Over the past few weeks I have been busy with a number of activities. As a result, I have not been active for a while in publishing articles on my website and/or contributing to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and my YouTube channel. Hopefully I can get this going again now.

The main activities of pi-ProductivITy of the last weeks were:

• Due to a number of legal considerations, I have decided to convert the business form from Sole Proprietorship to Private Limited Company (PLC, "BV" in dutch). This is now visible on the website through the modified references to the company (company number, VAT number, bank account, “BV” added to the name of the business), and also in the available PDF documents with General Terms and Conditions, Policy for the Protection of Personal Data and Policy for the Use of Cookies. The content of those documents did not change, but in order to comply with the applicable legislation, the reference to the company had to be adjusted everywhere.
• In the context of training, I went through a prospection and application process with the Centrum Voor Avondonderwijs. In the meantime, this has resulted in a framework agreement through which I can act as a teacher for that organization in the future for (initially) courses on Microsoft Excel, something I am really looking forward to!
  
• I regularly process bank statement data from various banks (privately and through the company, I am a customer of Argenta, Belfius and ING). The manner and format of the “downloads” provided by the banks varies widely. That is why I have developed an automated program as an Excel add-in, which can read bank downloads, whereby the user can extensively configure the rules to suit their own needs (among other things by defining “rules” to recognize certain patterns in the source data). This program will (after extensive testing this week and next) be added to the “suite” of my pi Add-ins, and (like the rest of that “suite”) supports the user in 4 languages. More details in a later post when the application is published (which may also include a video on my YouTube channel).
  
• In conversations with some “colleague entrepreneurs” in the area, I established that (just as is the case for myself) there is a demand for a program that on the one hand provides as much automated data entry for accounting as possible (entering transactions, for example) and which, on the other hand, also provides the flexibility to get a clear picture at any time (both overview of the company as well as details at supplier level, for example). There are quite a few online solutions that offer decent automation for data entry. What I feel is often missing, however, is the ability to quickly have a clear overview of “the moment” of the company's balance sheet, income statements and other data. In addition, there is always a risk (despite the small print claims) that a decision or event at the provider of such an online solution could lead to a company's history becoming unavailable (if, for example, one of those online applications to which reason is taken offline). That is why I started developing a concept to offer this automation in the form of an Excel application. This has the advantage that the user has the data under his own management at all times (and can also consult it off-line if desired), and that the data also remains available regardless of whether the supplier of the solution stops using it or not. At the moment I am still in the conceptual phase of that design. To make that development possible, I also followed a "home course" in "Basic Accounting", for which I will take an exam in a few weeks.
• For the past 8 years I have outsourced all my web hosting and mailboxes to a (quality) provider in the United States. However, that potentially exposed my company and by extension customers requesting website support to US law regarding mandatory access to all data in the event of a dispute (the so-called discovery obligations). That is why I have decided to bring all hosting activities to a provider that stores the data on servers located here in Belgium. In the end I ended up at Combell (better known in the past under the name “register.be”). They also give me the opportunity to work as a "reseller", so that I can offer total solutions to interested customers myself (so, for example, not only developing a website, but also managing the hosting of that website, managing the purchasing the domain name, managing the mailbox configurations, …). That transition did involve some work (addresses and websites that had to move).
  

The following activities are on the to-do list for the near future:

• The “liquidation” of the former Sole Proprietorship.
• Testing and publishing (as an extension of pi Add-ins) the program for reading account statements.
• Further developing my accounting program in Excel (note that it is NOT the intention to disable an accountant - just to optimise the use of the accountant's services so that that accountant can deal with important things for his customers such as advising and optimizing decisions regarding the tax aspects of the company), and less with “typing data into a table” ... my program should be able to supply all the necessary data for accountants in a flexible configuration so that they can be accessed with 1 press of a button. the button to upload everything into the system they are working with and then spend their time analysing the data).
• Developing an “offer” as a Combell reseller for customers who are interested in their own website with their own domain name and e-mail addresses, but who prefer a solution in which they only have to address a single contact person in case of any questions or problems.
• Developing an e-commerce model on the website for future customers who want to acquire one of my programs or services.

I will keep you informed of further developments!