You are here: Home >Archive for January, 2011

What Are the Benefits of Being a CPA?

CPA, certified public accountant, CPA’s are a vital part of any strong business or organization. In all three major areas of the accounting industry (Public, Private and Governmental) the CPA skill set is valued and respected as the pinnacle of professional achievement, and can equate to job promotions, travel opportunities, and personal growth.

1. Prestige, Respect and Reputation

They are well respected and greatly admired by their peers, clients, and social circles. Through their experience and knowledge, their virtues, ethics, character, technical and academic proficiency are tested. You could say that CPA stands for “Commitment, Professionalism, Achievement” just as much as it stands for Certified Public Accountant.

In today’s professional world, these 3 qualities are valued assets in any business. CPA is a highly sought after professions in this society today.

2. Money and financial satisfaction

Let’s face it: We all work to make money and earn benefits. If financial success is part of your motivation to become a CPA, you can breathe easily. For experienced CPAs. Salaries between $80K – $110K are common in public accounting, and these figures are likely to increase yearly, according to recent surveys.

3. Job Satisfaction and variety of work

As financial reporting becomes increasingly complex and increased in its importance, there is greater opportunity for criminal activity and negligence. Tighter regulations passed by the Securities Exchange Commission need to be complimented by CPA’s high level of honesty and integrity in order to put a stop to white collar crime and financial misstatements. They are frequently called upon to testify during criminal trials as expert witnesses.

As a whole, CPA’s are multifaceted professionals capable of performing multiple highly specialized job functions, some examples as below, but not limited to:

o Tax advisory services
o Business consultation
o Auditing
o International Financial Reporting
o Information Technology
o Management consultation

4. Career Security

There is a shortage of experienced accounting professionals, which puts those with their CPA designation even more in demand. What’s more, this trend shows no signs of slowing down. Students and young professionals that earn their CPA can almost guaranteed to find and secure a lucrative position of their choice. Firms and institutions are falling over each other in the struggle to locate and hang on to the most talented individuals. Universities and colleges will soon be offering compelling incentives to lure CPA’s into a teaching career. In a time when our financial institutions are claiming bankruptcy ; CPA’s tomorrow could be the day you write your own ticket to financial security.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • Twitter
  • RSS

IP Address and Subnet Masks for the CCENT Exam

On the CCENT Exam you will come across many different topics, but a major topic that will be presented in various different questions are IP addresses.

Any computer or router (an OSI Model layer 3 device) will need to have an IP address so that the computers are capable of interacting with one another.

In order to understand the concept of how they work they can be compared to something more familiar like telephone numbers. Any phone number that you call has a specific phone dedicated to it. So, if you wanted to call your mom you would dial her number and know that she would be the one to answer.

Computers operate in a similar fashion, but instead of using a phone number to talk to a specific computer you would use its IP address, which has a 32 bit long number that is written out in dotted decimal format. Which means there is a dot (a period) between every 8 bits. This just makes it much easier to read. An example of an IP address is: 192.168.1.1. Computers convert this number to binary, but that is a whole different lesson I don’t want to get into right now. Just remember that an IP address is split up into 4 different sections.

An IP address also has what is called a subnet mask attached to the end of it. For example, one with a subnet mask look like this 192.168.1.1 255.255.255.0. The purpose of the subnet mask is to let you know which part of the IP address belongs to the network and which part belongs to the hosts. This can kind of be compared to area codes when calling somebody’s telephone number.

In the above example because of what the subnet mask tells us, the network portion is the first three octets 192.168.1 and the host portion is the last octet.1. In this example and because there are only 8 binary bits allowed for each octet you can only have 256 addresses. So, for this example you can assign up to 254 hosts on this network. The number is 254 because you need to save 2 of the addresses to specify the network address and the broadcast address.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • Twitter
  • RSS

Cloud Computing for End Users and System Administrators

Today in this competing business world cloud computing has its own importance with respect to service delivery, customer benefits and satisfaction, business growth and revenue generation. All who are the end users sometimes find difference between the traditional computing model and cloud computing model. May be they use the old versions of the processes to do the work but now cloud computing has made the way easier because it has integrated many processes.

Cloud computing makes you able to run software programs and access data from anywhere like from any computer and no need to install, download, upgrade and troubleshoot applications on a PC physically. This process is similar to the operations of the managed IT services providers because they also use integrated services and this is the reason why cloud computing has become so popular these days.

There is another aspect of cloud computing for the system administrators, how they use and how it works for them. Anyone can be a system administrator like we can provide admin rights to any person to access install and manage processes for us. There were many issues happened time to time causing a big effect on the business. After the cloud model was introduced it has become safe, fast and easier since the user don’t have to install the desktop applications physically, upgrade and apply patches and even reinstall the application when the computer changes.

If you are an IT infrastructure management firm so your first priority should be to improve the efficiency of the bottom line. For this you will cut your costs and increase revenue but the efficiency level should not be disturbed. Here the cloud model does the job for your company. Here the internet also plays a big role because this model of computing depends on it. Cloud computing and the web are interconnected with each other and none of them can survive without each other.

The key constituents of the Cloud computing is omnipresent network access. Its success depends how the end users interact with each other through applications. The cloud is providing the services related to computing over the web to organizations and it has enabled a much dynamic and professional business environment.

For cloud storage data can be stored on multiple servers and they mainly hosted by third parties except hosting them on the dedicated servers. It has many benefits like the customers just have to pay for the storage space they are using. No need to install physical storage instruments on their own premises reducing the hosting costs.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • Twitter
  • RSS

How Microsoft Excel VLOOKUP Function Works

For those who get the hang of using Excel and now the transition from the use of the “fundamental basis” was for “less fundamental”, VLOOKUP is a must-try, must-know and must-use functions.

But how do you use VLOOKUP in Excel? One of the questions. I believe what should be asked is “how does this function work?” V in VLOOKUP stands for vertical – rather than “value,” as many would initially think.

Syntax VLOOKUP is VLOOKUP (lookup_value, table_array, col_index_num, range_lookup).
lookup_value – what you’ll find in the first column of a table_array.
table_array – two or more columns of data that can be text values ​​in the upper or lower (no matter the case of text), numbers or other logical values​​.

Simply put, syntax tells Excel to use VLOOKUP to return the value of the index number of a particular column of the table array positioned at the same row with the value in the first column corresponding to the lookup value (which is our criterion) and whether the match should be exact.

Notes about the VLOOKUP and limitations:

-It just returns the value associated with the first game. That is, if you have more than one value that matches the search criteria, the values ​​of the second and final match will be ignored.

-Results will be # NA if no match is found.

-When searching text values ​​in the first column table_array, ensure that the data in the first column table_array does not have leading spaces, trailing spaces, inconsistent use of straight (‘or “) and curly (‘ or”) quotation marks.

-The formula will give you # REF if the column index number you specify is less than 1 (there is no column number 0 or negative) or greater than the number of columns the table has an array.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • Twitter
  • RSS