Archive for the 'paperless' Category

Irish Revenue Commissioners make eFiling mandatory

Published March 23rd, 2010 in HM Customs and Revenue, online, secure certificate, slippery slope, IRS, efiling, Revenue Commissioners, paperless, eire, Pay and File and ireland. 0 Comments

Back in 2006 we mused over whether estatements from  a Bank were good or bad we concluded they were goodfor the bank, but bad for the individual.

Well now abother large organisation here in Ireland has furthered its hatrid of paper. From 1 January 2010, the Revenue Commissioners (who are the Revenue and Customs and Excise organ of the state) commeced “Phase 2″ of mandatory eFiling. It applies to certain companies only.

But the slippery slope is here, its just a matter of time before it extends to individuals.

The Revenue Commisioners already refuse to accept cash in their offices; they only accept payment by Debit Card, Cheques (which the IPSO wants to abolish by 2016) and a Single Debit Authority or Direct Debit.

Can you see where this is headed? I can, and its a bad place.

You see eThis and eThat sounds well and good in the short term, and there will be photo opportunities, like a Minister for Finance holding a CD-ROM containing a PDF instead of a paper booklet, thats ok, thats like an eStatement, you could print itif you wanted to, but we are talking about the Revenue Commissioners here. They have huge powers, and limitless funds to hire lawyers.

What happens if they say you didn’t submit a return? What proof would you have? a paper receipt from your own printer or a screen shot of the submission page? What could would believe that, sure you could have photoshopped it yourself. The Revenue Commissioners know that paper matters. That is why for years their documents have had watermarks and UV threads.

so heres our slogan (comprised of three clichés)…
“eFiling: It’s all fun and games, until something goes wrong, then you don’t have a leg to stand on”

Hotel frontdesk software

Published June 5th, 2008 in paperless revolution, frontdesk, paperless, paper to screen, hotel software and ambrand. 1 Comment

One of my friends runs a busy “Guesthouse”, although its central location and high standards mean it might as well be called a Hotel. The property uses a pen and ink booking system.

So unless you want to phone or walk-in any electronic inquiry you make will have a lag of say 1 hour at best, i.e.  they check email, check the book, reply. Today that just doens’t cut it. Any potential guest will have meanwhile found examplecorporatehotel.com and will have been able to confirm availability in 5 seconds and booked in 5 more with his credit card.

I have been trying various “Front desk” software programs.

When running a hotel there are a few key functions you will need in software.

  • The home page of the program should be a calendar
  • Check-in button
  • Check-out button
  • A rock solid backup method, something internal is good, but if a hotel is to commit its priceless calendar to a piece of software it should have files that can be backed up from DOS/Explorer, something like Outlooks .pst

ASI Frontdesk
Support: An American address, with Indian employees. There are a few bugs in the software. Like most things made for the American market the address field expects a two letter state abbreviation (eg CA) and a character zipcode (90210 with or without 1234). An Irish address can fill neither of those fields and the software does not truncate the final address on the letter head, leaving nasty spaces. Overall the software is badly designed.

I’ll keep trying and report more…

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