A trip down memory lane

Well, Friday has arrived. We are starting to see signs that spring is on it's way. Some of the trees are starting to show leaf buds. I actually saw a daffodil in bloom yesterday. Today I only had to work a half day, which I love. DH took my car (again!) to go help his friend, so I won't be doing my weekly grocery shopping until tomorrow morning. I guess I'll just clean house then.

I got a new computer at work yesterday, with Windows 10. As our IT guy was setting it all up I told him that I'm so old I remember going to a luncheon years ago where they were first introducing Windows for business's! LOL. That was in the early 90's. Then he made me feel even older when he said "oh....so you even got to use DOS?". Yep. We didn't even have email back in those days. And once the company started buying pc's we didn't even get them at our desks. We had a "pc pool" area set up, so when we needed to use a pc (which we accountants used for spreadsheet and word document work) we had to go sit over in the little group of pc's. Amazing how far it's all come.

Now, I have just about everything I need right at my desk. A pc, 2 monitors (some of our folks have 4), a printer, a scanner, all the programs, a smart phone. a scanner to do bank depoists, etc. All the stuff that makes working so much more efficient compared to back in those days.  Let alone, being able to access it all from home, to boot!

I am working on going as paperless as possible. Quite a few of our vendors email me invoices for Purchase Orders we have sent. I used to print out the invoice, enter the transactions in Quickbooks (receive the vendor invoice against the PO and then invoice our customer, for resale) and then file the vendor invoice in a folder of invoices to be paid. Then when I pay the bill, I pull the invoices I am paying and attach the invoices to the check remittance stubs and file away in a drawer.

My new method is to open the emailed invoice and just view it on one of my monitors. I have Quickbooks open on my other monitor and enter the bill. Then I drag the copy of the invoice and attach it to the transaction in Quickbooks. Then I create the customer invoice (mostly using copy and paste, rather than retyping our long as hell part #'s, addresses, etc), and then email the invoice to our customer. When the bill is due to the vendor, I will now be paying via online banking. No check to cut/sign, no paper copy of bill to attach and file. 

Some invoices/bills are mailed to us regular snail mail. (though I am working on getting as many of those as I can electronically, now) Currently our receptionist just throws those in my inbox. When I go 100% remote, she will just scan those too me (and then she can toss) and I will record/pay using the same method above. It will all be good :)