F.H. Black & Company

If you work in the finance department in a municipal government in Alberta, Saskatchewan or Manitoba and are attending the 2011 conference in Banff in September, be sure to attend F.H. Black & Company's presentation: "CaseWare Tips & Tricks". The presentation will take place on Wednesday, September 14 from 1:15 pm to 2:30pm.

During this presentation, Jamie Black will outline numerous tips for reducing the pain from your annual / quarterly or monthly reporting processes. Mirjam Brett, Director of Finance from the City of Fort Saskatchewan will join Jamie in discussing their recent implementation and the tips that she has for those considering a CaseWare implementation.

"The municipal governments that implement CaseWare Working Papers report dramatically reduced time investment to generate financial statements, less risk of error and a generally less stressful year-end process" says Mr. Black. "We do notice however that many municipal governments miss out on some of the best approaches to using the tool. They get a lot of benefit from the product but they could be so much more efficient. It may be they don't know about new features or they simply are doing things the hard way. We are excited to speak to western Canadian municipal governments about how to to get even more out of their CaseWare investment."

For more information on how CaseWare Working Papers can simplify your reporting processes, please contact us or for more information on the conference please visit http://www.westcangfoa.ca .

 

In March F.H. Black & Company offered our first Tips & Tricks webinar on CaseWare Working Papers. 40 participants gathered online for 90 minutes to discuss some often-overlooked or little-know features in Working Papers which can be used to improve the financial reporting process.

I am happy to report that it was a success! It was not completely hiccup-free however. Partway through the presentation we had an issue with our audio and some time later we had an issue with video.

In an attempt to see if we should continue offering these webinars, we sent out a survey to see what people thought. Here is a summary of the results:

 

• Our average score for overall satisfaction was 4 out of 5 (5 being best, 1 being worst).
• 78% of respondents felt they got more tips & tricks than they expected.
• 85% felt they received "good" or "excellent" value for their money.
• As you might expect given the technical problems we had, we scored lower on Audio quality (2.4 out of 5) and Video quality (3.6 out of 5).

 

Based on these very positive results, we have begun planning the next webinar dates and have been looking into ways to improve both audio and video quality.

Please stay tuned (subscribe to our RSS feed or join the CaseWare Users' Group on Linked-In) for an announcement in late June about our next webinar dates.

If you work in the finance department in a municipality in British Columbia and are attending the 2011 conference in Victoria in June, be sure to attend F.H. Black & Company's presentation: "Automating Municipal Financial Reporting with CaseWare". The presentation will take place on Wednesday, June 1 from 11:00 am to 12:00 pm.

During this 1 hour presentation, Jamie Black will introduce the many benefits that municipalities can obtain by implementing CaseWare Working Papers. The session focuses on the annual reporting process and a solution to many of the year end struggles that municipalities face.

"The municipalities that implement CaseWare Working Papers report dramatically reduced time investment to generate financial statements, less risk of error and a generally less stressful year-end process" says Mr. Black. "On top of this, many are able to negotiate reduced audit fees because their auditors get better information earlier in the audit cycle. We have had a lot of success with numerous municipalities and word of mouth has really begun to spread. We are excited to speak to BC municipalities about their opportunities this year."

For more information on how CaseWare Working Papers can simplify your reporting processes, please contact us or for more information on the conference please vist http://www.gfoabc.ca.

 

In response to regular requests from our clients, we are happy to announce a new webinar series: CaseWare Working Papers Tips & Tricks.

We will offer four (4) different hour long webinars in 2011 covering different areas of the CaseWare Working Papers product family. The cost is $35 per person for each webinar or $120 for all four webinars.

Webinar 1 - Frequently overlooked features in Working Papers

Considering we are about to enter tax time (in Canada), we thought we would explore a half dozen topics that will be particulalry useful at this time of year. Specific topics covered to include:

- improving integration with external applications (including tax software, PDFs & Excel),

- automating completion of alternate returns (for example GIFI tax returns, Financial Information Returns for municipalities or Canadian Association of University Business Officers return),

- little used adjusting entry functionality which simplify things like reconciliation of net income to taxable net income, restating balances for changes in accounting policies or adoption of alternate reporting frameworks (IFRS for example),

- utilizing User Defined balances in automatic documents to simplify analysis,

To attend this webinar, please click here to register.

Topics for subsequent webinars will be announced at a later date. To submit topic sugestions please This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

 

Please note that we will be using CaseWare Working Papers Canadian version 2010 for our webinar. If you use a different version, functionality differences may impact your ability to directly apply the tips or tricks discussed.

 

Harry Black, Managing Partner of F.H. Black and Company (FHB) and Hal Dreidger, Managing Partner of H.H. Dreidger (HHD) are pleased to announce the merger of their accounting practices, effective December 2010.

F.H. Black and Company, located at 36 Roslyn Road, will retain its present location and all current FHB employees and will welcome the relocation of H.H. Dreidger to the Roslyn Road office.   Clients can anticipate the continued  high level of servicing they have come to expect from FHB and HHD as the partners and employees anticipate a smooth amalgamation.

Managing Partner, Harry Black will oversee  the continued growth and development of the firm and will be directly involved in all client related matters.  Hal Dreidger, while looking forward to retirement in the next few years, will continue to play a key role in client management and servicing.   In addition to providing full service accounting services, F.H. Black and Company provides H.R. Consulting and I.T. Services to all clients

For more information about F.H. Black and Company and its professional services, please contact us at either (204) 949-9113 or (778) 785-3752.