Message From Evron's President

Ontario Moves Ahead on Electronic Recycling

Network Security: Maintaining The Firewall

Ensuring Reliability and Security for Your Business

Accountant's Corner

Ensuring Best Results for a Business Loan

PFW: Tips & Tricks

Improving the Accuracy of Inventory Cost Entry

Your Afternoon Smile

"You will either step forward into growth or you will step back into safety."

-- Abraham Maslow

Message From Evron's President

Ontario Moves Ahead on Electronic Recycling

There's some changes coming for Ontario buyers of computers and computer related equipment.

Beginning on the first day of April, the Ontario government is applying a recycling fee to computers, monitors and other forms of IT hardware. While not a tax per se, the fees are being accessed to offset the environmental impact of electronic waste and are being sent to the Ontario Electronic Stewardship (OES), which is responsible for monitoring the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Program, or WEEE.

The WEEE program is being implemented in several stages, with Phase 1 & Phase 2 being deployed this year. In this first year, the OES has a target of moving 17,000 new tonnes of computers, monitors, printers, disk drives, keyboards, mice, fax machines and televisions from landfill. BY 2014, the target is moving 75,000 tonnes of electronic waste.

So what does this all mean in terms of cost for you -- our customers?

In short, there will be a levy on certain types of hardware per unit. Included here is a chart from the OES that explains the fee:



So far, reaction to the WEEE program has been mixed at best. Some may see additional costs like these as poorly timed for a difficult economic climate. Others see it as a laudable program like this to exist from an environmental standpoint. In either case, we wanted to make you aware of the changes.

We at Evron think the program has real potential when it comes to dealing with electronic waste, for the environmental and economic impact of such materials in landfills and waste disposal centres is enormous in the long-term. Further, Ontario is merely playing catch-up to other provinces like Alberta and British Columbia who have recycling programs similar to the WEEE.

We encourage you to find out more information about this rapidly approaching program. The Ontario Electronic Stewardship - a non-profit organization - has a web site that answers all the questions you may have about the program, located at http://www.ontarioelectronicstewardship.ca

Evron is a leader in many aspects of IT -- we also want to be a leader in forward-thinking, environmentally sustainable ways.

Let's all help to keep Ontario Green.

- Larry Noble, P.Eng, MBA
- President, Evron Computer Systems Corp.

Network Security: Maintaining The Firewall

Ensuring Reliability and Security for Your Business

There's no doubt that security-related issues are a hot topic these days for network administrators and small business owners alike.

One of the most vital aspects of security for your network involves keeping your network protected from incoming Internet traffic.

Typically, a Firewall or a Virtual Private Network (VPN) device has the role of protecting the network perimeter. A proper firewall should check each and every network session going in and out from the Internet.

However, this should not be the end of the discussion. The fact remains that some of the older firewalls were not designed to combat newer threats from the Internet. Firewalls -- especially older ones that are more than two or three years old -- are simply not always capable of providing your business the protection you require.

As viruses and malware grow in sophistication, it is vital that your firewall parameters evolve to match these threats. This means, quite clearly, that your security needs must be kept up-to-date when it comes to essential components. This doesn't just include your firewall -- VPNs must also be included in these plans. Your business has to be, more now than ever, protected against threats like viruses that threaten your network security.

Of course, it's important when thinking about network security to place the threats to it in proper context. For example, when it comes to viral attacks, threats can occur both inside and outside your business. It isn't just hackers trying to crack your network - employees, either disgruntled or by accident, may compromise your network security through everything from accidental downloads of malware to deliberate sabotage. This extends also to the software being used in your office - after all, no piece of software is 100 per cent secure against vulnerabilities.

Yet perhaps one of the biggest security issues business owners must face nowadays is the security of data while on the road or mobile. The increasing mobility of employees through mobile computing means that VPNs must have strong security in order to protect data wireless transmitted.

To summarize, a strong security solution has to secure access on a network for your workers, but also provide protection from uninspected content that flows through any SSL VPN tunnels to ensure inbound and outbound protection from data loss.

So what to do? As a business owner, you're undoubtedly looking for ways to not only react to potential threats, but to have a constructive approach to network security before things get out of hand.

One solution to this is deep packet inspection -- specifically, a Network Security Appliance (NSA) that works against a comprehensive array of attacks, combining intrusion prevention, anti-virus and anti-spyware with the application-level control of SonicWall.

The NSA series has security, reliability and functionality in mind. The deep packet inspection examines all downloaded, e-mailed and compressed files, and examines information at the application layer to protect against the more sophisticated (and more prevalent) attacks that target application vulnerabilities.

Of course, there's an upside to buying an NSA from Evron right now. If you buy the SonicWall NSA, you'll receive an SSL VPN appliance for free. The SSL VPN is immensely valuable, given that it will assist you with remote access security for your works out of the office and on mobile handheld units.

- Amit (Sunny) Sahni, CCNA, CCEA, MCSE, VSP.
- Vice-President of Technical Services at Evron Computer Systems Corp.

Ensuring Best Results for a Business Loan

There is an old adage that you should not go to a lending institution when you need a loan.


While the saying is tongue in cheek, one part of it is true: never try to get money quickly from a bank. In spite of all the headlines that banks are acting irresponsibly, Canadian banks have always retained their conservative policies.


Consequently, taxpayers have not had to bail them out with tax dollars. Yet these days, an opportunity for growth could develop suddenly. To lose this opportunity due to a lack of a solid, trusting relationship between you and your bank would be unfortunate.


The key to the bank's support is simple -- credibility.


Lenders are not going to finance a loan, no matter how good it appears, without you having a history of timely, reliable payments and reporting.


You're wrong if you think that annual financial statements, prepared by your public accountant, supply the bank with timely information. By the time accountants statements get to the bank, they're three to six months old. Think of how much our economy has changed in the past six months. There are companies that were selling shares at high prices six months ago that are now bankrupt. If you are consistently submitting financial statements, projections, and other documents that appear to come out of entry-level software packages, you cannot expect be taken seriously.


Today's bankers are not impressed that your reports are computer generated. They are trained and experienced enough with accounting software to know that if your business is inventory-centric - a business that features reports emanating from entry-level software with very limited inventory capability - your data is possibly inaccurate. Once your data is perceived with skepticism, it is unlikely that a bank will take a chance on you.


The answer is to produce reports that the bank requires. If they need an "out of the box" report, make it for them. If your software cannot produce the custom reporting that the bank needs, then buy a product that will do the job. Call us to talk about solutions scaled to meet your financial reporting needs.


Don't allow yourself to become someone that repeats the story "if the bank had only co-operated, I could have made a fortune."


Have the reporting capabilities ready when your opportunity arises.

- Irwin Pinsky, B.Comm., CGA, MCP

Irwin Pinsky is the manager of our small business division and focuses on our BusinessVision practice. Irwin's experience includes that of a public practitioner focused on emerging companies, as well as financial controllership.

PFW: Tips & Tricks

Improving the Accuracy of Inventory Cost Entry

One of the strengths of Sage PFW is the parameter-driven nature of many of its operational characteristics. Proper understanding and use of these parameters will contribute to more accurate data entry and fewer accounting related problems. Two examples below illustrate this point:

1) Problem #1
Too often, invalid unit costs are being entered for Purchase Order Inventory Line Items:

Solution
Sage PFW will allow an organization to default as to how to associate unit costs with Inventory Line items. A default method can be set by accessing Application Setup within the Purchase Order module and then setting the 'Unit Cost Default Method' on the [Entry] tab to the choice best suited to the Inventory business model. The choices (as shown in the screen shot below) are: Last Cost, Standard Cost or None.

* If 'None' is chosen then data entry operators will be required to enter an Item's unit cost for every PO Inventory Line Item entered.
* If 'Last Cost' is chosen as the default then the Line Item unit cost at data entry time will automatically default to the Item's Last Cost
* If 'Standard Cost' is chosen as the default then the Line Item unit cost at data entry time will automatically default to the Item's specified Standard Cost.

The default to choose for this parameter should be governed by the Inventory method being used. For example, if Purchasing of Inventory type Line Items is primarily for Raw Materials to be used in manufacturing operations and if the Raw Materials Inventory Items are of Inventory FIFO (or LIFO) then the 'Last Cost' default makes sense.

The screen shot below shows the choices that can be made for this parameter.

Use of the appropriate default can significantly reduce the instances of erroneous costs being entered and posted and then propagating incorrect values into subsequent transactions.

2) Problem #2
Too often, invalid unit costs are being entered for Inventory Transaction Line Items.

Solution
Use the 'Allowable Cost Fluctuation' Parameter found on the Inventory Module/Application Setup/Transaction Information Tab to specify an acceptable 'unit cost deviation percentage' to be imposed during Inventory Transaction entry;

Use of a suitable percentage value in this field imposes the following constraints.

When the Inventory Transaction Edit Report runs, the system verifies that:

* The cost of an item using the FIFO (or LIFO) costing method is within the designated percentage above or below the last cost, as stored in the Item Location file.
* The cost of an item using the standard costing method is within the designated percentage above or below the standard cost, as stored in the Item Location file.

For example, if you want to insure that the costs used within (over or under) 10 per cent of the Last Cost, enter 10 in this field. If you enter a unit cost in Transaction Entry that falls outside this 10 per cent limit for Last Cost, the system assigns the transaction a warning status on the Edit Report.

- Nonny Beckerman
- Senior Consultant, Evron Computer Systems Corp.

About EVRON: EVRON is a leading provider of financial systems and network infrastructure solutions for small to mid-sized businesses. We have a history of success with thousands of implementations since 1983

T: 905-477-0444 | E: info@evron.com | W: http://www.evron.com.

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