Let's consider the fact that many of us spend a lot of time in front of our desktops. As accountants, bookkeepers and business owners we are often tied to our desks for long periods of time. If your desk was limited to the size of an 8 ½ x 11 piece of paper how productive would you be? Probably not very effective although I remember about 25 years ago, my to-do list was an 8" thick pile of letter size pages - it was kind of like jumping from one window to the next. Now just think about the size of a normal computer monitor - it's about letter size and we all do a lot of work on that size of digital ‘real estate'.
About 24 months ago I began to see some articles discussing dual monitors and the claim that productivity gains of 10 to 50% were available. What we choose to do with the extra time on our hands from such gains is up to each of us - leave early, take an extra day off, etc. or like yours truly, get even more work done. A little over a year ago, I took the step of adding a second monitor to my desktop and what a difference!
Most of us use Simply Accounting and some type of spreadsheet. I was always jumping from window to window and trying to remember the number that I saw in the last window to enter into an Excel spreadsheet in the current window - sometimes it took multiple tries. Remember that there are lots of different reports in Simply that you may only need one or two numbers from but only one spreadsheet to enter them into. So you drag your Excel file to the right monitor and run your Simply reports on the left monitor - the only thing that I wish for now is that Simply would let us copy and paste from the report right into our spreadsheets instead of having to re-type the number, source, description, etc.
Dual monitors are also very effective if you do a lot of online banking. If you pay bills online and keep that window on one monitor and the Simply Payment journal on the other, you can see the amount to be paid and then the corresponding payment code from the bank on the other. Do a Copy and Paste of the payment code from the bank site to the Payment window for your ‘cheque' number.
The uses for a dual monitor setup are endless - use an online bank statement on one monitor and have your Simply Bank Rec window open on the other, stretch large spreadsheets or multi-period Simply reports across the multiple windows or keep your email program in view when you are expecting important correspondence. Another savings that we have seen in our office is that we don't tend to print out and waste as much paper when that same information can easily be viewed on a second monitor.
A couple of things to remember if you decide to go this route - 1) buy a second monitor that is a comparable size or supports the same resolution as your existing monitor 2) a second monitor of the same size will give you more desktop real estate and may be more economical than one big 24" monitor. It takes about a day or so to get used of the setup but is well worth the time and investment.
It would be nice to hear about your productivity gains here and I encourage you to do so here so that others may learn.
