Xero, MYOB and GST

My latest Businessday column is up over at Stuff.

The cost to New Zealand businesses of complying with the changeover to 15 per cent GST and the other tax changes will be at least $275 million, according to my rough back-of-the- envelope calculations.

The upcoming changes should have us all concerned, and small businesses in particular should seek advice on what they need to do before and after the October 1 changeover date.

There are 476,000 active enterprises in New Zealand. The wide scope of tax changes – covering GST, PAYE, ACC payments and the company tax rate – means all will be impacted.

more

How to avoid upgrading MYOB to cope with GST change

MYOB demonstrate again why I have switched to Xero. To cope with the GST change you either need to upgrade, or follow the instructions on their website.

The instruction pages all start with the boilerplate text:

“The quickest and easiest way to handle the 1 October GST and tax changes is to update your software.”

This is true. Upgrading is the easiest answer – but it does, of course, come at a price. This sort of forced upgrading is how MYOB makes recurring revenue, and it should be added to the service plans and compared with subscription models.

But you can avoid the upgrade by following a obnoxiously complicated process, but be aware that even when you are done the GST Return functionality will no longer work – you need to go manual:

Completing a Standard GST Return post October 1If you choose not to upgrade your software, the GST Return included in your current BusinessBasics software will not calculate correctly for periods on or after October 2010. Do not use the old GST Return report (101) for any Returns at the new GST rate. Instead you can use the appropriate GST Detail and Summary reports to derive the correct values to allow you to complete the GST Return manually.

So here it is below – how to change GST in MYOB for Business Basics – which is the cheapest package and is “Accounting software that helps with the basics like invoicing, expenses and GST. Great for a small business.”

Try not to laugh, or cry, and sincerely – if you are using MYOB then now is a really good time to shift to something like Xero. I did a few months ago and the difference is light and day.

Wugly stuff

I received this spam through the contact me form:

Name: Wuglies Convenor of Judges
Email: moderator@thewuglies.co.nz
Website:

Dear Web owner

Congratulations!? Your webpage has just been nominated for the inaugural Wuglies.

Bought to you by Microsoft Internet Explorer 9, The Wuglies exist to raise awareness of plain Jane and wugly web sites.

Our driving cause is to give all web pages the opportunity to be well crafted and more beautiful.  So if your page is judged ‘Wugliest of All’ you’ll receive a homepage design makeover worth up to $2000. You win, your page-viewers win, and wugly blossoms into bewdiful.

We hope you accept your nomination in good humour and with slightly embarrassed grace. You can see some other nominated sites at http://www.thewuglies.co.nz

Please let us know if you accept your nomination.
Good luck in the vote-off.

Yours sincerely
Convenor of Judges – The Wuglies

Time: Sunday September 19, 2010 at 9:42 pm
IP Address: 121.98.134.189
Sent by an unverified visitor to your site

That IP address looks to be an Orcon static address in Auckland. Apparently. It’s listed with Spamhaus, but none of the other blacklist sites. Others may be able to find out more.

Overall it’s just a social media promotion.  Someone has gone to the trouble of sending the contact me form, which is a manual process, but it does mean I get to see the nomination and react – perhaps by blogging even. It’s not a bad approach, especially if you seed the first sites. Friend’s tell your friends that their website sucks. Hilarity ensues and everyone gets to see a Download Microsoft IE9 link.

Pity it doesn’t work on Macs, iPads or iPhones, but great to see Microsoft has finally come back to the browser wars.

No mention of where that $2000 is spent, and when it comes to web design that could be a lot or just an invitation to a black hole.

Oh – and I should point out that any and all criticism is fine by me – I do tend to throw a few stones myself. Feel free not to be anonymous though.

Name suppression – the judge’s findings and how to do it properly

Whale Oil failed in his case (at least so far) and is up for some eight thousand of dollars in fines and fees. To me it was clear that his actions were breaching the law, but it’s the considered opinion (Thanks Kiwiblog) of Judge Harvey that really matters here:

“The remaining nine charges having been proven to the standard required by law, the defendant will be convicted.”

Important findings from Judge Harvey (and no, I am not a lawyer):

  • It’s now even clearer that writing something on a blog is deemed as publishing, especially if you live in NZ when you do so. That much was already obvious, and it is nice to see it spelled out.
  • The Judge was less than clear on assigning blame for comments on the blog, but he did say that Whale Oil  was “the person who enables the posting of content by both himself and others” and so therefore is the publisher. The Judge referred to blog articles though, and not to comments in the decision document. He did say earlier that “However most administrators or supervisors of blog sites must hold some responsibility for the comments that are posted.” This is an interesting area that creates a lot of concern in big media. Reading between the lines, and again not as a lawyer, I’d say that post-comment moderation is ok – either doing as Trade Me does and moderating after it has been flagged by readers or seen by the blog owner. I also see little tolerance from the Judge for leaving up comments that are in breach of the law, especially after being notified. Even WhaleOil readers now have the ability to vote down comments.
  • The judge makes it clear that hiding a blog behind a password doesn’t help the cause – it’s still likely to be deemed as publication.
  • Writing in text speak or any other language or using pictures or codes won’t help either.
  • Linking to offending information is probably the same as publishing it yourself.
  • The name we refer to ourselves online is now our ‘nom d’internet‘, a phrase Judge Harvey coined for the decision. Nicely played.

Overall – we have been warned. Whale Oil’s fine is pretty small in the scheme of things, suffering perhaps from a lack of inflation adjustment – with the maximum of just $1000 per case. The judge ruled that $750 per case was payable, plus $130 per case in costs. That’s a lot of money for Slater, but not so much for a media company. I wouldn’t want to test it though.

Judge Harvey also noticed, as I hadn’t, that Whale Oil’s tagline “Whaleoil Beef Hooked” has another meaning when said out loud. A fine legal mind.

However the Judge does give a hint about how to legally release suppressed names:

Off-Shore Publication of Suppressed Names
[78]    There can be no doubt that the internet poses challenges to the effectiveness of suppression orders. The position of a person in New Zealand who posts a name the subject of a non-publication order on the internet is clear for the reasons that I have given. But what of the person (A) who makes a suppressed name available to a person (B) beyond the jurisdiction, and B posts the name on a his or her blog or website in a country other than New Zealand? Without specifically deciding the point, according to the decision of Hammond J in Re X the communication between A in New Zealand and B overseas could fall within the concept of a private conversation between individuals and may therefore would not fall within the scope of s. 140(1). Furthermore, the act of posting to a blog or a website by a person overseas (B) could not in those circumstances be caught by s. 7 of the Crimes Act 1961.

In essence, if Whale Oil sends an email to a site hosted in anther country, and that site’s owner considers that the details are fit for publication, then perhaps that site could publish and not be damned. Whale Oil would simply be having a 1-1 conversation with the author of the site, who resides overseas. However it’s not so easy:

[81] Much may depend upon the state of mind of person A in communicating the information to person B. Such behaviour could well mean that A could fall within the second limb of s. 140(5) evades or attempts to evade any such order. As I have said, this point is not decided and much would depend upon the detailed facts of the case.

Meanwhile the publication clearly reaches (and is targeted towards) New Zealand, and linking to from a locally written blog could be dangerous as the Judge pulls out the notorious DeCSS debacle:

[82] Following from that is the New Zealand based blogger who may embed a link to the off-shore blogsite which contains the suppressed name. One should be cautious in such circumstances that one does not become involved in publishing by way of hypertext link. In the case of Universal City Studios v Reimerdes and Corley34 a Court made an order that the defendant’s website was prohibited from directly providing files which contained the DeCSS code which enabled the circumvention of copy protection algorithms on DVDs. When the defendants posted links on their websites to other sites that provided DeCSS either by way of direct download via the link or by means of an extra few websites, the Court held that utilising this device was a distinction without a difference to offering a direct download. I have no doubt this point or something like it will fall to be decided in this country in some future case.

For those that don’t remember, the internet world responded to this decision with derision, and published the offending code in a multitude of different ways. Indeed the author of DeCSS itself was acquitted in Norwegian court. So no links.

But back to NZ name suppression. What if the author of the overseas site is unknown? What if the site is hosted in multiple places around the world? What if the site that received emails and published names was Wikileaks.org? What if there was a global site called NameSuppression.org, with a nz.NameSupression.Org sub-domain? The owners could be shadowy, the location ever in doubt and the publisher untouchable.

It can’t be long before this occurs, and then what shall we do in New Zealand? Block the site as the Australians tried to do with Wikileaks? Go after anyone that links to the site?

It’s an interesting conundrum. Judge Harvey has set the stage well.

It’s time for video evidence as the standard

Two Justices of the Peace (one of whom I know) found lawyer Keith Jefferies guilty of driving while using a phone in Wellington recently.

But the constable Bevan Sheffield-Cranstoun had no physical evidence to back his assertion – there was no video, no call transcript and no photo. There was only his word, as the Stuff article said:

“Jefferies told him he had not been using his cellphone while driving but Mr Sheffield-Cranstoun said he was certain about what he had seen.”

The article went on to say

Under cross-examination from Jefferies’ lawyer, John Tannahill, Mr Sheffield-Cranstoun agreed he had not asked to see the device between Jefferies’ legs.

It’s seems to be a simple case of who you believe – the sworn police officer, or the lawyer than enjoys winning traffic cases for his clients. I’m not going to debate who is right in the case – that’s not the point.

The point is we should no longer be satisfied with a lack of physical evidence for matters of this nature. With today’s technology there is no reason why we cannot equip all of our police force with evidential video cameras that are always on. The cameras can be inside the vehicles and on the police themselves.
Each time a crime is committed in front of an officer there will be a visual record, court admissible, of the offense. Police will be trained – if it isn’t on video it isn’t observed.

Meanwhile let’s change the requirement for evidence for speeding. I advocate adoption of the process used in Botswana, where all speed traps are backed up by video evidence. The pulled over motorist is immediately invited to see the video of their vehicle speeding, which has the radar’s reading superimposed. It’s impossible to argue with, and will surely save a lot of court action as well.

We are so lucky in New Zealand to have a trusted Police. Let’s help keep it that way by giving them the tools they need to do their job.

Soft Sunday News

Sunday news is traditionally a bit softer than weekday news, but today I noticed a bunch of, shall we say, softer headlines. So I decided to browse the popular news sites and copy a few of the more delightful leads and headlines.

So meet a selection of headlines from 8pm on this Sunday night. Each colour is a different NZ outlet – NZHerald, Stuff, Yahoo, MSN, Infonews, Scoop, Tv3 or TVNZ.

Can you guess which colour is which outlet? Were you surprised?

Answers after the fold.

Purple Media

NEW YORK: Naomi Campbell danced on the sidewalk of Madison Avenue in leather hotpants.

Even those who’ve lost everything are seeing their glass as half full.

This dumptruck loses its lunch in Andrew Baxter Drive, Manukau

Overdue rental fees are costing the New Zealand video industry millions of dollars

I said it last Sunday and I have to say it again: I hate writing about myself. I made an exception last week to briefly

The country’s best known cocktail king has mixed with a local skincare company to conquer the world of beauty.

This week we look at the Canterbury earthquake and marvel at how capitalism saved lives and how buffoons think the disaster will be good for the economy.

Blue Media

Nine years ago, nearly three thousand Americans lost their lives on September 11, 2001.

Parliament voted last night to send a private members bill allowing Manukau City to ban street prostitution to a select committee

Let’s get one thing straight. Earthquakes are not good for the economy

When a population can be guaranteed to be more extreme than its government, democracy has become a majoritarian excess.

Grey Media

Police and forensic staff have spent the weekend digging up an unmarked grave at the Karori Cemetery, where the remains of a dog was found

Risk’s to New Zealand’s biosecurity from flooding, earthquake, and other natural disasters are not being adequately addressed and require urgent action

Harriet Fenwick was crowned the New Zealand winner of the 2010 Stella Artois Draught Masters on Friday in Auckland

Orange Media

Tragedy has brought the boys from Evermore home to Feilding for a special one-off concert

Chinese pilots, who had lied about their flying experience, have been allowed to return to…

There are dozens of reasons to visit Sebastopol – bird-watching, biking, ballooning. But…

Brand Beckham and cringeworthy celeb ads

Dark Red Media

Real estate agents in Christchurch say it’s a nervous time for buyers and sellers

Apple may not have reinvented the wheel, but it has revolutionised the personal computer.

Bieber rocks downtown LA

Rooneys reveal ‘extreme pain’ after sex claims

Light Purple Media

NZ Orion flying to Antarctica to rescue a critically ill US man has been forced to return to Chch

Moonwalking just like Michael Jackson will soon be possible for everyone with the launch later this year of the first video game

South African fusion band Freshlyground have been barred from performing in Zimbabwe after releasing a video that pokes fun at long-time…

A Paris man who registered 55 children by 55 different mothers faces up to 10 years in jail and fines

Green Media

Ashburton has tasted sweet success after it took almost 24 hours to set a new world-record for a giant chocolate bar.

There are many types of lace available, from chunky cotton laces resembling broderie anglaise to very intricate and fine fabrics more akin to decorative tulle.

Prague zoo says one of its fearless honey badgers is on the run.

Pamela Anderson says her life has gone “downhill” since Baywatch ended.

Aussie 007 actor George Lazenby says he bedded a woman a day during his time playing the British spy.

American consumers like the immersive feeling of watch 3-D television, but are put off by having to wear special glasses because they restrict multi-tasking at home

A man in Kentucky facing eviction over his hostile temper became enraged by how his wife cooked his eggs and killed her, his stepdaughter and three neighbours with a shotgun before shooting himself

Turquoise  Media

Which airports offer the best service to travellers all over the world?

Brush up your dance skills at a sizzling Latin dance class taught by Dancing with the Stars performer Hayley Holt

Their paychecks may be are huge and they have a lifestyle to match. So who is Hollywood’s richest actor in 2010.

Sexy bikini models show their stuff at the launch of the Ralph 2011 swimwear model calendar over in Sydney

Red Media

WHY THE HELL DID I DO THAT? COLEEN IS PREGNANT

Google and Mozilla take separate paths in search of greater adoption of their open source browsers. According to the latest Net Applications numbers, Internet Explorer stills hold 60 percent of the browser market, while Firefox is stuck at

Vice girl Helen Wood today breaks her silence and reveals how cheating Wayne Rooney had three-in-a-bed sex with her, then – riddled with guilt – hung his head in shame and asked her: “Why the hell did I do that?

They might be Top Models, but a couple of the contestants on the top-rating television show have turned out to be anything but role models for anti-tobacco campaigners.

How many did you get right?

Continue reading “Soft Sunday News”

YouTube Instant

Yet another classic Stanford undergraduate story. Google releases Google Instant, and so Feross Aboukhadijeh creates YouTube instant.

Try it.

Very shortly afterward Feross received a tweet from YouTube CEO Chad Hurley offering him a job. That’s smart – other students have stuck it out and formed companies – like Google itself.

More on Venturebeat

To work like it is intended YouTube Instant requires a high speed connection and an essentially unlimited data plan. That’s because it downloads the best guess video as you type. It’s not going to help much to cache locally – YouTube instant lets the long tail of videos get exposed.

Can we imagine this being created in New Zealand? It’s got to be tough, especially when looking at YouTube at night. At the moment, when high speed, always on and unlimited broadband isn’t yet a reality, it’s difficult to see how NZ developers can break through to the world.

The Yike Bike

I’ve just had a go on one of these amazing Yikebikes.

They look beautiful, and that to me is why so many people want one. It’s up there with Apple products in its ability to attract desire.

Riding it is relatively intuitive –  In my short but quick burst on the bike I found that balancing and turning was much easier if you go faster – much like it is in skiing or riding motorcycles. The speed seemed pretty good, but the brakes didn’t give a solid feel, despite seeming to be pretty effective. They do have ABS, but would want to check how it goes with an emergency stop when whizzing down one of Wellington’s hills

You accelerate by pulling up a button under the right hand bar, and brake by doing the same on the left.

The bike is wobbly at slow speed at first, and I’d recommend playing with it for a while before trying the roads. The videos and demonstrations are all without helmets, and it seems the YikeBike is in a grey area of the law. I wouldn’t consider not wearing a helmet, despite the law. 25 kmph on the road needs that sort of protection.

In short – I want one. It is beautiful in function and form – a great Kiwi story.

Writing should be free – Businessblogs

Let’s play spot the difference.

Businessblogshub.com is a US website that aggregates and pushes out business writing from people wanting PR.


Businessblogs.co.nz does the same here in New Zealand. Can you see the difference?

It’s buried a bit, but if you dig around you will see that the US site is free for contributors to register and place articles, as well it should be:

But it costs money to do the same for the NZ site. Just how much – well they used to have it on display but the number is now hidden behind a form. From memory it was in the range of a couple of hundred dollars. I’m informed on the quiet that existing contributors are currently not charged.

I could not find the company registration in NZ, and yet the terms of service keep referring to an entity called “businessblogs.co.nz.” The address in the terms of service is the same as for PropertyTalk.com, which is a registered company. The owners of that company are Marc and Donna Krisjanous, and the person behind the businessblogs twitter account is apparently named Marc as well.

If you are a writer considering paying money to business blogs, I recommend that you do not pay – instead simply start you own blog. It’s simple and essentially free.

The blogging software I and many others use is WordPress.com, and they take care of all the technical stuff so you can focus on writing. You can purchase a domain name for a few dollars from within WordPress (the only cost), and they make it simple. WordPress takes care of all of the findability (search engine optimisation) and you can focus on writing.

If you are from businessblogs – then make the site free. The website, as a clone of the USA site and containing many of the same articles, is simple and easy to use, but it’s too easy to compete by starting your own blog.

How not to lift things – fatal risk

I watched amazed at this lifting operation in Auckland last night. From where I was watching it appeared that the load went over the head of the workers and drivers several times, which is a fatal risk if anything goes wrong with the load.

The load itself was often very cumbersome, long and skinny and prone to being moved around by the wind. It didn’t look like it would be too hard for a decent gust to tip the load so that it fell.

Meanwhile the lift went over the top of the shop verandahs each time, and pedestrians were free to freely walk back and forth.

One truck driver, not pictured as he had left before I started taking pictures, seemed to understand the risks, and he would move away from the suspended load, and seemed quite annoyed when it was lifted over his head. And justifiably so.

Another driver, not part of the lifting process, saw me taking pictures and we had a safety chat. He agreed that there was a risk to pedestrians, and explained that the Auckland City Council had signed off on the lift. I left the issue with him to follow up, as the supervisor was out of sight on the roof. He did not seem to feel empowered to do anything about the process, which was problematic.

I suggest that the City Council reexamine the procedures on this and for all lift. I’d also suggest that the lifting company do the same, and most of all I’d suggest that any and all workers in this situation should stop the lift if they see these sorts of risks.

Do this or it’s just a matter of time before someone dies.

I walked another way.

Five reasons not to auto-DM on Twitter

(With apologies to those not on Twitter)

I followed back a lot of people this weekend, and received several auto- direct messages in return. They say things like “thanks for the follow – look at me/my website/my company.”

These messages are rude and make me annoyed, and here is why:

  1. They waste time as they cannot be ignored, unlike public tweets. I get my DMs emailed to me so I can respond quickly.
  2. They are almost always generic, and pushing the person or some product. That’s rude.
  3. They make the sender look like a spammer, trying to gain as many followers as possible.
  4. They make the sender look like a clueless newbie, which is not a crime, but something that should be fixed asap
  5. They assume a relationship exists between myself and the sender. It does not.

Overall – the direct message function should be treated like a text message. If in doubt, then only send DMs when you would be comfortable sending a text, making a phone call or skyping with the person.

There are three options to respond to those that send these annoying messages – ignore them, unfollow the person and reply back letting them know that auto-DMing is rude. I’ve done all three, and from now I will refer them to this post.

Telecom Broadband meter is a bit short

Telecom may want to think about upgrading their broadband meter. My Orcon connection (over Chorus cabinetised lines) is a lot faster than their “Extreme!” speed of about 2.5 Megabits/sec.

This is, of course, a good problem to have, and a symptom of ever increasing speeds. Fibre to the home will give well over ten times the red line for 100 Megabits/sec and  100 times the red line for 1 Gigabit/sec connections. I cannot wait.

As an aside – here is my broadband meter for my mobile phone. I’d really like to know my data usage.

Air NZ automatic insurance ripoff

I am a huge fan of Air NZ – the people that work there are great, the experience on the ground and in the sky is superb and they were deserved winners of a number of awards this year. However as customers we owe it to them to be ever-vigilant in helping them maintain their passion for delivering great journeys. So on to insurance we go:

I was checking out flights today on Airnz.co.nz, looking to fly to Queenstown:

Ouch – that’s expensive, but at least it is a relatively simple process.

The next screen made me angry though:

Air NZ has added an unsolicited $10 in Domestic Trip Insurance to the bill. They tried this a while ago, and it is back.

There are 3 things about this that turn this happy customer into an unhappy one:

1: It’s deceitful. The quoted price on the search results page did not include the $10, while the second page price did. I’ve  purchased unwanted insurance at least twice recently as a result.

2: It is painful. Before this change I just scrolled to the bottom of the page and clicked ‘continue’. Now I need to look out for the insurance scam and click it off. When I forget then I have to email customer support, who, though they know my Frequent Flyer number and the flight number, insist on asking for a confirmation number as well. This all takes energy and time, on both sides, and is certainly not improving my mood. Meanwhile I cannot set this as a preference in my frequent flyer options.

3: It’s an unnecessary ripoff. The insurance does not cover business travel, where you did not pre-book accomodation, where your travel provider goes insolvent or if the military take over. While the last one isn’t likely soon in New Zealand, I rarely book accommodation and almost all of my travel is for business.

The policy also does not cover electronic equipment, including Laptops and ‘personal electronic devices’, which I am going to take includes phones.

Finally with the ticket class I am buying it’s so easy to change a flight for free on the day (at the airport), and just as simple to to transfer it to another day for just $15. So why would I need insurance for that?

In short the $10 insurance is worthless to me – I am most likely to require insurance after I lose or break some electronic gadget while flying on business to a place where I have not pre-booked my accommodation. I will never get benefit from this so called insurance, and nor will most of the travellers that buy tickets. The high value business travellers in particular are really ill-done by this product which seems to belong in the 1970’s.

I’m sure this is a good money spinner for Air NZ, but it just feels wrong. It is not giving customers what they want. This automatic pre-selection of insurance went away before, and it should go away again and forever. Meanwhile the insurance product itself is of no value to most customers, and needs a serious upgrade.

<update – I just got a reply from AirNZ to one of my customer help enquiries. They now have my feedback.

“I have forwarded your concerns about the insurance your query to our insurance partnership manager, who has confirmed that we are currently undergoing some testing on our New Zealand website where the insurance may be automatically ticked during the process. This is however only a on a trial period at the moment to gauge passenger feedback, and a decision will be made by senior management at the end of that period whether to keep this on an ongoing basis.”>

We love Flowerpower, do you like?

We at Powerkiwi love our Flowerpower product, and so we have created a Facebook page to have some fun. For now we are trying to build up to a decent number of people who like the page so that we can start offering sme fun deals.

Therefore we are giving away $100 of free credit to a randomly selected person that  is in the first 200 to ‘like‘ our page on Facebok. That’s it.

Here it is.

Of course this only applies to those people who have or are getting a Powershop account. If you don’t have one then click the flower top right and get $50 of free credit just for joining. No paper required – we promise.