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This Valentine’s Day, Get Something For That Lovable Yet Hopelessly Disorganized Accountant in Your Life

Valentine’s Day is upon us and that means accountants all across this great land are disappointing their beloveds with excuses like, “We have a deadline Thursday,” and “Remember, we both agreed that we wouldn’t buy into these Hallmark holidays,” and “The client needs me to stay late.”

So if you’re unable to pull yourself away from client service for 10 goddamn minutes to comb through the picked over greeting cards left at Walgreens, do yourself a favor and at least do something nice for a hapless co-worker who can’t get their act together this busy season.

You know the type I’m talking about — the person who’s always late to meetings, never prepared, keeps a nightmare of a desk, and has 11,000+ unread emails on their smartphone. This person could use an act of kindness to help them bring a bit of order to their lives, and lucky for you I have the perfect idea. Okay, it’s an idea. The idea is a notebook. Okay, it’s not a great idea. Still! It’s something and you should try to do something nice for someone else for once in your life.

The Modern Ledger Notebook is a Kickstarter campaign1 started by Mike Linn, a 13-year veteran of public accounting, and he didn’t just slap this thing together:

I have worked in public accounting for 13 years and each year I look for ways to make the busy season more efficient. I decided that a notebook would help me organize everything I needed to know and keep track of it all in one place. I have been working with over a dozen colleagues to design and test all the different layouts that will be the most helpful.

I have used apps and spreadsheets to track things in the past, but there is something to be said for getting things down on paper. Many experts agree that the act of writing helps to remember them later and avoid open loop thought patterns. It is also nice to have a notebook with face-to-face meetings when a laptop may prove to be a distraction.

“The reason I am using this crowdfunding site is the simple fact that I want to make something accountants truly want,” he writes, and it’s good to know his heart’s in the right place. (A good number of you, I think, would take the money and run only to find yourselves featured on another website.)

The MLN is organized into seven sections for meetings, to-do lists, schedules, a time tracker, ratios, formulas, and more. Here’s the MLN in action:

You will not be able to resist doodling elaborate entity structures in this thing.

Not enough? How about EXCEL KEY SHORTCUTS?

If that’s not worth your pledge, I don’t know what is.

But, again, you should do this for someone who needs the help. Or cheering up. Hey, maybe that someone is you! If so, then TREAT YO SELF to a Modern Ledger Notebook if no one else will. You may still die alone, but at least you’ll get some work done.

[Kickstarter]

1 We should probably mention that this thing is all or nothing and even if it’s funded, the notebooks won’t ship until after busy season, so you really can’t do anything to help anyone right now. But come on, it’s the thought that counts.

Top image: iStock/gemenacom