Archive for the ‘small business’ Category

Microsoft Security Essentials for XP alternatives?

Friday, January 10th, 2014

It was widely reported this week that Microsoft will be ending updates (including definitions) for MS Security Essentials for Windows XP when they end support of XP itself.

This is a problem for me. I have been recommending MSE to friends and family for years – it’s non-intrusive, it generally works, it’s never broken any software for me, and it doesn’t constantly produce false or exaggerated  warnings over things like “tracking” cookies.

Sadly, anti-virus software in general is awful. The marketing of AV requires long lists of checkbox features. Every single one of these features takes just a little more resources or risks software conflicts.

In business environments, I have used many of the familiar brands over the years – now that I think about it, I’ve directly worked with most of the common paid software brands at one time or another – though, some of these were a decade ago, and the experiences are irrelevant to the current versions of the packages. I have also tried many of the common free AV options for home users.

Universally, they have had their annoyances and/or huge limitations. I remember the time an AV program deleted (not quarantined!) a contact database file that happened to have a magic string that looked like a virus. Or the time a business AV package sent me literally thousands of emails warning me about something or other (it was too stupid a package to recognize that it had already emailed me the exact issue seconds ago). Or the AV feature that inserted itself as a HTTP proxy and thereby broke the instant messenger and some websites. Or incredibly resource intensive AV, bundled by the PC OEM, that brought brand new computers to a crawl.

This post has drifted a bit… I am currently testing Immunet on one of my daily use computers. Immunet was recently purchased by SourceFire, and uses the ClamAV antivirus definitions (and I think engine) that is community run (and powers many open source anti-virus systems). This isn’t a recommendation, merely a mention of another option that is a little under the radar.

 

Groupon.com is coming to Vancouver

Friday, March 19th, 2010

Groupon.com is a new coupon concept that is coming to Vancouver. They’ve been doing heavy web advertising today, I guess they are geo-targeting the Lower Mainland. The concept, is that a store offers a discount, usually a discounted gift certificate such as $12 for a $25 Gift Card, and Groupon members buy-in. The offer only goes live if a minimum number of Groupon members joins the deal. It’s been in the USA for a while, I think I heard about it a few months ago.

I did a quick Google search to find out example deals, this article about the San Jose site came up.

I signed up, so that I can see which local retailers give Groupon.com a try. If you’re into new marketing concepts, or if you are a retailer yourself, sign up for your own Groupon.com Vancouver account – yes, I get a referral credit for that link.

I’m keeping an eye on Groupon in Vancouver. If it hits critical mass, I suspect that one or more of my retail clients will be experimenting on Groupon.com sooner rather than later.

Ivy DSL – Internet for Retailers Launched!

Tuesday, December 29th, 2009

Perceptus Solutions Inc. is proud to offer our ADSL service, Ivy DSL, to the public as of today!

We have been providing two retail chains of 8 and 12 stores in BC and Alberta ADSL service in a private beta test for a year. We’re happy with our product, and we’re now ready to take on new clients.

The back story: Perceptus does a lot of IT contracting work for local, Vancouver based, retailers. We realized last year that we could offer retail chains a great deal on basic Internet access. We know your situation well. You need multiple ADSL lines, one for each store, plus your offices, and you deserve to get it at a better price than the incumbents will offer you. And you need someone on the other side of the conversation that understands the complexity of a retail environment.

Our private beta test chains saved 30% and 38% of their monthly ADSL service charges after moving to Ivy DSL. We offer business grade 3MBps ADSL lines with a static IP address for $40 per month ($55 per month for a 6MBps line). Further, their ADSL uptime and service quality is as good or better than before. And they’re happy to deal with a smaller provider. Most of the time you’ll be able to deal directly with me, Leonard Chan, the main guy behind Perceptus Solutions Inc.

So, for the best value in ADSL based Internet access for retail chains, visit IvyDSL.com.

The Fastest Way to Lookup Multiple Historical CAD to USD Rates

Friday, August 21st, 2009

At Perceptus, we deal with the Canadian Dollar to US Dollar exchange rate a lot.  Doesn’t every small business in Canada? We need to convert our US revenues to Canadian CAD amounts for tax purposes, among other things.

We used to use the common websites like XE.com or X-Rate.com to get our historical exchange rates.  But those sites are too slow if you need to look up a half a dozen exchange rates from the past.  It takes several clicks to retrieve a single exchange rate for a date in the past.

So, I went looking for something better to use.  In fact, I was prepared to create a new tool for looking up historical Canada to USA exchange rates on the Web Tools by Perceptus site if I couldn’t find a satisfactory alternative.

Unfortunately for tools.perceptus.ca, I did find a reasonably good way to get a lot of old exchange rates in an efficient way.  The IMF website, of all places, has a great custom table generator.

Here’s the link: Http://www.imf.org/external/np/fin/ert/GUI/Pages/CountryDataBase.aspx

However, this link (until it breaks, anyway) will take you directly to every CAD to USD rate in the last 365 days in a nice and tidy table.  Just generate the table, and look up the rate you need for the date you need.

Nice!

So BC is harmonizing PST and GST in 2010

Friday, July 24th, 2009

Yipee!  The Provincial Government and the Federal Government of Canada have worked out a deal to harmonize the PST and GST.

I’ve hated the PST ever since Perceptus Solutions Inc. has had collect and remit PST  (Wow, Perceptus is more than 5 years old!).  For the uninitiated, PST is intimidating to understand, and bothersome to put into practice.

There is a lot of misunderstanding about how much companies will save by harmonizing the PST.  It is absolutely not true that companies will save 7% of their expenses.  It is a topic for another day, but I list some things that Perceptus does and does not do with PST below, and it’ll make it clear that we do not magically gain 7% net profit.  However, many companies will save a lot.  But, more importantly, there’s less paperwork to handle, fewer regulations to puzzle over, and fewer phone calls to the Province to try and figure out what is exempt or not exempt.  This means that BC based businesses can spend more time creating, building, and improving themselves to do things better, cheaper, and faster – things which will help all BC residents in hard to measure ways in the hazy future.

For those who have never  dealt with PST  behind the scenes, I can tell you from both personal experience, that the experiences of some of our customers, that PST has always been a royal pain compared to the GST.

GST in practice: We get charged GST. We charge GST.  We remit the net amount to Ottawa.

  • Perceptus is charged GST on almost all of  our inputs, the ADSL that resell under the IvyDSL.com banner, our computer gear, office supplies, cellphones, automobile expenses, etc.
  • Similarly, we  charge GST on everything we sell to Canadian companies and individuals.  However, our business customers don’t really care, because they also claim GST inputs to net out their GST payments.
  • We send to the federal government the difference between what we collected and what we paid in GST.  It’s easy to calculate, and we’re indifferent to whether GST goes up or down, it just doesn’t significantly affect our bottom line – we just collect on behalf of the government.

PST on the other hand: We sometimes get charged by suppliers. We sometimes don’t get charged.  We sometimes charge our customers. We sometimes don’t charge.  Often, both scenarious are on a single invoice!  We remit to Victoria whatever we happened to charge.  “Huh?” is right.

  • Perceptus is charged PST on some of the things we need to run the business.
    • ADSL that we resell: Excluded.  We are a reseller; however, we had to send documentation of such.  But, any lines we use for our own purposes, we have to calculate separately and self-assess PST.
    • Most gear, and supplies: Charged.  Paper, computers, coffee, cellphones, etc.  The more we use, the higher our PST expenses, and the higher our costs.  That all get’s figured into the prices we quote to our customers.
    • Some, but not all service providers would be charged PST too.  We don’t use many outside services, so I won’t elaborate too much.
  • Perceptus charges our customers on some things but not others.
    • ADSL, under our IvyDSL.com banner, we do charge our customers PST.
    • Website subscriptions and our packaged software are charged PST.
  • Perceptus does not have to charge for other items
    • If we write a custom report, setup a network, design a webpage or other “custom” work, it’s a service, and there’s no PST.
    • Further, if we were to write a custom tool to work with one of our packaged items, e.g. an enhanced feature for Bean Counting, our inventory counting system, we would not have to charge PST on the custom work, but we would have to charge PST on the “packaged” software.
    • If for some reason we were to wholesale a product, we wouldn’t need to charge PST, but we’d need to track our reseller’s PST info.

The list goes on.  It’s maddening.

Yes, harmonizing the PST will initially cause the price of some items to go up for consumers.  Yes, some industries will be negatively affected, such as restaurants.  Yes, I think the provincial government is doing a bit of a tax grab here – I believe other provinces reduced the total harmonized tax by at least a percent when they moved to the HST.  But overall, HST is not a bad thing – granted, we’re  fortunate to be on the side that generally benefits from the HST.   I suspect that the province will try and tip tax revenues back towards businesses from consumers a bit by adjusting personal and corporate income taxes – or at least they should, because the consumers are clearly taking a hit on the HST.

At Perceptus, I’m  just glad to have less regulation to wrap my  head around.  And as a taxpayer, I’m glad that the provincial government has less paperwork to process.