Tech Talk

HEY PHONE, WE NEED TO TALK

Do you need to break up with your phone?

Some studies show that simply holding your phone provides a wave of dopamine and oxytocin in your brain, making you feel happy and safe. As for the amount of time we spend staring at tiny screens? If the average is 90 minutes a day (and that’s a low estimate, by some studies), that still equals 23 days a year, or five years over a lifetime. If you need an intervention, consider the following:

Crack a book. Firms that have instituted a rule that everyone must read 15 minutes a day have seen increased productivity and morale.

Leave it behind. Simply leaving your phone in your car — just during dinner, say — reduces your reliance on responding to messages immediately.

Track your usage. Apps that track how reliant you are on your device abound. Turn them on to see how bad your addiction really is.

Adapted from “Are you ‘more dumber’ than your smartphone?,” a blog post from the American Institute of CPAs. Read the post in full for more tips at tinyurl.com/y72arwvu.

EXCELLENT EXCEL >> Save time filtering by adding to current selection

At the Auditor of Public Accounts, we have statewide Excel tables with 285, 760 and 2,055 different business units, fund codes and account numbers, respectively. To find a particular item, we simply turn on filtering for the table using the Filter button on the Data toolbar ribbon. After filtering is turned on, we click on the arrow in the table header to make our selection. Instead of scrolling through all 2,055 account codes, we merely type what we are looking for in the Search box that appears in the dropdown menu when we clicked on the arrow in the table header.

Now here is the cool part. Let’s say we want to show information for a second account code along with the information for the first account code we searched for. To quickly add the second item without scrolling through the long list of codes, we would find the second account code by typing it into the Search box — but before we hit enter, we would check the box that says “Add current selection to the filter,” which should show up directly under the search box. By checking the “Add current selection to the filter” box, Excel retains the items from any previous filters and adds them to any new items selected. How cool is that?

George D. Strudgeon, CPA, CGFM, is an audit director at the Virginia Auditor of Public Accounts in Richmond. Email him if you have Excel topics you want him to cover.

george.strudgeon@gmail.com connect.vscpa.com/GeorgeStrudgeon

Robotics and audits{

Two types of robotics can help auditors sift through information: Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Intelligent Process Automation (IPA). RPA automates standardized and repetitive tasks, while IPA utilizes both RPA, artificial intelligence and other technologies to make automation smarter. IPA can deal with unstructured data and make complex decisions. For more, check out “Beyond Robotics: How AI Can Help Improve the Audit Process,” from the American Institute of CPAs blog at tinyurl.com/yapo8la9.