Last Thursday I was doing a remote tech support call for an elderly gentleman and his wife in Macon, Georgia (I’m in Seattle). He said, “The printer is in another room, and I want to check the status to see if my document is done printing. It takes a lot of steps. Is there an easy way to see when the printer is done?”

SOLUTION
I put a shortcut to the printer queue on his Windows desktop, which was actually on a laptop. They both liked it, so I put another shortcut on the desktop of her laptop.

HOW TO DO IT
If you’d like a shortcut to open your printer queue, here are the steps. If you have more than one printer, you can make one for each of them.

Step 1: In Printer Properties, copy the name of your printer.

Step 2: On the desktop, Right-Click - New - Shortcut.

Step 3: Where it says, "Type the location of the item," write:
C:\Windows\System32\rundll32.exe printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /o /n "YourPrinterName"
Between the quote marks, replace YourPrinterName with the name of your printer, found in Step 1.

Example:
C:\Windows\System32\rundll32.exe printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /o /n "WF-2930 Series(Network)"

Step 4: Give the shortcut a name and save it.

Step 5: While something is printing, double-click the icon to see the current document queue and status.

#CallMeIfYouNeedMe #FIFONetworks

#TechSupport #RemoteSupport #HelpDesk

Cybersecurity - Networks - Wireless – Telecom – VoIP

The most time consuming part of my business taxes is the part a tax preparer can't do: categorizing expenses and totaling by category. I've been working on that today (after sleeping in). Every year, when I get that information finished, I fill out the tax forms myself.

When I first started my business, I hired a CPA firm to do my taxes. I did it that way for several years. Of course, I reviewed the completed return every year before sending it in. After awhile, I realized, “I can do this.”

“But Bob, what about changes to tax law?”

It’s true, I suppose, but as a counter-argument I’d point out that when the tax law changes, the tax forms change correspondingly. Here’s the thing: I actually read the forms and the instructions. And that’s the part that most people don’t want to do, I think. They don’t want to read it. So they ask a CPA, or at least a Tax Preparer, to do it for them.

In my amateurish, non-professional way of doing taxes, I have something very nice working in my favor: if I’m ever audited, the IRS auditor will either say my tax return is fine, or they’ll say, “We owe you a refund. You overpaid.” I declare all income, and I don’t make up deductions, and the math is good. So if I do make a mistake, it’s going to be not taking a deduction that I’m entitled to.

Will that hypothetical refund for overpayment ever be more than the money I’ve saved over the years by doing my own taxes? I doubt it.

So it comes down to whether I prefer the drudgery of doing it myself, or paying someone to do it for me. And since I have to do 98% of the work (categorizing and totaling expenses) and the CPA would only do 2% of the work (filling out the forms with the numbers I provide), I’m fine with doing it all myself.

#entrepreneurship #smallBusiness #taxes