Advisor Today - July 2008

MANAGING YOUR PRACTICE
TECHNOLOGY
Must-Have Tech
Remote-control energy conservation? Headache-free mileage logging?
One number for all your phones? Yes. Yes. And yes.
Maggie Leyes

I n this era of $4-a-gallon gas and “Green is good,” conservation is becoming a priority for this era of $4-a-gallon gas and “Green is good,” conservation is becoming a priority for of $4-a-gallon gas and “Green is good,” conservation is becoming a priority for a lot of people. But let’s face it, it’s at the top of our to-do list if it doesn’t make much of a dent in our day or does not take us too far out of our way. How likely would you be to conserve energy, however, if you could do it by remote control? You can, with Belkin’s Conserve surge protector power strip, which allows you to shut down power to those electronic energy gadgets like your computer, monitor, phone charger—basically anything you plug in. This is how it works: If a gadget stays plugged in—even if it is turned off—it still pulls power. Until now, your only option to keep your electronics from suck- _Belkin’s _Conserve _surge ing energy when in standby mode was to get on your hands and _protector _power _stripknees, wiggle under your desk and switch off the power strip that _$49.99they were all plugged into. (Not gonna happen for most of us.) _{( www.belkin.com)}Belkin’s Conserve power strip lets you do the same thing with a little remote. Click. And it shuts off the power to six of your gadgets. Two of its outlets maintain constant power for those gadgets or peripherals that shouldn’t be shut off completely. And if you have a large array of electronics and want to use multiple Conserve strips, one remote control will shut them all off.

Vulocity’s Mileage Logger
Mileage Logger
$299.95

Keep the IRS at bay. Again, with the cost of filling your gas tank rivaling the money you would spend on a meal at a five-star restaurant, it only makes sense that you would track every last mile you travel in your car for business so you can write it off at tax time. But to stay on the good side of the IRS, you really need to move past jotting your mileage on a scrap of paper that lives in your car’s cup holder or “forgetting and estimating.” Neither method is really audit-friendly.

Instead, look into using Vulocity’s Mileage Logger. You simply plug it into you r car, and it automatically keeps track of the miles you drive, thanks to its global posit ioning system re- ceiver. It then transmits that information, via a cellular network, to a website—no software or interaction on your part is needed. Later you can log on to your personal account o n Vu- locity’s website and access your trip log. Once there, you can designate whether a tr ip was for business, personal use, medical or charity. There are reports that you can generate and edit. This allows you to delete, for example, all but business trips. It then prints out the report for your tax records. While you do have to pay a monthly fee for the logging service, it is an easy way not to lose out on that IRS deduction of 50. 5 cents per mile.