Better the Devil you don't know?

7 Reasons to Out Source to J & J Systems Uk Limited

There are many reasons why a business seeks to outsource its IT requirement.  Often the justification of moving from a longstanding supplier, payment for a previously unused service, or simply a service found cheaper elsewhere using a friend or family member can be quite difficult to find.  Occasionally it seems like a ‘leap of faith’ – rather like changing accountant, which is why many small businesses adopt the ‘better the devil I know’ attitude.  So, here are 7 good reasons to outsource your IT Services to J & J Systems.

·         Make only one call to one provider and get on with your work, rather than spending hours chasing multiple suppliers:

As J&J can not only provide hardware and software support, we offer complete network support, office applications, accounting software, phone lines, phone calls and  broadband services, these coupled with domain and web hosting services gives us the complete range to cover your business. Just think, you could spend less time chasing suppliers and relaying messages, with only one call to J&J. 

·         Be secure in the knowledge your Servers and Workstations are monitored hourly for a range of faults and issues – with or without you actually present

With our Sentinel system your Servers and Workstations are monitored day and night, alerting our Support Desk of imminent issues, often from system generated alerts, if critical services stop working or hard drives become congested we will know as early as possible giving time to rectify the problem in the best possible manner.

·         Give your staff more time to do their own jobs, more productively, with greater efficiency throughout improved communication systems:

With engineers who travel through Kent and the South East able to call in or offer remote support from our Support Desk, your staff should be able to work efficiently and not get involved in supporting the network or office based equipment, allowing them to get on with their own jobs.  How many times a day does your office ‘IT’ bod spend time under a desk – often it’s the MD, think of the hourly rate!

·         Update your software seamlessly overnight without disrupting your staff during their working day:

Often machines aren’t updated regularly due to Internet download implications, speed or simply because people don’t know how to.  Our Sentinel system will be working hard to update all your Servers and Workstations during the night, keeping them up-to-date on the latest security releases of Operating Systems and Office Applications.  Updates will be kept small and regular, causing less disruption and increasing protection for the business against viruses, and of course, giving everyone else more time to do what they’re good at.

·         Budget for your support costs with a fixed monthly fee, which can decrease if you reduce equipment:

Our support plans have a simple monthly fixed fee per server, machine and peripheral.  The fee covers most work on machines based on Microsoft software, and includes virus damage, machine re-installation and even data recovery from your back-ups.  Our Sentinel monitoring and alert software is installed on all machines, giving us hourly updates on your system.  You can budget for your support costs and reduce them if you retire equipment as we will fluctuate the fee to accommodate your business changes.

·         Receive regular, free reviews with you and your key staff to help you keep in touch with new developments:

One of our Directors will visit your business on a regular basis to carry out reviews with you, ensuring you are receiving the best service and making sure you are getting what your business needs from the systems you have in place.  Its all about making your network and systems work for your business, if your needs change or your staff do, so can the requirement from software or hardware.  We like to ensure we give you the best possible systems and service for those needs.

·         Give your key staff helpful tips on improving their skills free of charge:
One of our team  will visit your office and deliver an IT Focus session regularly or periodically, according to your business’ needs.  This allows staff to receive key updates on software, byte size training sessions or simply a refresher on using fundamental software in the business.  Whether that’s using the new features of Outlook, or an overview of the latest Office, education in small chunks is often more easily digested by staff.  When did your business receive any formal training in its back office products?  These sessions are free for those clients with support contracts and can greatly improve productivity.  We will reinforce these sessions with extra articles and more on our website, Blogs and e-shots - helping to keep everyone in-the-loop.

Being established over 13 years with our two directors having a collective knowledge that is frightening when expressed in years, extending into more than 50 – J & J Systems supports small to medium businesses in Kent and the South East from a diverse range of market sectors.  This experience is drawn on to provide a complete range of services, which can be used individually or collectively for our clients, offering solutions that can be adapted to suit all budgets.

If you would like to arrange an appointment for one of our Directors to visit you and discuss why we should be the Devil You do Know in the future, give the office a call on 01227 371375.

Productivity Plus in Outlook We Often Ignore

Our Favourite Five Underused Functions in Outlook

Outlook 2010 has been in many of our offices now for quite a long time, yet most of us continue to use the product in exactly the same way we used Office 97!

The 2010 version has several very good longstanding functions from 97, and some handy new ones too. These can help users to organise themselves and find items not only in Messaging, but Contacts and Tasks, as well as Calendars.

Here are five of our favourite Outlook features – Some have been around for a while, but all are good productivity tools. Which do you use?

Email – Favourite Folders

Can be viewed by selecting the Ribbon Bar – View Group – Navigation Pane – Favourites

Sometimes Folders can become buried deep in my Inbox, under a Client list, or Project, but with Favourites, I can add or remove folders quickly and easily - This gives me the chance to keep the folders in current use to-hand for today, tomorrow, next week or next year. This means I can organise my regularly used folders and allows me to quickly see anything I enter there.

To Add a Folder to the Favourite list, simply select the required folder, right click and select Show in Favourites.  Providing your Favourites are set to viewed, you should see the addition of your Folder.  Its just as easily removed – they don’t have to stay there permanently.

You can do exactly the same thing above by using the intuitive drag-and-drop feature, simply left click and hold on the folder you want to move and drop the item into the Favourite Bar (shown by the ‘drag your favourite folders here’ section).

Email – Search Folders

In your Navigation Pane you should see the Folder tab (4th along), click that and you’ll see the ‘New Folder’ and ‘New Search Folder’ buttons.

Right click on the Search Folder Header and you can select New Search Folder – there are too many options to go through here, but you can easily pick Mail from one Client, one person, etc.
 default you get Large Mail and Unread Mail, but you can add your own.

I like to have Categorised mail and one or two folders listing particular individuals. You can pick particular folders that the Search brings up, you can also return to and customise the Search at any time.

You might want to look for attachments, or follow up items – just think about what type of mail you repeatedly look for and you can setup a Search Folder.

So if you regularly hunt through your Sent mails for items, or Project folders, try setting up a Search Folder – it’s dead simple, and a great time saver!
Of course if you delete a Search Folder, you won’t delete the contents – the Search Folder is merely a way of showing you the items meeting your criteria. 

Email - Quick Steps

In your Outlook 2010 Ribbon Bar, you should see a Group called Quick Steps.  Im sure a lot of people have simply ignored it.

Following on from thinking about the tasks you repeatedly carry out Quick Steps will help you.  They are easy-to-use one-click buttons which perform multiple actions at once. If you file your mail, they can be a huge time saver – one click and that email is filed away and marked as read. If you send e-mail to the same people over and over – one click and you have a new email to that team.

Microsoft say that 70% of people file mail into folders in Outlook. In Outlook 2007, and every release before that, there were two ways of filing manually: either you dragged it to the folder or you clicked “Move to folder” and choose the folder.   Quick Steps will walk you through setting up those repetitive filing jobs.  They‘ve really helped me!

Outlook – Auto Correct

Lets face it, most of us use Outlook to write emails.  How many are two finger typists? Not qualified in writing but plodding through the work day.  For those that struggle with spelling, of course the Office range help us greatly by offering Spelling and Grammar facilities.  I bet hardly anyone reading this has customised their product to use the correct language, how many times are we unhappy with American English (sorry Americans).  For me, one of the most useful tools however is the Auto Correct – I cant spell Calendar, it doesn’t matter how many times I try, it comes from my fingers incorrectly.  There are many instances of right hand being quicker than left and the odd letter being transposed.  So to help we can use Auto Correct, its buried away in -  File, Options, Mail, Spelling & Auto Correct, Auto Correct Options – in simple terms, on the AutoCorrect TAB, scroll to the bottom and add your correction then click Add.

With many of these things, the time saved once you have set it up is immeasurable.  Seconds do add up.  There are so many options, typists who have to deal with fractions or particular signs can set those up – you can change the short cut keys you want to use to call these corrections up – suddenly, degree symbols, or diameter signs are easy!  Next time you mis-type the same word, set it up in AutoCorrect.


Outlook – Customise Ribbon & Quick Access Toolbar


These are great tools to give you the opportunity to find all those functions and frequently used items and put them where you can find them at last.


From your menu, select File, Options & Customise the Ribbon, you can Add a New TAB &/or a new group within that TAB.  You can put any command on your TAB, so rather than hunting through the groups and finding the functions you used to use, you can put them in in one place.  Like wise, from the same area File, Options, Quick Access Toolbar, you can add your favourite items as buttons, I like to add on or two items that tend to disappear when the email box is a small window – like Insert Signature, or High Importance.  You can also customise the Quick Access Toolbar by clicking on the Down Arrow at the end of the Toolbar.


So there you have our five favourite features of Outlook and they are features we believe add benefit to most users of the software - increasing productivity for their business.

5 Good Reasons to Upgrade Pegasus Opera II to Opera 3

Although there are many reasons to upgrade your Opera II to the latest product from Pegasus - Opera 3 we have picked our five favourite reasons and think they are the reasons our clients should now consider moving to the next generation.

Standard reports can now be sent to Excel for manipulation

It comes with many standard reports already setup, all reports have the ability to be sent to Excel  

Its quick, easy and saves time to modify simple reports in Excel – no need for XRL or complicated export methods.

Modal Reporting allowing multiple reports to run simultaneously

You can now compare reports side by side and run other modules and processing screens without having to close reports down.  A huge time saver and a paper saver too, rather than having to find the data and print it – you can leave it on the screen for a side-by-side comparison.

Extended Notifier and Scheduling Services

Stop chasing around the office & branches trying to get all users out of the system to perform a backup.

You can notify users of any necessity to carry out system work, backups, period ends and other exclusive file requirements.  Users can be forced to log out & locked out for a period of time.  You can schedule some tasks for out of hours work.  Increasing your business productivity and reducing loss of working time.

Retrospective Debtors & Creditors Reports

One of our frequently asked questions from most accounting solutions is regarding reconciliation of the debtors and creditors reports to control accounts.  Now Opera 3 can provide retrospective reporting in both ledgers & this will work for most clients upgrading straight away with no modifications or time delay to build up data.

Rectify Allocations

Offers the ability to amend incorrect allocations in both the Sales & Purchase Ledgers and if required remove the receipt or payment.  This means no longer having to post refunds or adjustments to correct incorrect postings.

Is a simple Wizard in the new Opera 3, making it simple for users to rectify their Allocations with full Audit Reporting.

Watch the YouTube Video Demo here: http://youtu.be/GfTlCbDlKUM

Other considerations;

Continual commitment to development

Rectify Journal – Error correction made easy in the Nominal Ledger

VAT 100 Return submission direct from within the solution

Improved Help records and screen display

Post transactions in the current, previous and future 3 years with Open Period Accounting

Calculate the value of your stock accurately with Landed Costs

Upgrade before 30^th April and receive a loyalty discount, give Jacqui a call in the office to discuss this further on 01227 371375

5 Simple Tips to Avoid a Computer Virus

Five Simple Tips to Avoid a Computer Virus

One of our biggest challenges dealing with clients of all sizes and from all walks of business life is to manage virus avoidance, cleaning and more frequently file restoration and repair.

Often it is the simplest of actions, (or inactions) which will keep our clients and users in general free from virus infections.

A Virus is a computer program which replicates itself, normally with bad intent, spreading from one computer to another. 

The term ‘Virus’ is often used as a generalisation referring to all types of application, but there are multiple types of malware which can infect computers, there are in general terms three basic types;

o    Viruses (including worms which use bandwidth and Trojans who steal data).

o    Spyware (cookies, data phishing, key-loggers who steal your personal data)

o    Adware (irritating pop-ups, rogue & fake software and "browser hijackers")

The main methods of infection are:

o    Email attachment files of any type which are from untrusted, unrecognised senders Adult or gambling websites.

o    Opening or downloading unknown software and video files – often file-sharing.

o    Poor network firewall policies

o    Installing free downloaded programs, such as screen savers that again are not from a trusted source

Without doubt the carrier of most virus infections is email – in one shape or form.

So Five Simple Tips to Avoid a Computer Virus;

There are some simple rules that computer users can apply to their daily work that would help them avoid infection;

1.       Adopt an intolerance towards ‘joke’ and ‘chain mail’ emails which breed an attitude of acceptance to attachments from various sources

2.       Don't open any attachments unless you are certain you know the source of the email, the sender & you are certain you are expecting an email of that type from the sender who forwarded the mail. 

If you are have any doubts on the validity of the source or attachment that you have been sent, do NOT open it and check with the individual that sent the mail before opening it, or simply delete it.

3.       Keep your Windows operating system up to date by using the Microsoft Windows update website or by utilising our remote management service.

4.       Keep your Anti Virus & Anti Spam software up to date on your workstation/network/Exchange services.

5.       Never download software from ‘free’ sites, pirate video or music sites.