll miss you! I still remember the phone interview with Lenny over 9 years ago. I remember starting him off as a Level I tech helping with hardware; he has grown so much over the years and we are so glad to have had him on the team. Now Lenny will start a new chapter. Lenny has been an integral part of the Tech Support team at one of our long-time clients (over 15 years). That client has grown tremendously and is ready to hire a full-time Technician, and they were interested in having Lenny take this new position. This would be a great opportunity for Lenny, and a wonderful transition for our client. After quite a bit of conversation and following all the proper channels, Lenny has been offered, and has accepted this new role. We are so excited for Lenny, even as we are sad to see him leave the Syscon team. But there’s more! Since we will maintain a relationship with this client, we will be able to stay connected with Lenny, helping the transition for both our client and Syscon. If you’d like to send a note of congratulations to Lenny, or a story about how he has helped you over the years, please send it to our office, ’Attn: Mary,’ and we’ll be sure to get it to him! - CMW Jesse Itzler, author of Living with a SEAL, the keynote speaker at an industry event in Orlando. All Things Tech January 2020 630.850.9039 From the Techs Oral-B Genius X Rechargeable Power Electric Toothbrush -- 3 of 4 - All Things Tech January 2020 Construction Corner S100C—version 22.3.30 with Federal Tax Tables In late December 2019, the 2020 Federal Tax tables, along with a number of States, became available. Sage released v22.3.30 to include these new tax tables. This brings up a lot of questions, so here are some of the most common, along with our update. If you attended my yearend webinar, you may remember that all of the tax tables are built into the software; there’s nowhere to go and make changes. They’re updated in the software code. You can’t update these, and you’ll need the upgrade installed before the new tables are available to run your payroll. There are quite a few pay calcs that you have to update after closing the payroll such as FICA (both sides), SUTA, FUTA, 401k, and similar. These can be updated whether or not you have the new software release/ version. Be sure to get these done! There’s always been a ‘reasonable’ rule which says that you need to use the new year’s tax tables within a reasonable amount of time after they become available. Sometime in January, you’ll want to get this update installed and start using the new tables. To ‘encourage’ us to be on the latest version, Sage has arranged with Aatrix to only have the 2019 payroll forms available in the latest release, v22.3.0. That means you’ll need to upgrade before creating the 2019 Federal 940, 941, W-2’s, and state reports. If you have an on premise server, be sure your IT person uses the new feature to push the update to each workstation (instead of the old way where we had to go to each computer and install the update). Also be sure all archives are updated to the latest release, including any that might be in a separate SQL instance. - CMW W-4 Form Changes in 2020 This should be interesting! S100C v22.3.30 has a new W-4 Information tab to accommodate the new W-4 form for 2020. Rolling this out will be sticky, to say the least. In general, you are required to use the new W-4 form for all new hires. Any current employees making changes in 2020 also are required to use the new form. They’ll go to the IRS website link and follow the 5 steps to figure out how much to have withheld in Federal Withholding, rather than the Marital status and allowances we’re used to. In the release notes from Sage, they have information on the new tab and how to make the entries. Everyone is giving disclaimers about making this change; it’s just too new, and I don’t know how many of our field guys are going to log into the IRS website and figure this out. Check the Sage release notes, get with your CPA group, then stay tuned! – CMW Collecting Time From the Field Just Got Exciting! You won’t find a better, fully integrated, field time collection solution than ours because we wrote it to do what our clients need! Interested? Want to enjoy Mondays again? Join us Thursday, January 23 rd , 11:30am Central Time to hear all about it! 630.850.9039 This month’s trivia question: The keyboard layout designed by Sholes is: a) DVORAK b) YUIOP c) SHOLESLAY d) QWERTY Congratulations to last month’s Trivia Contest winner, Amanda Dickman with Mulcahy Nickolaus in MN! Amanda’s name was drawn from the ϐishbowl for last month’s correctly answered Question: “.MOV” extension refers usually to what kind of ϐile? b) Animation/movie ϐile Who Wants To Win a $25 Amazon Gift Card? To enter: Go to www.Syscon‐inc.com/Trivia and type in your answer. All correct answers will be put into a ϐishbowl and we’ll randomly draw the winner. The Winner will be contacted shortly after the deadline and will be announced in next month’s newsletter. Deadline: January 20, 2020 -- 4 of 4 -