By Stephanie Elsen
Carole Thuringer joined Red Wing Software’s support team 16 years ago. Carole has been an asset to Red Wing Software in a variety of ways over the years. After several years of working on the support team, she managed a network of reselling partners. She then went on to start and develop the ‘How2’ documentation system and videos, and then also created and launched Red Wing Software University (RWSU) which customers still use every single day. Most recently, Carole has taken on the role of Staff Accountant, though she continues to work on the RWSU, the testing of new products, and helping with migration processes.
Carole has a 13-year-old daughter named Zoe, who is a straight A student, excels in track, and loves to participate in plays. Carole also just celebrated her fourth wedding anniversary with her husband John. In their spare time, the three of them enjoy family activities. Carole says, “The three of us love trail riding with our ATVs and our Arabian horses. We used to compete at horse shows almost every weekend each summer, but have switched gears in the past couple of years to Competitive Mounted Orienteering. Never heard of it? Think of a timed scavenger hunt through the woods on horseback using an old-fashioned map reading compass! This year, we are also expanding our horizons and will be competing in 25 and 50-mile endurance rides with our horses.”
CenterPoint Accounting and Payroll customer, Swisslane Dairy was featured in the May 21st issue of Progressive Dairyman in the article, “Michigan Dairies Featured in Robotic Milking Panel Discussion.” Swisslane Dairy is one of two farms who currently use the Lely brand of robots. Read the whole story here.
Be prepared and have a plan. The last few weeks have had some excellent and unfortunate examples of the importance of being prepared and having a plan. The recent weather tragedies around the country, especially in the south central United States, are perfect examples of how critical it can be if you’re not prepared for the possibility of severe weather events. Many people’s lives were saved because of severe weather warnings, and their own individual preparedness with storm shelters or evacuation plans.
Even the less severe weather events that have been prevalent throughout the central and upper Midwest with the late, wet spring and farmers’ inability to get field work done as early as normal, required contingency plans for the rest of the season.
Closer to home, we had a customer recently lose over two years of financial information because of a problem with his main computer. He had religiously backed up his data, only to discover his backups were not going to the correct location, and when his computer had a problem, he found that his last good backup was two years old.
These conditions give us a good wake-up call on the importance of being prepared and having a plan for the unexpected. Whether dealing with weather, economic conditions, or technology problems, we all need to think about what our plan is to recover from unexpected and uncontrollable situations.
By Stephanie Elsen
Looking for nonprofit accounting software? Good budget management is a crucial component of the system you choose. Here are some questions to ask vendors about budget management tools.
- Can individual budgets be created for entity levels within the organization such as by projects, departments, and funds, with individual reporting capability and the ability to roll budgets together for overall organization totals?
- Can the application create new budgets from previous history actuals with the logic of adjusting the new budget numbers by a percentage, flat amount, etc.
- If department heads are responsible for their own budgeting, can the application export an entity budget to Excel®, allowing a department head to create their own budget numbers and then import the information back into the related entity budget?
- Can the application allow for customized budget reporting and provide options to report by entity all the way up to organizational totals over different time periods.
Ask the right questions and you’ll be on your way to getting a system that can meet your organization’s budgeting needs.