Comments on: Social accounting – a joke or deadly serious?

By: Dennis Howlett

Dennis Howlett — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 23:47:11 +0000

@Jon — thanks: The second Tweet is interesting but I'd struggle to get acceptance except by 'edge' cases like thee and me, Worth exploring in an upcoming post methinks.

By: Jon Collins

Jon Collins — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 23:20:31 +0000

… and a late couple of Twitters from me:

@dahowlett right now (as I do my personal tax), social accounting would be the opposite to antisocial!

@dahowlett Perhaps the ledger could/should be a reflection of one's interests and activities, in declarative living sense. Link to Dopplr?

By: Dennis Howlett

Dennis Howlett — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 21:05:29 +0000

@Stuart – that's a great idea.

By: Stuart Jones

Stuart Jones — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 14:22:55 +0000

I have suggested that the Small Practitioners Association looks at GetSatisfaction for a members' forum.

Thanks for the kick to make me do it.

By: Dennis Howlett

Dennis Howlett — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 12:27:32 +0000

You are exactly right Ric. We've seen how this was an issue for FreshBooks and has remained relatively low key.

We think there is way too much value to ignore in the long term but we will have to make sure we get it right both technically and in how it is communicated.

One immediate quick win we think is in having overall performance data exactly because it allows our users to kick back at the tax authorities.

By: Ric Hayman

Ric Hayman — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 12:19:08 +0000

Dennis – reminds me of when Aust brought in GST (VAT) – the kicker was the regular Business Activity Statement (BAS) which captures a lot of information about your business, for the purpose of aggregation by the Tax Office. Endgame? – profiles of businesses for comparative purposes to determine which businesses are not fitting a profile, so that they can be queried/investigated by the taxman.

Now; if you can avoid the 'Big Brother' aspect, this is the same sort of value you (?) could could offer once you get to a statistically significant number of clients/reports.

Where XBRL could become useful is in allowing movement of a business's history from one service to another …