Getting to Know... Tony Lane

[JasonHill]

Tony Lane loves his cat Shelby so much she features on his Community Forum avatar and gets treated to a walk around his Tasmanian property every morning. “I accompany her or she just accompanies me,” Tony says. “We take turns at being leader.”

 “I never thought I’d end up being a ‘cat person’,” Tony confesses. But spend any amount of time with Tony and you quickly realise he is a ‘people person’ – someone who dedicates much of his time selflessly helping others.

Tony has been one of the leading contributors on the MYOB Community Forum in the past few years. He is approaching an astonishing 2000 posts, and last month alone posted 90 helpful messages. His comprehensive answers, often accompanied by carefully annotated screenshots, would have assisted many thousands of grateful MYOB users since he joined the online community in January 2011.

“It keeps my mind active and alert and satisfies my willingness to help others,” Tony humbly says of his significant contribution to the MYOB Community.

Tony’s Tazinx username stems from his time selling printer cartridges – a contraction of his beloved state of Tasmania and inks. He also had another username that he retired after 666 posts – an indication of his wry sense of humour.

Now semi-retired, Tony started his working life at the tender age of 12 at a Sydney delicatessen and left school at 14 after completing the equivalent of Year 10. His worst job was changing kerosene lamps for the NSW Railways.

“You’d leave with lamps that had been lit for over an hour in the lamp room, on a manual rail tricycle, travel to each signal, climb the ladder with a lighted lamp, remove the spent existing one and replace it with a lighted one.” Frustratingly, the replacement lamp would often immediately go out the second it was fitted into its new home. “For someone afraid of heights in the first place, the whole thing was daunting, particularly when the flame went out and the wick had to be relit.”

Fortunately, the man known affectionately as “Tassie Tony” in MYOB circles later got to perform work for the railways much more suited to his capabilities and intellect, including accounting, station management and safe train working. He would later move to the NSW Public Service before spending many years working on database management systems. In 2005 he became a bookkeeper and BAS agent in Ulverstone on the north-west coast of Tasmania.

Tony’s volunteer work has included roles in Rotary, Apex, railway groups and other community organisations. In addition to “helping others”, his eclectic list of hobbies includes gardening, historic railways, ship, machinery, SQL programming and MYOB form customisation.

Tony says much of his vast knowledge of MYOB software is self-taught. “Most of what I’ve learnt and practised about with MYOB has been sourced from the Community Forum in balance with my own life experiences with earlier training, coupled with past manual and computerised financial systems, plus some common sense.”

His advice for new AccountRight users is “don’t be afraid to get your finger pads dirty”.