PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE 

Dear SBBA Members: 

Happy March!  Happy St. Patrick’s Day to ye lucky Irish.  I was glad to get through February and cannot wait for May.

 I would like to take this opportunity to thank Ken for his many years of voluntary service for the SBBA.  THANKS, KEN!  Ken has served in many capacities including (and not limited to) Welcoming Committee, Listserver Administrator and most recently Treasurer for the last two and a half years.  We appreciate his dedication and expertise; he’s been an incredible asset to the group, and we look forward to him participating in whatever capacity he is most comfortable with in the future. 

Looking forward to seeing everyone at the meeting this month.

 Sincerely,
     Jennifer Loren

SECRETARY'S MINUTES 
Submitted by Paula Mauro, SBBA Secretary

The regular monthly meeting of the Santa Barbara Bookkeeper's Association was held on Tuesday, February 17, 2004 , 11:30 a.m. at Mulligan's Cafe.  Vicki St. Martin was Acting Treasurer.  Vice President Karen Mora opened the meeting and welcomed everyone including new members and guests. 

In coming months, members will be asked to RSVP for lunch so that the restaurant will have an estimate of the number of people to expect.

Paula Herschede was the winner of the free lunch in March.

Job announcements were made.

Pamela Allman introduced Elizabeth Donati and MONEY CAMP .  Elizabeth gave an overview of Money Camp, which is a workshop teaching about our feelings about money; how we use it, save it or spend it.

This workshop will be held on March 6 at the Pepper Tree Inn from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.   Information flyers were available at each table and a sign up sheet was circulated.

SPEAKER AT OUR MARCH MEETING

The guest speaker will be Roberta Nielson.  She will be talking on the topic of email.  If anyone has any questions they would like addressed please e-mail Vicki St. Martin – vickistmartin@cox.net

It’s time to due it!!

Dues are due for the six month period beginning April 1, 2004 through September 30, 2004 , in the amount of  of $30.00.  You will soon receive an e-mail, letting you know your dues payment status.  You may bring your dues payment to the March meeting.

Remember:

The referral list goes out to local accounting professionals in May.  In order to be included, you must be current on your dues!

don ’t forget to rsvp if you’re coming to march meeting

E-mail to Jennifer Loren  jen.loren@cox.net   - be sure to put RSVP in the subject line of your e-mail.  She must receive your response no later than the Friday before the meeting.  For March, that means  March 12!!

 QuickBooks Users Group Meeting

Monday, May 3rd, 2004

Topic: Job Costing

                                                   Santa Barbara City College

West Campus – Business & Communications Bldg.

Room BC214 – Conference Room

721 Cliff Drive , Santa Barbara , CA 93109

  6:00 - 8:00 p.m. - $15.00 (Dinner Included) 

Send Check payable to QB Users Group

P.O. Box 3302 , Santa Barbara , CA 93130 to reserve seat 

The Group is for ALL levels of QB users open forum for users to share experience, knowledge & support.

PLEASE COME JOIN US! 

For further information, please email:

 Bonna Hamilton bonna@silcom.com

 Jasmine Gollner-Gill QBUsersGroup@aol.com

Nicole Blum-Negard nicciblum@hotmail.com

The Santa Barbara Chapter of the IMA (Institute of Management Accountants) invites anyone interested from the S.B. Bookkeepers' Assoc. to join us at a dinner meeting at 5:30 PM on Wed. April 14 at the Stella Mare Event Center at 3302 McCaw Ave. for $40./person. There is a dinner choice of steak, salmon, or pasta. To RSVP, contact Chris Frohling at 963-9532 or cmf@penfieldsmith.com. The speaker is Yagev Ben Itshak, a Certified Sr. Adizes Associate at the Adizes Institute, who will talk about "Diagnosing Organizational Problems and Their Causes". This session teaches how to distinguish problems that are normal from those that are abnormal in any organization. A powerful model that differentiates causes, symptoms, and manifestations will also be explored, one that reveals which problems must be addressed before they further inhibit the success of the organizations and which problems can simply be monitored. Yagev Ben Itzhak is President and the Professional Director of the Adizes Institute's activity in the U.S. and Mexico . His areas of expertise include organizational diagnosis, building strategy and mission, structure facilitation, high accountability systems, management coaching, and developing high performance teams.

Article from SBBA member, Gail Gillies (964-4947 ).  

Money Camp  Saturday March 6, 2004 

About sixteen people and the two leaders, Elisabeth Donati and Larry Stein, met at the Pepper Tree Inn at 8:30 on Saturday morning.  Refreshments were served buffet style, fruit, pastry and coffee and tea.  The session for us was for only four hours.  Usually, the camp for children takes place for an entire week, and for other adult groups it is over a weekend.

We were a lively group.  There was much interaction, with questions and discussion back and forth between the leaders and participants.  We were each asked to tell about what feelings about money we grew up with in our families and how those shaped our attitude toward money in the present.  One focus of our session was planning for retirement.

 Submitted by Paula Mauro, Secretary, SBBA

for anyone interested in a little trivia............ (and who isn’t!!)-ed.

"the word freelance originated from the 14th century when mercenary
knights with no particular allegiance would take their lances into
battle for the prince or state that paid them the most money."

Submitted by Sandy O’Meara, CPA

Applying 80/20 analysis to your business

Presented by Brenda Richter, CPA

A member of the Principa Alliance

The Pareto Principle

In 1897, Vilfredo Pareto, and Italian economist, observed that the distribution of wealth was unequal within every country.  That is, 5% of the population might own 50% of the wealth, 10% of the population might have 65% and 20% might own 80%.  Whilst this is not very remarkable (we see it all the time) what Pareto discovered was that this pattern repeated itself in almost every country he examined.[i]  Consequently, he concluded that there was a predictable mathematical relationship at work that determined the distribution of wealth: in short, 20% of the population would hold 80% of the wealth.

Since Pareto, many other academics have observed this phenomenon in other aspects of life.  They have found generally that 80% of the results of something usually come from 20% of the efforts.  To clarify, it is neither the first 20% nor the last 20% of efforts that produces the 80% of results, but rather it is distributed amongst all the effort.  If we could easily identify the 20% that produces the results, we would probably try to concentrate on it and eliminate the inefficient 80%.  The dilemma, of course, is that we can’t quite put our finger on those high-valued activities that create the biggest pay-off.

Core Concepts:

If you see the message in this graph then you probably use its principle in some aspect of your life.  Even if you don’t, or are still trying to grasp the concept, please read on and it will become glaringly apparent why its logic is fundamentally important to your business and, quite possibly, your life.

Let’s not get hung up on the numbers.  It could be that in some cases 70% of the outcome comes from 30% of the effort, and in other cases the split could be 90:10.  What is important to show is that it is almost never a 50/50 split (i.e. 50% of the inputs return 50% of the outputs).  If that were so, then every minute of the day would be as productive as every other minute.

Think about some of ways you can observe the Pareto principle in your own life.  For example:

·         20% of your investment portfolio returns about 80% of the capital gains while the other 80% of your investments make up only 20% of your gains (if you could just predict those producers you could have retired by now).

·         20% of your effort at work results in 80% of your achievement while the other 80% makes up only 20% of your achievement (knowing which effort will be rewarded would let you go home early).

·         20% of your sales leads return 80% of your future revenue while the other 80% lead to only 20% of revenue (concentrating on those 20% would save you dramatically, if you knew who they were).

·         20% of your employees’ effort results in 80% of the output while 80% of their effort only produces 20% of the output (if you don’t believe this, just watch them for a few days).

·         20% of your employees produce 80% of the value-added work while 80% of your employees produce only 20% of the value-added work (we call these people “stars,”, and they do not usually stick around when they realize that their pay is not commensurate).

·         20% of your employees will create 80% of the unnecessary work while 80% will create only 20% of the unnecessary work (just go to a big corporation and look to see how many committee meetings there are).

·         20% of your customers make up 80% of your complaints while the other 80% only make up 20% of the complaints (is there something in common with these people and can you do something quick to resolve the matter?).

·         20% of your time on the phone is spent with 80% of your clients while the other 80% is only spent with 20% of you customers (are these the right 20% you want to spend time with?).

·         20% of “value” comes from 80% of your customers while the other 80% of the value comes from only 20% of your customers.

“Wait a minute!” you say.  “That last one cannot be right.  And even if it is true that I spend 80% of my time with 20% of my clients, so what?  I charge each client roughly the same amount for every hour I spend, so my return is the same for each hour spent.  Right?”   Wrong.

If you would like a copy of the related case study, please email me at Brenda@BrendaRichterCPA.com