Work or life ~~ Family Gala ~~ Passed by Kingston ~~ Thousands of Island

Beautiful scenery, beautiful date, sunshine, blue sky

It was a beautiful day when we were on the way back from Montreal to Toronto, we passed by Kingston, thousand of islands.

While we were driving lone the Island Parkway, there were ideas that jumped up more than twice. If I were one of the house owners in this spot, will I ever need to go abroad for vacations? I probably not. I can sit here all day long, just watch the birds fly over the water or land on some spots, late summer winds blow and refresh my mind.

I am a lucky lady that I have you by my side!

Work or life ~~ 55 Vogell Road ~~ Story of Green life

Like most of the office gurus, I brought in my little green to my spot too. This small cup grows very well and getting bigger and stronger.

Unfortunately, I did not keep a photo of its' original look. Imagine that it's long leaves not yet grow like today, just as small as the height of the cup.

To the opposite, I also adopted one giant green plant from company to home. It was two years ago when the office was in renovation, there were decisions that all the senior green plants will be replaced by the new orders. HR encouraged employees to bring back home some of those.

It was quite a big project for Sam and me moved it to home, as the pot is so big and heavy, and we don't want to break it during the transit. We let it lied down at the back of CRV, and I hold the main branch all the time during the transportation.

It grows well at our home till now~

Work or life ~~ 55 Vogell Road ~~Add a drop down list in an email template

This was one of the work plan projects for this year. I developed a small email template that enables the drop-down list in the email. 

The pro side is that there was a record of the request. But the short is that people may not use it at all. Well, I am not going to persuade everyone to apply in daily work. This is only a once a while or occasionally request thing. But a very good chance that I can practice my template skills.

Since this template is built under Office 360, the first step is to enable the Development tap in Word. Only the plugin created by Word, then able to be copied to the Outlook email body. Unfortunately not Excel. 

Secondly, modified the list content and format under the same mode. Copy the whole block that created and pasted into Outlook, an email body, same as email template then is done.

Work or life ~~ 55 Vogell Road ~~ Family Gala

We attended this company event in Ottawa in September. I remember the weather was so nice, sunshine every day. 

The company booked a large hotel to accompany all the attended employees and their families. After the one and half day seminars and leadership forum, the event ended up with an outdoor tracing game and luxury ball. 

I already forgot when it was the last time that I dance with my hubby, in such a fancy environment,  with very rhythm kinds of music. And I realized how active my co-workers are, they were all dressed up with elegant make-up, moved the bodies in the middle of the hall. 

The DJ was clever, he kept playing the music that was just right for the major of the people. So you'll not surprised to hear the song of the YMCA! !!

Work or life ~~ 55 Vogell Road ~~ 50 YEAR

The date was July 17th, 2018. I am sure you can recall many things happened that day. For me, I am adding another big event in my life. This is the 50 years anniversary for the company.

I already knew that there were celebration activities host by Marketing, PR and other departments. The thing I would not able to predict is that the show they put on, it was so amazing!

They brought in several ancient motors and an outdoor party. I am very lucky to be one of the employees for this company, I enjoyed this moment!

Work or life ~~ 55 Vogell Road ~~ The BANK error

I found this error during my month end bank reconciliation process. The story is quite dramatic. I summarize all the information, the log could be like this:

Date 3, BNS BANK notified treasury manager Carson and senior specialist Christine that, there was a cheque amount was cashed error by BANK. Our BNS BANK firstly released the funding to the vendor, then took the funding back. They corrected the mistake on the same day. To avoid future confusion, Carson Manager decided to void the cheque and reissue the new. 

Date 5, followed by the communication with BANK,  Carson, and Christine filed the stop payment immediately and notified our BNS BANK. In the afternoon, when the confirmation from BANK arrived, AP then reissued a new payment to the vendor. 

Date 11, the replacement cheque was returned to the office, because the vendor did not pick up from the UPS agent. AP Gurpreet decided to keep this cheque for a while, in case the vendor come back from a business trip and looking for this cheque. 

Month end process began, while I was looking for unbalance amount in the bank accounts. This amount was shown as paid already to the vendor, but we were still holding the cheque till month end. The vendor should never receive the funding. 

Brought up this question to my co-workers, we called the vendor and called the BANK. The vendor told us that he was able to cash the funding on Date 7. As the whole team knew, the new cheque was cut on Date 11. We wonder if the vendor got the cash from the voided cheque. If that's the case, it could be our nightmare. 

We received BANK and vendor's images the next day, it confirmed what we afraid of. Although BANK already filed the stop payment to the voided cheque, but nobody knows what happened, the cheque was still cashed by one of the BANK operator by error. 

Advised by our national manager, she would like a explanation and cleared up action from BANK first, then we also clean it in our SAP in next month.

We spent almost a whole month to communicate with BANK and tried to understand what has happened. Unfortunately, BANK could not do much about it, they provided some sort of study result and action plans. 

Finally, in order to close this case and balance by next month end. Our manager then advise us to manually cashed the amount to the reissued replacement cheque via SAP, and discard the paper (physical) cheque to the bin. 

Work or life ~~ 55 Vogell Road ~~ My client lost my payment cheque

It was confirmed that one of our clients could not locate our delivered cheque.

The original cheque was delivered on 12/19, signed off by the reception. However, since then on, nobody in the office ever sees the cheque again. The client requested we resend the new cheque to replace the original.

My manager told me the steps. I followed the instructions and completed the void procedure today.

Firstly I need to make sure from our SAP system, the cheque we issued earlier is still outstanding. Secondly, I received the confirmation from my co-worker that the cheque also hasn't been cashed at BANK. She also filed the stop payment immediately. The BANK quickly issue the proof of the stop payment activation. The final step was for my AP co-worker, she voided the cheque from the SAP system and filed the approval.

After the above procedure, then we are ready for the new cheque reissuing.

Life ~ Hiking before snow fall

We experienced a very nice Autumn in last November. The temperature is higher than average and a lot of sunshine. We decided to spend a good quality of our casual time to walk around and do as much as hiking as possible. Even when my parents are here, we keep the same.

It looked like my parents also enjoyed the weather and the scene too. 

EXCEL EXCEL ~~ Show the last day of the month in spreadsheet

Due to my responsibility, I need to run several month-end reconciliation files and reports. In order to save my energy to type the last day of the month in every worksheet, I decided to rely on a formula to make the changes in the workbook.

After the test in last month process. I found it is really a time-saving thing.