Climbing is something that always appealed to me, even before I really started getting into it. When I first moved to Calgary, I finally got a chance to try it out, and I was instantly hooked. Within a week I owned my own gear and climbed regularly at The Crux Climbing. I was hooked. I couldn’t get enough. Then I broke my knee.
Throughout my life I’ve tried and abandoned a lot of things. I really didn’t want to give many of them up, but other things (like work) ended up getting in the way. I really only blame myself for this, partly because I’m always interested in trying new things and partly because my priorities change. I was determined to not let that happen with climbing. It almost did.
After nearly a year in Ontario, with work finally settling into a post tax-season routing, I decided I needed to start taking some more time for me. Climbing was the answer. A colleague (friend) who also moved here from Alberta also had a strong desire to climb, so after months of me stalling (working long hours), we finally set out to find a climbing gym.
To date we’ve climbed in four different gyms in the GTA. We originally intended to climb the few that were within a reasonable driving distance from our office, but I think we’ll now venture out a bit further for the sake of exploring the gyms. Along the way I’ll be posting my reviews of each gym.
Climb on!
With the HST looming in Ontario and BC, I thought I’d take a few minutes to explain why the government argues that the HST is good for business.
Under a PST (aka RST) system, the PST is paid by whoever consumes the goods. So if you buy a hairbrush for example, you will be the one “consuming” it, so you have to pay the PST.
For service business, it’s a little more complex. Let’s say I have a business installing widgets. I have to buy a widget for $100 and provide installation services which cost me another $100. My total fee to my customer is $300. Since I’m installing the widget, my business is “consuming” the widget, therefore I have to pay the PST on it. The business implications, including taxes are as follows:
Selling price: $315 = $300 + $15(GST)
Cost: $218 = $100(widget) + $5(GST) + $8(PST) + $100(labour) + $5(GST)
My profits: $92 = $300 – $234 + $5(GST credit on widget) + $5(GST credit on labour)
Government gets: $13 = $15 (GST collected) – $5(GST credit on widget) – $5(GST credit on labour) + $8(PST)
Under the HST system, the business gets to claim a tax credit for the PST paid as well, since that cost is now passed on to the end user. Basically the PST behaves the same way the GST does; that is, the government’s take is what I collect minus what I pay. So continuing with the same example:
Selling price: $339 = $300 + $39(HST)
Cost: $226 = $100(widget) + $13(HST) + $100(labour) + $13(HST)
My profits: $100 = $300 – $226 + $13(HST credit on widget) + $13(HST credit on labour)
Government gets: $13 = $39 (HST collected) – $13(HST credit on widget) – $13(HST on labour)
So you can see that the government doesn’t actually get any more money directly by switching to an HST system. What happens is that the end user price goes up, and this money effectively gets transferred to business through additional profits. The government does then get an extra cut when the business pays its income taxes.
Then what’s the point? If the government doesn’t get a bunch of extra cash, why switch? There are two primary political reasons for making the change. First, by taking less tax from businesses, the province becomes a more attractive place tax-wise to do business. Businesses here are more profitable than they are in provinces that have a PST system. The second is to pursue economic growth. Since businesses should now have more money, they should be in a better position to expand; to hire.
A third reason, as noted above is the increase in the income tax base. As a baseline, the government comes away from the switch even, but increased profits in business mean increased income taxes paid to the government.
So businesses win. The government wins. The consumer… well, we kinda get screwed over, except to the extent that we own businesses, find new jobs, or benefit from the government’s use of the additional income taxes collected.
So I’m stuck in traffic last week on my way home (my commute ranges between 20 minutes and 1.5 hours depending on traffic) and the traffic report comes on the radio. He starts talking about all of the problem areas and how traffic is backed up here and over there. I’m stuck in the middle of it, so I kinda tune him out until I hear the comment “sunshine IS a factor”.
Say what??!?!?! Having lived here for 9 months now, I’ve learned that Ontario drivers cannot drive in snow. Snow tires or not, they just don’t know how. I’ve also discovered that they can’t drive if it’s raining/wet out. Or damp. And now, apparently, they can’t drive if it’s sunny out.
So my observation (confirmed by daily traffic reports) is this:
People in Ontario can’t drive if:
- It’s raining.
- Or snowing.
- Or dark.
- Or too bright (the sunshine affects traffic? AYFKM?)
Fortunately, they are GOOD drivers when:
- It’s spring break and there’s a third of the normal traffic volume (provided that it’s not raining or snowing or sunny out),
- Or when it’s grey, which seems to be somewhere around 86.23746% of the time (does the sun EVER shine here???),
- And around motorcycles.
I for one, am extremely thankful for the latter. I find it odd that everywhere I drive here I seem to be surrounded by utterly terrible drivers, UNLESS I’m on my motorbike. Then everyone becomes courteous. They give me space; they don’t crowd my lane, they don’t ride up too close. I actually feel safer on my bike here than I did in Calgary, and it most certainly feels safer than in my car.
Strange. I am most definitely looking forward to the summer, and begging for a few days of sunshine. Not too bright though, we don’t want traffic to get backed up.
On Tuesday, I was lucky enough to be part of a team going on what we call a “Follow Me to the Office” (FMO). The idea: we head out to tax offices to observe how our users are using our software and their other workflows. Part of the principle behind the idea is that it’s often difficult for users to articulate where they might be having problems. In fact, there are many cases where software users don’t even realize that they’re having difficulty with something; they just accept a task as tedious. That’s why we do these visits. Through observation, we hope to learn where the accountants’ pain points are, learn more about the workflow, and generate ideas for things that we can do better.
This particular client was a medium-sized CA firm, not altogether different from the firm where I used to work. Except this one was quite a bit more technologically advanced. I can’t get into the particulars about what they’re doing there, but it was fascinating to see, and I definitely learned quite a bit.
As part of a software development team, it was very interesting to see our software in ‘action’ in a real practice. I mean, I have our product open pretty much every minute that I’m at work. I’m used to seeing it all the time. I’m very used to working in it, but it’s always with sample or test data. It’s a bit different to see it in a production environment where it’s a tool (as opposed to seeing it at work, where it’s the end product).
Some key takeaways for me:
- Our users are generally quite happy with our software (aside from one or two missing features). This was particular refreshing given that my day job at this time of year is dealing with everything that could possibly be wrong.
- There’s still a lot of room for improvement in terms of streamlining and automating the tax preparation process.
- The tax preparation overall hasn’t changed much since I was in practice. This pretty much validated my understanding of accountants’ workflows, and the opportunities to make things better.
While I was at this one, some of my colleagues were attending FMOs to other offices. In total we saw three different firms that day, and all three of them were VERY different. Pooling our observations was a fun process, and it’s definitely helped us refocus on what matters to accountants.
I’m excited for the next opportunity to follow someone to the office.
So today I finally got my chance to present our product in a training-type format to a group of accountants thanks to CGA Alberta. I really value their opinions, so it was an excellent opportunity to get out there and meet a bunch of them.
The final count was 72 attendees; a larger group than I expected. I started getting a little nervous right before my presentation began. I hold these people’s opinion in the highest regard (professionally), and it’s been a long time since I’ve done that size of a presentation.
Overall, I’d say it went very well. The topics were quite technical, but I think everybody was with me throughout the presentation. It felt great to see people taking notes, and it was a wonderful opportunity to get some feedback from our users.
I was a little taken aback by how few of users had even heard of the features I was presenting. Many were long-time users who weren’t aware of quite a few things in the software. In some ways I think that’s a big problem with feature-rich applications… many users will never find some of the feature.
My key takeaways today:
- The vast majority of users are not aware of some of the most powerful features of our product.
- Accountants are actively looking for tools to make their lives easier and their work more efficient; there are still some areas of the workflow that are unnecessarily tedious.
- We could (and likely should) offer a lot more in terms of product education for our users including training, video demos, cheat sheets
I hope the attendees took away:
- I hope they feel that they learned something that was useful for them. I hope they try out some of what I discussed today.
- There is more to our product than meets the eye. More specifically, there are some pretty powerful features that are worth exploring.
- I hope that I helped them see our product in a more personal way.
I really enjoyed myself today. I hope to get more opportunities like this. Today, was a good day.
