A Time to Enjoy a Priceless yet Increasingly Elusive Luxury.
Compiled by Angela Mutiso
It’s that time of the year again. Store-front windows are illuminated with bright lights, and excitement is
budding all around us, even at work. As the holiday season sets in, we tend to feel more festive, but less
productive at work. It’s inevitable– this contagious feeling thrills even the hardest workers among us.
Even though some of your colleagues may still be working during the month of December, studies show
that more than half of the world’s workforce reports a decline in productivity during the last month of
the year, as they begin to scale back for the holidays.
By mid-December, some of your colleagues usually start sneaking off early from work, for some seasonal
merriment, family gatherings, or last-minute shopping before Christmas. For many of us, the holiday season offers a chance to enjoy a priceless, yet increasingly elusive luxury: uninterrupted and gratifying sleep. The trip home for Christmas is a chance to spend time with your extended family, bump into some former classmates from the local primary school, sample some local brew with your uncles, have a feel of your mother tongue and maybe even say hello to the family dog– who amazingly, is still alive.
If you want to fully capture the magic of Christmas, it’s important to immerse yourself in the festivities and get involved with as much as you can. Try to take in a play, attend a carol service and visit as many Christmas bazaars as you can. Filling your music-track list with exciting holiday music and watching some good old Christmas movies are both excellent ways to fully indulge yourself in the spirit of the season. If you wish, you could even do all of this in the Christmas clothes you just bought or your best outfit. Sometimes the holiday commotion obscures the rationale behind the custom of gift-giving at Christmas.
But it is a custom that has a long history. The practice also demonstrates a human impulse to show gratitude and love. This year, we’re getting into the holiday spirit A derivative can be defined as a financial instrument whose value depends on (or derives from) the values of other, more basic, underlying variables. The underlying variables are financial assets such as bonds, equities, monetary exchange rates and interest rates. Derivatives include forward and future contracts, swaps, and options. Derivatives are tools at the disposal of a finance manager to manage a wide range of financial risks.
There is an argument that derivatives date as far back as 1700 B.C during bible times at the period when Jacob had to purchase a 7 year option to marry Laban’s daughter, Rachel. Laban, however defaulted on
the derivative and Jacob had to purchase another 7 year option and he eventually married Rachel (Chance, 1995). and compiling a list of things that every bookkeeper will be hoping to see under the Yule tree on Christmas day.
- Accurate and comprehensible client tax return data (Accounting automation applications)
Having to work with inaccurate client-information is both time -consuming and frustrating for accountants. What’s more, persistently pursuing clients for information can strain relationships. One solution to this hurdle is accounting automation applications.
Any CPA would be happy to receive useful accounting software to make their work easier. There are now quite a number available for purchase online. Some of them have an automated email feature that can notify clients about missing information. Aside from helping book-keepers to streamline their work, accounting automation applications have numerous other benefits, such as:
• Freeing up time: Rather than spend valuable time and energy chasing clients for missing taxinformation, automation applications allow book keepers to focus on more important tasks and getting actual work done.
• Enhancing the caliber and consistency of correspondence: Automation applications Offer Company emails a much needed upgrade. They enable accountants to send their clients clear and concise emails with a professional and consistent tone each time. This is far better than having different employees sending different client emails each time.
• Automation is a growth sector in accounting; Upcoming innovations will undoubtedly give bookkeeping firms a solid competitive edge over their competitors. There are various applications to choose from, each of them with their own unique benefits.
- Patience
Unrealistic work deadlines lead to a world of trouble. Not only do they cause a huge dip in employee morale, they also increase stress levels at work. Accountants are not superhuman; they need time to work effectively, if you want your books balanced properly, you need to give them time. Don’t expect magical
results if you give them an unrealistic timescale.
• Unrealistic deadlines lead to errors – If you instruct your accounting department to complete a complex task in a very short time, they’ll have to rush in order to meet the deadline. When you rush through your work, you’re more likely to make errors. The end product is sub standard work that will most likely have slip ups. This could very easily cause a problem, particularly if you have to hand this work over to your superiors, or if it is being handed over directly to clients. Then, rectifying the error will take up more time.
• Controversy may result from work overload because, in this type of environment, where stress is constant, it is not difficult for relationships between coworkers to degrade to the point where disagreements become the order of the day.
When one person is sitting doing nothing, throughout the day, another employee may be wondering why they have been given this unfair deadline. Anger can result, and when this happens, issues arise. Your office will eventually be filled with disgruntled employees.
• Setting reasonable timelines when assigning an employee a task to complete is necessary if you want to prevent all these issues and maintain a positive work environment. Let them know the assignment is critical, but also make sure to give them adequate time to execute it correctly.
3 Attention to detail
What causes a lack of attention to detail?
A lack of attention to detail can be caused by many different factors. According to human errors solutions.com, some of the main causes of poor attention to detail in the workplace include:
• Working quickly to complete tasks
• Receiving training that isn’t up to standard
• Experiencing tiredness during the working day
Meanwhile…
A Cake for Christmas
Vanilla cake
Here is a simple cake recipe for you to try out this Christmas.
Flour- (Ngano) 2 ½ cups
Sugar 1 1/3 cups
Baking powder 2 teaspoons
Salt ½ teaspoon
I cup milk ½ cup margarine or butter
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla essence
2 eggs
1 cup sultanas or black currants (optional)
Get a big bowl and mix all the ingredients together until they are all properly mixed. About 4 minutes will do (don’t over mix).
Get a cake tin or a pan (sufuria) and grease it with margarine, then sprinkle a little flour on the margarine (about 1 ½ table spoons) then swish round the pan so it’s all greased and floured. (There should be sufficient space at the top for the cake to rise)
Now pour the batter into the floured and greased pan. Bake for around 35-40 minutes in a moderate oven – about 350 degrees. When ready, a tooth pick should come out clean when you prick.
Remember…this cake is for all seasons.
Enjoy!
