Notes from the President

Ken Hilton - President Red Wing Software

January is the busiest month at Red Wing Software, with our customers completing transactions for 2021, finalizing payroll information to prepare W-2 forms, and getting information ready for tax returns. It was not a great time for us to have an issue with computers and accessing critical information to serve our users.
On January 11th, we had a failure of a router that allows communication between our remote workforce and the computers in our office that hold all our customer records, making it virtually impossible to handle support calls. Fortunately, Roxie, the long-time voice of Red Wing Software, was in the office and could take incoming calls and schedule callbacks for our support staff.
We realized we couldn’t work efficiently from outside the office, and everything was functioning at the office. Several of our staff quickly traveled to the office to answer calls and take care of our customers. Within about three hours, we caught up with the backlog of support calls, and Larry, our amazing IT Manager, had everything functioning again.
While this kind of disruption is never fun to deal with, it’s great to have a group of dedicated employees who step up and take care of business. On behalf of Red Wing Software, I want to thank our customers affected by this disruption for your patience and thank our staff for ensuring we could take good care of our users during such a critical time.

Notes from the President

Ken Hilton - President Red Wing Software

Seeing the recent storm devastation across the central United States really tends to put things into perspective. Our thoughts and prayers go to all those affected by the disaster.
We can each, individually, do our part to help wherever possible when events like this occur. As a company, Red Wing Software will do what we can to help those affected by the disaster get back to business and some sort of normal operation. We understand your financial information is not the top priority immediately after such events. When it does rise back toward the top of the list, please call on us if help is needed re-installing programs or backups, or for any other assistance our Support staff can provide. We’re here to help.

Notes from the President

Ken Hilton - President Red Wing Software

I hope everyone had a wonderful and safe Thanksgiving gathering with family and friends.
Our development, support, quality assurance, and education teams have been busy programming, testing, and documenting the 2022 payroll withholding tables and the tax changes for depreciation. Subscribing to a Customer Care Membership with Red Wing Software ensures you have the latest information for accurately calculating payroll and depreciation in a timely manner. This newsletter is packed with valuable year-end information, so I’ll keep my very important message brief.
On behalf of Red Wing Software, I want to wish a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and prosperous New Year to our families, customers, co-workers, partners, vendors, friends, and especially all the people that help keep us safe and free.

Notes from the President

Ken Hilton - President Red Wing Software

What would it be like for a business to lose all phone service? On October 12th at 8:30 in the morning, Red Wing Software found out. In the middle of an internal video conference, the phones went silent. Everyone still appeared on the screens, but there was no voice communication. This has happened before, but typically lasted for a relatively short time, and everything was back and running. This time, it wasn’t typical.
When we contacted the service provider and alerted them of the problem, it took a while to realize someone had cut a fiber line that supplied service to its customers. Once we determined it would take more time than normal to solve the problem, we immediately posted a message on our website and in the notification bar within our CenterPoint programs to alert our customers of the outage. Fortunately, two totally different vendors provide our phone service and our internet service, and we still had full internet access.
We could still communicate with our customers via the support@redwingsoftware.com email portal and handle many of our support calls using that method. In cases that we needed to talk someone through an issue, our staff used their personal cell phones to contact our customers. It wasn’t until after the close of business that the phone service was restored, and we were back to normal the following day.
Thanks to our customers for your patience during this outage and our staff for jumping into action to make the best of a difficult situation.

Notes from the President

Ken Hilton - President Red Wing Software

October may seem like a strange time to talk about budgeting for your business, but any time of year is a good time to review how your business is tracking against your projections. At Red Wing Software, we’ve already started the planning process for 2022. Whether it’s planning for next year or comparing this year’s results to what you were planning, looking at your actual numbers compared to your business plan for the year should be something that happens regularly.
To illustrate, I’ll use a couple of Red Wing Software examples of why this is important. Each manager of their respective department is responsible for creating their budget for the coming year. Of course, not only are expenses projected, but revenue is also part of the budget. For example, each Sales Representative puts together the sales goals they expect to achieve monthly, and how they expect to achieve those goals. Sales numbers are then measured throughout the year daily, so we are aware of how we are performing compared to our projections. If sales numbers are not what we expected (either lower or higher), it is important to know the reasons and react quickly to any discrepancy. Of course, if sales numbers are higher than we expected, we want to know why and keep making decisions that ensure continued success.
On the expense side, you obviously want to make sure you are not spending money that was not budgeted without a serious look into why these expenses were increased. Also, and this may sound strange at first, you want to make sure you are spending all the budgeted money unless there is a good reason for not spending it. For instance, our Marketing Manager budgets to spend a certain amount on very specific items; whether it’s advertising, trade shows, web presence, travel, or other things, it is important to stick to this plan. If marketing dollars are not spent as planned, the result could very well be a decrease in revenue. It can be a delicate balancing act.
We are fortunate at Red Wing Software to have seasoned, experienced managers and staff who are very good at planning for their respective departments. Our revenue and expense numbers are typically within two percent of their projections. I believe with practice, discipline, and timely analysis, most businesses can be equally accurate in their planning process.