Netwatch: Your guide to business and accounting on the Internet

Your guide to business and accounting on the Internet

As accountants, we're immediately tagged as number experts, regardless of the career we are in. But even the trusted number-cruncher will occasionally deal with calculations that don't easily come to mind.

When we get a tad rusty, we might need a wee bit of a refresher, or even some help with certain types of calculations. And that's perhaps one of the benefits of the Internet from an accounting perspective: you can use it to locate a vast number of financial calculators that come in handy for many different circumstances.

For example, there are online calculators for mortgages, RRSPs, taxes, loans for buying a car or other matters. At these Web pages, you can enter some financial information and get the results instantly.

The level of sophistication and range of options available through these calculators is impressive. Take the issue of mortgages, for example. If you are considering a new home purchase, or selling your existing home for a larger one (or advising a client on such matters), online mortgage calculators can help you explore the ramifications of various financial approaches. These calculators let you examine the mortgage decision from a variety of perspectives, such as your total monthly costs, or how much of a mortgage you could obtain based on current income.

There are also specialized financial calculators available on the Web that relate to business activities, such as the internal rate of return, net present value and other common financial concepts. SolveIT!, a company that develops software that makes these nifty e-- tools tick, has placed a variety of very good financial calculators on its site that you can access and use for free.

One caveat, though: many of these calculators are developed in the US, so the results won't always add up for Canadians. For example, you can't use US retirement calculators for RRSP decisions (US retirement plans differ from ours) or for mortgages (mortgage interest is tax deductible in the US). Hence, you should be sure to use Canadian-specific financial calculators whenever possible.

Two good starting points for Canadian-specific calculators are the Independent Online Financial Marketing site and Dinkytown. The websites of most major Canadian financial institutions are also excellent resources, since they feature a number of calculators worth exploring.

If you want to go beyond Canadian-specific calculators, take a look at investment site TheStreet.com as well as AccountingWeb, both of which feature a variety of innovative calculators. Finally, the best overall directory for online calculators is Martindale's Reference Desk - it features more than 14,000 models. Some are Canadian-specific, and a number of others can be used for any purpose.

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Choice calculators

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Independent Online Financial Marketing www.independentfinancial.on.ca/calculators.htm DinkYtown

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www.dinkytown.net/java/ca.html Martindale's The Reference Desk Calculators www-sci.lib.uci.edu/HSG/Ref.html AccountingWeb

www.accountingweb.com/tools/calculators.html TheStreet.com

www.thestreet.com/tsc/financenter/FC_calc.html

[Author Affiliation]

Jim Carroll, FCA, is a wellknown keynote speaker, author and columnist. He can be reached via e-mail at jcarroll@ jimcarroll.com or log on to his website at www.jimcarroll.com