Easter Sunday

This Easter Sunday I was invited at my sisters. At first I didn't feel like going since I wasn't feeling so hot. Have been dealing with flu like symptoms for a couple of days. So I took an after lunch nap and was hoping things would improve...and that was exactly what happened. So around 4 pm I left and headed out. I decided to leave Daisy at home. On the one hand there would be several kids, the weatehr was terrible and Daisy is currently shedding like crazy. And I figured she might be more comfy at home.
When I got to the endstation of the light rail from where my sis was going to pick me up it had just started to snow again. Well it has been quite some time since I spent Easter in the snow...and I'm really getting sick and tired auf the snow. This winter has been lasting for way too long, as far as I am concerned.
When I got to my sis we settled down in the living room, while the kids were going slightly crazy upstairs. Got to mee my sister-in-law for the first time. And she is really easy to talk to. Got to catach on an stuff that's going on in my Sis' life- Haven't seen her for the past 6 month or so. It's not that we live that far apart, it's just that we m currently dating one guy and that it seems to go somewhere...although I'm not exactly where. There are times when SM Realationships are not that easy to figure out.
Got to hear more what's going on in Sis prefessional career and also got a chance to chatch up with my borther-in-law. Later that evening I got the grand tour of their new house, that they've just settled in a couple of month ago. It's a very nice place in one of Vienna's upscale neighborhoods. Definitely a great place to raise their kids. All in all it was a fun afternoon and I'm sure we will see each other occasionally esüecially when the weather keeps getting better since my nephew Daniel keeps asking about Daisy.

Taking Inventory

This was the first time that I was going to have to be part of taking inventory since I started working for my current company. Not that it is anything particularly new to me. I've been working in accounting for over 22 years and have been doing inventory related tasks lots of time. But with the company I'm working for it's a little different since we also deal with precious metals and gemstones and here taking inventory is enven more important since there is a boatload of cash at stakes.
What was nice that our boss decided not to do the entire invetory on one day but on 2 days. But that meant we had to come in on Saturday for about 5 hours or so.
Day 1 of taking inventory went off without a hitch. Everything pretty much worked according to plan. Had been doing lots of prep work for balancing all the precious metal accounts previously. So that certainly came in helpful. The only thing that made it questionable how long we'll be working was, that with the current flu season we had quite a number of people calling in sick. But at 6 pm on Firday the Junior Boss told us to wrap things up for today and all of us went home.
On Saturday we continued our work and at 11 am we were pretty much done. The boss told us to finish things up and wanted uns to enjoy our easter weekend. He told each and everyone that we had been doing a good job and on top of that we got little bonus for having been part in taking taking inventory. It's really a nice gesture and I really did appreciate it. It's not really about the money the thought is what counts for me way more. That's the time when I absolutely love working for a family sized business. And btw it's not the first time that my boss told me that he really appreciates the way work I do.
When I got home form work at noon, there was no excited cowdog waiting for me at the door. But I pretty much was expecting that. I had already closed and locked the door behind me before Daisy walked out of the bedroom. She has really gotten used to my working schedule and didn't expect me for another couple of hours. But as sson as she realzed that I was here to stay for the day she was quite excited and we spent a quality afternoon together. Would have loved to take her for a long outing at the park, but the bad weatehr didn't quite allow for that.

Amazong Race - Episode 06

My thoughts on Episode 06 of Amazing Race season 22.

My 42nd Birthday...

Today is my 42nd Birthday. Well, I don't fell any different than I did when I was 41. No real surprise there. It was a typical day. Had to work and it was a not super busy work day and that was certainly a nice change. Would have loved to take the day off, but with the end of the tax year just around the corner that would have been a very bad idea. On top of that the weather wasn't anything what I would call nice...it had been snowing all day long. So not a fan of that and I'm really getting sick of winter. So I got lots of stuff done at work. But I didn't stay as long as I usually did. Went home about 1 hour earlier than usual.
Took Daisy for a long stroll in snow and of course she absolutely loved it. Towards the end of the stroll she was more looking like a snow dog. Back home I had a great dinner. My homemade meatballs tasted even better after than had been warmed up a second time. Then I spent the rest of the evening catching up on some TV. All in all a very nice way to spend my birthday. If the weather would have been nicer I would have gone out for a couple of hours, but this was definitely very relaxing. And with having to deal all the fun that comes along with taking inventory at the end of the tax year you really have to take advantage of any opportunity that gives you time the relax and chill.
And of course getting quite a number of birthday wishes via Twitter, Facebook, SMS and Phone was quite nice as well!

Amazing Race - Episode 05...

My thoughts on Episode 22 of the Amazing Race season 22...

Woes at Work...

Up till now we had been dealing with overdue invoices a certain way. While it does work for the most part it is not entirely accurate. The system doesn't give a good way of autimatically deciding between what is truly overdue, where there have been agreements made, where we are wating to get the money from COD Company and where money might have been sent but might not have been credited to our bank account.
So todays task was to fix those issues, since a number of customers had comlained about that during the convention in February. Well the system does give me certain options but they're not exacactly what you could call automated. I had changed the ID's over so that only the truly overdue incoices would show up. At least that was the idea. When I printed out the report I was missing about 1000 entries...and that told me that there had to be something terribly wrong. So I did a couple of test runs more and turns out, that each and every position needes to be manually put into a certain category. The rest that is not being categorized comes into the category "no category". The would be fine if that category physically would exist and if I could create an report using that category. But that is something the system doesn't allow me to do.
So after I had finised dealing with the overdue invoices in the old fanshioned manner I went ahead and started with the task of categorizing each and every position for all of our customers. And that is quite some undertaking. By the end of the day I had actually made very good progress. Finished categorizing about 2/3 of the data of the German Sub-Firm. One more day like today and all should be ready to go for the report of overdue invoices at the beginning of April. I'm still not entirely certain how much time went into planning and thinking all those changes trough.
Being a Main-Accountant is fun at least for most times. And you have to spend a considerable amount of time trying to figure stuff out and thinking things through how you can make your work more accurate and more efficient. That's the fun part of working in a family-sized business you have a lot of room to move around and you get to make many decisions on your own. I have to admit that might not be everybodys cup of tea, but I do really enjoy it.