Notes from the President

02 March 2022 khilton Notes from the President

Ken Hilton - President Red Wing Software

Being laser-focused to complete a mission seems like a smart thing, especially when the mission is time‑sensitive. Several years ago, I had such a mission. I was heading to a meeting in Fargo, ND, from my home office in the south suburbs of Chicago. Getting to O’Hare airport after the flight departs doesn’t leave many options, so I was laser-focused to complete this mission and get to the airport on time.
It was a typical winter day with blowing snow and slow traffic, but I was determined to get to O’Hare in time to catch my flight. After much frustration with traffic and conditions, I made it to the airport, parked, and entered the terminal with little time to spare.
Mission accomplished. I breathed a sigh of relief. But wait. Why is my flight not on the departures board? In my quest to complete the mission, I lost focus on my mission’s destination. It turns out I’m at the wrong airport. My flight was leaving from Midway airport.
Everything worked out, and I got to Fargo in time for the meeting, but the moral of the story is, “When you are laser-focused to accomplish any mission, make sure you’re heading for the correct destination.”

Notes from the President

03 February 2022 khilton 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

11 January 2022 khilton 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

03 December 2021 khilton 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

09 November 2021 khilton 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.