At SlimSoft we have embraced the virtual office concept for our employees. We all work from home, except Costa Rican's who will be working from an office, and we hire people were they live. This has resulted in our company having to incorporate in three different countries (Canada, USA and Costa Rica) and register in one US state (Ohio) and 3 different Canadian provinces (British Columbia, Ontario and Nova Scotia). So with companies in 3 different countries and an option of having employees spread all over the world one of the biggest challenges so far has been figuring out what to do with our paper mail.
Bills are not too bad; most utilities and home services like internet and cable have the option of automatic payment and an electronic invoice. The challenge here is to have a central location where to view them all. E-Post in Canada has a good solution, but not all vendors are signed up with E-post so the virtual user has to have many logins and passwords to keep track of all the electronic invoices.
Bank correspondence is another challenge, most banks these days support e-banking which allows the virtual user to view statements online, but they do not have a good history. RBC in Canada for example holds 3 months of regular account statements and 1 month of credit card statements. When you are running a business this is not adequate, I would like to have at least the past 16 month available for searching and reviewing.
Government mail depends on the country; our experience so far with the B.C. government in Canada is very good, we have been able to obtain any information we need and pay our taxes and permits through the internet, the challenge here is that the assessment notices still come in the mail, go figure why can't those go to E-Post as well. As for the other two countries, Costa Rica and the USA we are still learning, the incorporation process so far has been web based.
Vendor invoices and payments like accountans, lawyers and insurance companies, are also an issue, only one of our vendors invoices us through e-mail and only one accepts credit card, the ideal for us would be to get invoices electronically and be able to pay the bills with a bank transfer...maybe some day, it is possible in Europe already.
Lastly customer payment via cheque is also an issue, some of our customers pay with a wire transfer but a few still use the old fashioned method of a cheque, which makes it difficult for us since we are not always in Vancouver.
So in the mean time, while the world catches up to our virtual needs we have engaged a company called Lason to receive and scan our mail. Lason will open all our mail, send us an e-mail notice if they have received a cheque or something that needs inmediate attention and will scan and e-mail the rest, all mail will receive a file number so it is easy to find at a later date. Mail will be filed and stored in boxes in Lason's vault until it is picked up by one of us. So no matter where we happend to be in the world Brent, Andrew and I will be able to deal with our business obligations...but for the time being we still have to carry a cheque book.
Bills are not too bad; most utilities and home services like internet and cable have the option of automatic payment and an electronic invoice. The challenge here is to have a central location where to view them all. E-Post in Canada has a good solution, but not all vendors are signed up with E-post so the virtual user has to have many logins and passwords to keep track of all the electronic invoices.
Bank correspondence is another challenge, most banks these days support e-banking which allows the virtual user to view statements online, but they do not have a good history. RBC in Canada for example holds 3 months of regular account statements and 1 month of credit card statements. When you are running a business this is not adequate, I would like to have at least the past 16 month available for searching and reviewing.
Government mail depends on the country; our experience so far with the B.C. government in Canada is very good, we have been able to obtain any information we need and pay our taxes and permits through the internet, the challenge here is that the assessment notices still come in the mail, go figure why can't those go to E-Post as well. As for the other two countries, Costa Rica and the USA we are still learning, the incorporation process so far has been web based.
Vendor invoices and payments like accountans, lawyers and insurance companies, are also an issue, only one of our vendors invoices us through e-mail and only one accepts credit card, the ideal for us would be to get invoices electronically and be able to pay the bills with a bank transfer...maybe some day, it is possible in Europe already.
Lastly customer payment via cheque is also an issue, some of our customers pay with a wire transfer but a few still use the old fashioned method of a cheque, which makes it difficult for us since we are not always in Vancouver.
So in the mean time, while the world catches up to our virtual needs we have engaged a company called Lason to receive and scan our mail. Lason will open all our mail, send us an e-mail notice if they have received a cheque or something that needs inmediate attention and will scan and e-mail the rest, all mail will receive a file number so it is easy to find at a later date. Mail will be filed and stored in boxes in Lason's vault until it is picked up by one of us. So no matter where we happend to be in the world Brent, Andrew and I will be able to deal with our business obligations...but for the time being we still have to carry a cheque book.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home