With a London schoolwear supplier the back-too-school rush is convenient

The September back-to-school rush can be completely overwhelming and stressful, especially for parents with multiple children. Following the strict uniform guidelines of one school can be difficult enough, but when parents have to find school uniforms for several children at different schools, they can be overcome with the rush and difficulty of it all.

One way to guarantee a mad last-minute rush for school clothes is to hit up the department stores at the last minute, searching through the generic stock of blue, green and red jumpers for the exact right style and shade defined by a school’s guidelines.

Thankfully, there are ways to avoid this new term nightmare. These days, there are a large variety of specialist shops that stock school uniforms specific to local schools. So if a parent has multiple children attending different local schools, a one-stop-shop at a uniform shop will enable them to avoid the headache of the last-minute department store rush.

Sometimes parents think that, because they live in urban areas, they are unable to use the resource of specialist school uniform shops. However, a London schoolwear supplier is not at all difficult to find, with school kit for various different sizes and ages available in ready stock, aimed at specific schools.

The importance of correct school uniform, from the point of view of children and parents, cannot be exaggerated too much. For parents, incorrect uniform results in letters home and tearful children. For children, it can be socially disastrous to turn up to school in the incorrect uniform, with increased chances of bullying. Children, and especially teenagers, place a lot of importance on being accepted. Not ‘fitting in’ can be a huge source of stress, especially when codesfor school clothes are strict and without a huge amount of wiggle room.Â

Today’s busy parents can find it very difficult to find time to physically go shopping for school clothes, especially when they have to juggle work, school and clubs in order to get to the shops together with their children. That’s where online shopping can come in. Lots of schoolwear suppliers have websites able to buy in new stock on order, which takes an hours-long process of rushing around multiple shops and turns it into something as quick and easy as point and click. Finding a local London schoolwear supplier really can be a lifesaver for busy urban parents and their children.

Please visit http://www.uniform4kids.com/ for further information about this topic.

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Duplicate Payments and Recovery Audit Software

Accounts payable audit are necessary for any corporation which worries it may be at risk of making duplicate payments, invoice payment mistakes or other financial hiccups – which can have a far-reaching and long-lasting effect on a company with a extensive accounts payable department. If a business is working with many different contractors and service providers, in can be easy to lose track of just how accurate its payments are. In the case of a company operating with out-of-date or ineffective systems, these payments can spiral until they represent significant losses.

That’s why most accounts payable departments commonly use a recovery audit, to see just where they’re missing money. However, recovery audits can be costly in themselves, and cumbersome, if the appropriate technologies are not in place. Increasingly, accounts payable audit are at their most effective when paired with recovery audit software that automatically sees errors in accounting and invoicing systems. This includes the identification of inaccurate or duplicate payments, overpayments, missed discounts, currency conversion errors, unclaimed cheques, inaccurate tax adjustments and even attempted fraud.

Due to the expense and complexity of good-quality recovery audit software, most firms use services that provide them with built-in tools. Because these tools are the main operation of an accounts payable software company, rather than a sideline, the company can invest a lot more in keeping them up to date and at maximum productivity – essentially, hundreds of clients will share the cost of one software system, and have the hassle taken off their backs.

Generally, recovery audit software is accessed online, with clients able to check in on the process and see results in an accessible format whenever they want to. No more waiting for office staff to write up reports or worrying about what they might have mistaken – the software is kept backed up and up to date by the company supplying and operating the software. Much of this software includes prevention tools that make recovery audit a constant process, rather than a regular mammoth task: and make sure that mistakes, frauds and overpayments are stopped at once. For some large companies, this represents a saving of millions of dollars, even before they factor in the work time and office resources that have been freed up by relying on a software system. Many systems will even automate historical claims to debtors or contractors, so that the lost revenue is back in the company’s account as speedily as possible.

In the department of accounts payable audit, this software can be an indispensable tool. Human error is all but eliminated, and employees can breathe easily, sure that they’re not throwing away money through mistakes that get lost in the net.

Please visit http://www.fiscaltec.com/uk

Steel, aluminium and glass louvres: where design meets efficiency

When a climate is unpredictable, oppressively hot or cold, or when a building is located in a polluted area such as a large city, external louvres are often used to provide ventilation and a regular circulation of fresh air. These consist of several slats placed at precise angles to ensure the best possible circulation for fresh, temperature-controlled air. Large structures, such as brise soleil, its name taken from the French (-sunbreaker’) can also shade visitors around the building from either overwhelming sun or light precipitation. Smaller louvres control sand or dust from entering the building, as well as ambient noise. They are an extremely useful method of reducing emissions from heating and from air conditioning, and for this reason have gained importance as an essential feature of a -green building’. Air conditioning in particular is one of the most infamous culprits in carbon dioxide production.

Some louvres have even more advanced and specific environmentally friendly uses. For instance, glass louvres actively absorb\attract and retain heat, leaving buildings cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Some are even built in conjunction with solar panels: the slats are ideally placed to support delicate photovoltaic cells, and the glass maximizes the amount of sunlight they attract. Many well-known buildings, such as Paris’ Institute du Monde Arabe, the Milwaukee Art Museum, Yorkshire Sculpture Park and Chandigargh city at the foot of the Himalayas, designed by the initiator of brise soleil, architect Le Courbusier (-the blackbird’), use louvres to create modern and efficient buildings.

However, architects are artists, and when planning external louvres on a building, they’re not thinking only of the functionality of efficient temperature and pollution control systems. It’s the indisputable beauty of external louvres that has made them a key feature of all kinds of architecture projects, from airports or entire cities like Chandigargh, to private homes and small offices. Louvres are found everywhere in inconscpicious forms made out of steel or aluminium, and many are designed specifically not to be obvious. But on the other extreme, an arresting structure made of wooden or glass louvres combines functionality with a design talking point.

When sitting out in the garden, approaching the pool, or simply approaching a building, a louvre structure is fantastic way of providing a cool, quiet and tranquil space while also enjoying the serenity for inhabitants, workers and guests that comes from gorgeous architecture. It’s increasingly uncommon to find a shaded outdoor space attached to a well-designed building that doesn’t incorporate an attractive brise soleil component ‘ and with louvre installation becoming cheaper and more accessible to the average homeowner, the trend is only set to become more well-loved.Â

Please visit http://www.maplesunscreening.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

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Bacs payments: what you want to know

Bacs is a not-for-profit member organisation which has been an essential part of automated payments and electronic transfers in the UK, US and Europe for decades. An industry body owned by 16 highly-respected banks and building societies, it uses Direct Debit and Bacs Direct Credit to carry out transactions, and is the hidden spine of the UK’s automated payments system “Bacs software” is a phrase used to refer to a software solution which automates Bacs payments.Â

Although many people haven’t heard of the group, they will almost undoubtedly have used its services. During 2013, 5.67 billion separatedifferent payments were made by UK employers, employees, traders or customers. Three quarters of the adult UK population now have at least one Direct Debit set up (for subscription services, to pay utilities, phone or internet bills or to donate to charity) while Direct Credit payments are used by organisations distributing benefits, wages or salaries.

However, you shouldn’t just trust any organisation claiming to offer Bacs software for automated payments. The body very tightly controls which software suppliers are licenced to use their two software offerings, Bacstel-IP and Secure-IP for Faster Payments. Solution suppliers must show that they can offer the highest level of security for their Bacs payments, and are tested by the body through a sequence of processes before they can legally advertise themselves as using ‘approved software’. Look for the Software Service Logo, or simply look up the company you’re considering on the body’s own online register of approved organisations.Â

A good approved payment system should offer direct integration with your office and accounts system to automate your files, invoices and bills into the template necessary to carry out a Bacs payment: Faster Payments, Direct Credits or Direct Debits. All stages in the software should be password-controlled, and the software should control all requirements for you in order to make and receive payments within three days.Â

Bacs software is used by many different organisations across many different areas. It can be used by employers to make sure that weekly wages, monthly salaries, or employees’ mortgages and pension contributions are always on time, secure and accurate. It can also be used to process Direct Debit and other subscription payments, without the accountant having to do anything manually. It’s essential to make sure that you’re using a reliable automated payments provider – but when a programme is Bacs approved, you know that it’s safe and reliable thanks to their exhaustive testing for licensees.Â

Please visit http://www.bottomline.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

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Document management -€“ implications for your IT performance

A document management system allows you to store all of your office documents, physical and electronic, on the same network. Physical documents are converted to electronic ones via a set of document processing technologies, which can take a number of different forms. (Invoice processing simply applies these technologies to your accounts department.) The resulting files may be Word documents, if you have more advanced software such as optical character recognition, or they may be JPEGs, TIFFs and PDFs if they are regular scans.

The advantages of document processing are significant. Businesses can literally become paperless, since everything can be uploaded and kept centrally, allowing anyone with permission to access it as they need it. However, it’s not a panacea, and used unwisely there are some problems. One of the reasons you’ll want to consider using such a system is because it is more environmentally friendly, since it doesn’t waste paper. Another is that documents can be found and shared quickly.

However, there are knock-on effects to other areas of your business. Your IT infrastructure will need to be up-to-date and future-proofed to prevent issues. A major problem to head off is storage space.Â

Document processing turns physical papers into electronic outputs. The software involved does this in a range of ways and with a variety of outputs. Some outputs (file types) are more suitable than others. So, for example, a simple scan programme might output a TIFF or PDF. These images can be optimised – or they can contain a huge amount of redundant information. Where files are larger than they need to be (and they can run to many tens of megabytes) your storage space will fill up fast. Sooner or later you will have to do something about it to keep your system running. That might be adding further storage (which is relatively cheap but can come with the complications of restructuring), moving to the cloud (costly) or carrying out a complex de-dup.

The solution is to think long-term when you are moving to a paperless system. Document processing technology should be selected on your future needs, not just current ones or simple price level. Otherwise, your document management system will become overloaded and you will end up paying more for extra storage. Invoice processing, too, could become over-complicated, with customer and supplier goodwill eroded as a result. Since this is something you probably wanted to address and streamline with invoice processing, it’s as well to ensure it doesn’t become a problem further down the line when the new system has been implemented.

Please visit http://www.bottomline.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

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Sales presentations can glow, or be lacklustre

Powerpoint presentations are very simple to throw together, but outstanding Powerpoint design is extremely hard. Pushed for time, most of us will put together a bunch of slides based on our talk, perhaps illustrating some major points. The versatility of Powerpoint makes this easy – too easy. Thanks to the user-friendliness of the product, you can very quickly build up slides with text, images, audio and video, transitioning to each other with a variety of special effects. But that’s not enough. Good sales presentations are more than window-dressing, and if you don’t know what you’re doing your audience will find out pretty fast.

Bad Powerpoint design just repeats what the audience hears in your spoken presentation. Good design has a narrative: a story that continues through the presentation and that is communicated with brevity and clarity. The visuals matter, but only in enabling this primary aim. People take in information in different ways, so don’t presume that the slides are an optional extra to the talk you deliver. In many cases these snapshots will be most or all of what a viewer/listener takes away.

This isn’t something that just anyone can do – at least not without training. If you work in an organisation of any size, you’ll already understand that. Although you can create your own copy, it’s far more effective to hire a copywriter to do it for you. Anyone can write; not everyone can copywrite (although in smaller organisations they may try). Powerpoint is the same. The problem is that the ease of using the software means there are a lot of beginners out there, with unfortunate results. Creating a really brilliant slideshow is actually quite an art; it’s just that creating a mediocre slideshow is within anyone’s reach – just as writing a lacklustre sales pitch or website landing page is something anyone can do.

If your Powerpoint design is letting you down, there are experts who can either do it for you or train someone within your organisation so that they can put together high-quality sales presentations. Great Powerpoint presentations don’t just happen by themselves; they are crafted, just like any other worthwhile product – copy, artwork, software, a website. As in anything like this, the proof of the pudding should be in the eating, and very quickly. Return on investment is the only worthwhile measure of success when hiring a service like this, and you should see it almost straight away in the form of successful bids and convincing presentations.

Please visit http://www.eyefulpresentations.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

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Bacs software is a must for modern organisations

It wasn’t so long ago that book-keeping was carried out manually – it actually was book keeping – and payments were made by cash or cheque. This was time-consuming and laborious, and vulnerable to errors that could cost you and your organisation a significant amount of money. Not only that, but dealing with cash or cheques could be insecure and slow. Fortunately, with the advent and popularity of bacs, this is no longer the case. Bacs payments are fast and secure, and bacs software can be integrated with most accounting software – meaning that all of your book-keeping practices can be neatly brought together so that there is no ambiguity and no surprises.

Bacs, or bankers automated clearing system, has been around for decades now but has only relatively recently been adopted on a large scale. Until a few years ago it was normal for employers – particularly smaller ones – to pay workers in cash or by cheque. In the 21st century there is no call for this, or for the problems it brings. Bacs payments mean that you do not have to keep large quantities of cash on the premises. Neither do you have to wait to have cheques countersigned, or have to wait for them to clear. Bacs is not instant, but it is predictable. (In fact, in many cases bacs payments will go through in just minutes, rather than the three-day standard. In any case, if you need quicker payments then the SWIFT system is available for an additional fee.)

You may be able to manage, just about, on your own without bacs. However, issues typically happen when you try to mix old with new – when you are paid by cash or cheque but your accounts are automated with bacs software, or when you don’t use bacs payments but clients and suppliers do. In these cases it is easy for payments to be overlooked, perhaps because one or other of you isn’t used to dealing with cash or paying in cheques, or else isn’t able to check accounts online and keep track of their cash-flow electronically. Since bacs has become the standard and most businesses and other organisations now use it, it makes sense to switch to this system. The savings of time and money it brings should soon pay for any one-off costs to your accounts department and will future-proof your organisation.

Please visit http://www.bottomline.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

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Document processing that allows employee voices to be heard

Offices used to be disordered and complicated places with machines and filing cabinets in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Cumbersome photocopiers would stand next to great switchboard systems, and computers with voluminous monitors would occupy whole desks. Going back further still, some parts of offices would have been reminiscent of craft shops, as employees made carbon copies of worksheets. Document management in those days represented a formidable task, requiring memory and handwriting abilities at the top of their game. Now, of course, these skills are not outright disregarded but they can be overlooked among people whose analytical thought as well as their pragmatism is deemed to be more of an asset. Indeed, document processing really requires staff to have their wits about them, especially if the documents are going somewhere private. Confidentiality is certainly important these days, and perhaps more than ever since ‘hackgate’ (The Leveson inquiry). Even fellow employees must be protected in this department, for the safe invoice processing of their wages and fees is an important marker of any given institution’s reputation.

A company that can secure a healthy reputation in terms of its relationship with its employees will be sure to have a weight lifted from its shoulders, as well as a better sight of its future aims. Speedier invoice to pay systems, used by temporary workers and freelancers will be very helpful in terms of granting a clear vision looking forwards. Thus the modern working environment that utilises document management systems efficiently will literally and metaphorically have more capacity to grow – paper transformed into electronic content will give clear sightlines and an uncluttered environment while fast payment systems will keep the company in the good books and ensure that external services are proposed ever more eagerly. Put simply, decluttering and getting on top of admin and accounts means empowering the mobile workforce.

What the majority of companies should be striving for in this day and age is a transparent system and a realistic, though vigorous approach to allocating budgetary funds. Different departments of individual companies have extremely varying needs and it is important that the management acquaints itself with every department’s requirements, individually. If that sounds like a problem, consider document processing whereby elected individuals could be speak for their department and interact directly with document content in a location visible to the directors. When document management occurs in this way, the management proper will have more knowledge and be able to do a better job. Invoice processing is slightly different of course but can be handled in an equally fair and transparent way.

Please visit http://www.bottomline.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

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Brise soleil adapt with changing weather.

If you were around in the ‘90s, the chances are you’ll remember Baz Luhrmann’s long running chart topper titled Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen). The song split audiences: there were those who loved its pop philosophical bent and positivity, while others despised its patronisingly didactic nature. But whatever our criticism of this song, rarely did we think, well, it’s one thing for us humans to wear sunscreen but what about the buildings we all work in? The fact is that buildings need sun protection too if their employees are to stay safe. External louvres for buildings are a totally different kettle of fish. Commonly known in varieties such as brise soleil and glass louvres, they protect buildings’ external shells as well as the things and people inside them.

Brise soleil carry out their function by shading the external façade of a building in a stylish and streamlined fashion in keeping with the rest of the existing building. Often abstract in their design, they are brilliantly well-suited to public art galleries outdoors. In fact, the Yorkshire Sculpture Park gallery is one example of a building that uses a brise soleil to excellent effect. The shade is designed and positioned such that it works with the changing light and temperature according to the season. In summer, much of the large exterior window of the gallery will be kept in shade at noon. In winter, on the other hand, when the light is weaker and the temperature colder, only the top section of this window will be cast in shadow. A possible added feature (not so desirable in an art gallery but rather more so in a corporate space such as a lobby or reception room) with a brise soleil consists of a special design feature that allows patterned light into the room. If you’re the manager of a building that’s been purpose built for a particular company, you might consider trying to tailor the pattern of light to the company’s needs: why not reproduce the corporate logo or make a new design suggestive of their brand values?

Glass louvres and external louvres are slightly different from brise soleil, meanwhile. Glass louvres can in fact function as independent structures; think of the famous glass pyramid in the courtyard of the Paris gallery known as the Louvre. One difference is that in Paris, the pyramid actually connects to the main building and is visible when you look upwards from a position underground.

Please visit http://www.maplesunscreening.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

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ICT infrastructure that improves wellbeing in hard to reach communities

Having decent access to the internet has become nigh on as essential to daily life as having an efficient heating system or constant water supply. Clearly, the latter have an impact on our actual capacity to survive but when it comes to leading a progressive existence as responsible and free thinking citizens, the internet provides a fundamental service too. So many things are made more difficult if you are not online: from checking your bank balance and paying bills, to the more pleasurable social matters of keeping in touch with friends and family. This is why it is quite scandalous that, prior to the launch of community broadband projects concerned with improving ICT infrastructure, whole swathes of the nation were being deprived of technological wealth that should have been available to all from the start. It is little surprise that the areas worst affected were the regions: rural Britain is used by now to being low down on the list of priorities in comparison with London and other large cities. Happily though, the companies behind next generation access initiatives are making sure that broadband services are becoming more evenly distributed. Finally, we can look forward to a Britain that is both linked up internally as well as a Britain allowing its inhabitants to reach out to resources worldwide.

The lessening of the gap between those able to get a speedy internet service and those who cannot is really fundamental in our existing climate of austerity. While permanent contracts in established enterprises are proving difficult to secure for the young and mature alike, there is an ever growing possibility for individuals and small groups of people to be proactive and launch projects on their own initiative online. With the required skills, a small idea can grow into something great once it has secured an online presence and appropriate audience. This is because the world wide web functions in a cross-border way: ideas, products and information are disseminated in a totally different way here than do documents and other physical entities reliant upon national and international postal systems or fax.

So, if you suppose that the area you occupy is still being ill served in terms of internet provision, it merits telephoning your local authority to ask when you can expect a positive shift. ICT infrastructure does take time to ameliorate but increased interest will increase the speed with which next generation access is delivered. It’s time to fight for your community’s access to community broadband.

Please visit http://www.broadbandvantage.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

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