| Accounting Departments' Use of Yahoo Pipes Mashups Richard Torian March 25, 2010 The purpose of this article is to provide some examples of using Yahoo Pipes mashups in support of accounting departments. Yahoo Pipes is a mashup application tool that is free to use for creating accessible online maps and other mashups. The first six examples assume the use of QuickBooks as the accounting system but these mashups should be adoptable to other accounting systems. 1. http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=7c113c0551ae12a7434ea627b15ccc64 This Pipe shows the location of customers on a map along with contact, open invoice, open sales order, open purchase order, account balance, and credit limit information. Sales representatives and others in the field should be able to access this map and information on the Internet using their iPhone or similar mobile devices. 2. http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=64142b65fefe8f938e7eb595e435d71c This Pipe attempts to show where sales are concentrated geographically. A list provides details giving the items, quantities, and dollar amounts sold at the location. A single marker may indicate many sales, so the list needs to be referred for sales amounts. 3. http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=3084f2a90fb1a4d4a2d9c017a513ca0f This Pipe shows the locations of construction jobs. Showing these locations on a map might be useful in various ways. Mapping the jobs could help in giving directions and evaluating where jobs are in demand. Maps could also be created for showing employee residences and fixed asset locations. Mapping employee residences might help some companies who depend on employees for certain activities where distances to those activities might be a factor to consider. If a company has several locations (stores, warehouses, storage facilities, and/or other sites), a map that shows where fixed assets are might be useful. 4. http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=ePQgB_173BG8ICRxn0artA This Pipe allows the user to find recent questions and answers on the Intuit QuickBooks Users Forum. Results are generally very relevant to the search term because of Yahoo Pipes capability to filter the source feed. Filtering can be built into the Pipe in a way not possible in ordinary search processes. 5. http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=ddeef65494cd0682fe721cdc24815182 This Pipe pulls in several feeds that identify podcasts and filters those feeds for podcasts only about QuickBooks. Yahoo Pipes has the capability to pull (fetch) dozens of RSS feeds and API output from database sources simultaneously. Then the Pipe can filter these feeds and output in a way not possible by ordinary search engines. Podcasts are excellent learning tools, and should be useful to companies needing to train accounting staff. 6. http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=dd43b6d099bc0edfa4acb3d88485f8c3 This Pipe searches the Internet, using the Yahoo search engine, for QuickBooks add-ons and then filters the search results in a way that delivers excellent results. This Pipe might be useful to a company seeking to add an enhanced capability to QuickBooks. The Pipe should expedite the search for potential add-on enhancements. The following Yahoo Pipes are more general-use mashup applications that might be useful to accounting and other departments in a company to support various functions. 1. http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=6d259b16d8bbf35102889ded355b5323 This Pipe identifies companies within a 20-mile radius based on a zip code and a name or description a user inserts. The companies need to be in the Yahoo Local database searched by the Pipe and the inserted term needs to be in the company’s name or description. 2. http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=540f3a222c7337b4a9fa3d33af103030 This Pipe finds prices for products being offered for sale on eBay. A product description and price range is entered by the user. The Pipe could be useful to a company seeking price comparisons for products purchased and sold by the company. 3. http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=5c04815201cda081f31d15dbc46af46b This Pipe finds videos that have in their name and/or description the term the user enters. This Pipe could be useful to a company developing and/or selling a similar product or purchasing the product. 4. http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=5dc6b6727c26c0b14d4f73059d62efc0 This Pipe finds the price for a company product as listed in both the Yahoo Shopping and eBay databases. This Pipe could be useful to a company seeking price comparisons for products purchased and sold by the company. If you are interested in exploring with me whether data maps and other Yahoo Pipes products might aid your business operations and decision making, please contact me. Please click here to return to the Management Accounting Information Center front page. Please click here to send an email with comments on this article. |