Excel, so useful for running a business but such a nightmare to use. Sure the happy little columns keep data neat and you can sort if you need to, even do a basic search. But while a great tool for some things, Excel should not be your boundbook solution.
We used to record every transaction by hand in paper form, hence the term boundbook. These paper nightmares were large, time consuming and ripe for compliance issues. Enter computers! While excel was a great option in 1999 contemporary FFL boundbook software is leaps and bounds a head of excel for automation features, ease of use, and most importantly compliance.
ATF Excels… or do they?
Any software worth anything, as FastBound of course is, will be complaint with ATF Ruling 20016-1. The new ruling permits federal firearms licensees to use software systems to maintain their A&D books, but they must meet certain standards. A big one being: all software must create an audit trail. Systems like FastBound do this automatically so you never even have to thing about the process, while a system like excel track changes would be noted manually and allow room for compliance errors and issues with the ATF.
Spreadsheets don’t update!
If you create your own Excel spreadsheet, you have to manually add columns for each piece of information. That includes:
- The model of the firearm
- The date you received it
- The date you transferred it
- The serial number
- The manufacturer or importer
- The number of Form 4473
- The type of firearm
- The gauge or caliber
- The name, company name, address, and FFL number of transferee
But what happens when the ATF changes a regulation? For instance, maybe the ATF changes the A&D requirements to include the birth date of the transferee. Unless you are up-to-date with the ATF’s changes, you wouldn’t know. Hopefully a fellow business owner (or maybe a customer) would inform you, but that isn’t a strategy to rely on.
Cloud based software systems like FastBound automatically update to keep you up to date on new ruling, changes, or better compliance practices at all times, without giving it a second thought.
Blue screen of death. Microsoft error!
In the age of computers we’ve all had one die. Now imagine your ATF logbook was on that computer. Sorry mister ATF inspector, but computer crashed! How will that work? About as effective as ‘the dog ate my homework’. Files become corrupt, so you may have a second location but how often do you check it? At FastBound we focus on Ease of Use, Automation and Compliance. Nothing seems to be more time consuming, cumbersome, or open for errors than transferring around multiple excel files, making sure they all match, and deciding where to store your precious date.
We could go on and on on why Excel should haunt your sleep, but since there is a simple solution, hint hint it’s FastBound, we won’t. So get started. Save time, stay compliant and stop worrying about that blue screen of death – Try FastBound for free.
