Alisa A. Mitchell CPA PASmall business owners have a lot on their plates, and time simply does not allow you to become an expert in all the areas required for running a business. Here are a couple of common mistakes that we see all the time. Correcting them will help you be more productive and profitable in your business.
1. Mismanaging receipts
Maintaining receipts are challenging for everyone, but the IRS requires that you have proof of business expenditures. Periodically, we come across people who feel that keeping the credit card statements are enough; unfortunately, they’re not. You’ll want to create a process to keep your receipts all in one place so they don’t get lost.
Receipts printed on thermal paper (think gas station receipts and many more) will fade within a year or two, and the bad news is the IRS could audit several years back if they come calling. Correct this by scanning them in or taking a clear picture of them using your smartphone.
Some accounting systems and/or document management applications allow you to upload the receipt and attach it to the transaction in your accounting system. This is a great solution, and if you’re interested in this, please ask us about it.
2. Ignoring the accounting reports
There are gold nuggets in your accounting reports, but some business owners don’t take the time to review them or are uncertain about how to interpret them. Your accountant can help you understand the reports and find the gold nuggets that can help you take action toward profitability.
Some of the things you can do with your reports include:
- Identifying your highest selling services or products
- Projecting cash flow so you’re not caught short at payroll time
- Getting clear on your top customers or your demographic of top customers
- Evaluating your marketing or business development spend
- Pointing out trends compared to prior years, budget, or seasonality effects
- Checking up on profit margins per product or service to make sure you are priced correctly
- Managing aging receivables or speeding up collections
- Measuring employee profitability, if relevant
- And so much more
Being proactive with your accounting will help you spot opportunities in your business that you can act on, as well as spot and correct problems long before they manifest into trouble.
3. Mixing business and pleasure
In your bank accounts and on your credit cards, mixing business and pleasure is to be avoided when possible. All businesses should have a separate bank account, and all business transactions should go through there. It takes an accountant much longer to correctly book a business deposit that was deposited into a personal account.
Taking out a separate credit card and putting all your business transactions on it will save your bookkeeper a ton of time. The credit card doesn’t even have to be a business credit card. It can just be a personal credit card that’s solely used for business. If you have employees making credit card charges, sometimes a separate card for them helps you control fraud.
The hardest area in which to separate business from pleasure is cash transactions. Be sure your accountant knows about these. The accountant can either set up a petty cash account or a reimbursement process so that you can get credit for cash expenditures that are for the business.
How did you rate on these three mistakes? Avoid these three and your accounting department as well as your business will run a lot smoother.
Holding your own event is a great way to meet new people and allow them to sample your business in a low-risk setting. A face-to-face event allows you to build trust quicker than many other marketing methods, and trust is almost always required before a sale can be made.
Types of Events
Some of the more popular types of events you can hold include:
- A seminar or class
- An open house
- A neighborhood sale
- A networking meeting
- A reception or party or celebration or festival
- A conference
If you’re new to holding events, start small and/or join with another business so that you’ll have a larger number of people to invite.
Participants
Once you’ve decided on the type of event you want to hold, you’ll want to determine who you will invite. Will it be clients only? Will you join with other businesses and combine your lists? You’ll want to invite a larger number of people than you might think. If the event is free, there may be several no-shows, even if they have RSVP’d. The more formal the event, the fewer the no-shows.
Topic or Purpose
For the best turnout, choose a topic that’s interesting to your clients as well as relevant to the services you offer. Provide education that the customer needs, a new money-making strategy, a new product or service roll-out, or something that will affect your customers’ well-being, and you’ll experience the best turnout.
Spread the Word
Now that you’re ready to hold your event, it’s time to get the word out. Plan on sending multiple emails (more than you might be comfortable with) to let people know about your event. Email is a good way to notify people, but if you have the budget, mail invitations. Call the most important people and let them know you want them at your event.
Have Fun and Make Money
Be sure to have a high ratio of staff to guests so that more than one of your staff can meet each person. Enjoy your event, and hopefully, you’ll be able to get to know many future customers there as well.
Have you ever been in a situation where there’s no internet and you needed it? Or perhaps you’re at a hotel and don’t want to pay the extra $15 per day for wireless internet. If so, you’re not alone, and luckily, there’s a gadget for just about everything. This time, it’s a gadget you probably already have: all you need to do is whip out your cell phone.
iPhone
Your cell phone can act as your wireless modem. Plug the iPhone into your PC using your USB connection. Go to Settings on your iPhone and one of your settings will be labeled Personal Hotspot. Tap it and toggle it to “on.” Set a password.
On your PC, view your wireless internet connections, and the name you’ve given your phone will show up. Click to connect and enter the password you set on your phone.
Voila, internet!
Android
If you have an Android, tap More… and select Wireless and Networks, then Tethering and Portable Hotspot. Check Portable Wi-Fi hotspot. Tap Portable Wi-Fi hotspot settings and you can edit the Wi-Fi network name, and choose a password.
On your PC, view your wireless internet connections, and the name you’ve given the Wi-Fi network will show up. Click to connect and enter the password you set on your phone.
Fees
Ask your cell phone network provider if this hotspot feature is included in your package or is an extra charge. You may also have to call then to enable this feature.
Once you’ve used this once, you’ll be hooked. You now have a new internet access alternative anywhere you have cell phone coverage.
Sales tax laws are constantly changing, and sales tax audits have increased since states and local agencies have become creative about finding new ways to generate revenues. If you haven’t made any changes in your sales tax procedures in a while, you are probably at risk.
Taxability
From state to state, the taxability of items varies. For example, data processing services including web hosting and graphics are taxable in Texas but not California. Because of these intricacies, it makes sense to consult an expert in this area. Some states have been taxing certain services for many years now.
Nexus
The new buzzword in sales tax is “nexus,” which simply means presence. If your business has a presence in a state, then certain items you sell could be taxable. “Presence” is a little gray, but here are a few examples of some characteristics that the courts have decided prove nexus.
- If you have employees or contractors working in a state, you are liable to collect and remit sales tax. This can play havoc if you hire virtual or remote workers. Even if they are part-time, you have nexus in that state.
- If you outsource inventory fulfillment in any way (think Amazon sales), you have nexus in states where there is a physical warehouse that houses your products.
- If you own business property in a state, you must file sales tax.
- If you participate in trade shows or are a public speaker, you have nexus in states where the conferences are held.
The Risk
If you fail to collect taxes where you should, the risk is easy to calculate. Take the potential taxable sales times the sales tax rate, and add any penalties. The numbers get scary if you’ve been in business for several years.
Let’s say your annual revenues are $5 million. You didn’t realize that your Texas sales were taxable, and this amounts to 10% or $500K. Your tax liability is $41,250 per year. If you have been doing it wrong for five years, well, you can add it up. Add penalties on top, and it’s not a small amount. It can wipe out your entire year’s profit.
Sales tax liability becomes more important if you plan to sell your business. A traditional valuation will always include a sales tax risk analysis. Even if you don’t plan to sell, the odds of you getting audited or a disgruntled employee blowing the whistle can be too much to risk.
If you want help calculating your risk or assessing nexus or taxability for your business, reach out and we can help.
Unfortunately, spam is an inevitable part of today’s digital world. The bad news is if you have your spam settings set too tightly, you will lose good emails. If you receive new prospects via email, you may miss out on good clients and revenue. If you have your settings too loose, you have to take up extra time to wade through the spam emails.
Here are some tips and facts that can help you control it.
Anti-virus software
Desktop-based (not cloud-based) anti-virus software is a must anyway, and most have an anti-spam component that can be activated to mark spam and move it to a junk folder in your Outlook or email software. You can then periodically review and delete the items in the junk folder.
Web hosting software
Many website hosting packages come with SpamAssassin which you can set up via your website’s control panel. You can choose whether to delete the spam and you can set the level of deletion which is based on an email scoring system as to how spammy it is. Your webmster can help you set this up.
Third-party email
About half of all businesses have gone to third-party email solutions such as Google mail, Rackspace, Office 365, and many others. Many of these have built-in spam protection on their servers.
Gmail, which is free, is also very popular and filters the spam automatically. You can set up your gmail account so that it sends from your business email.
Challenge and response software
Some business owners have gone to a challenge and response software such as SpamArrest. All emails coming in require validation via a captcha (those boxes that have you prove you’re a person and not a robot by entering letters and numbers) on the sender’s part.
Old email addresses
Older email addresses are subject to more spam than newer ones. Also, if you use common emails such as info@yourdomain.com, you probably get more spam than most. Start over every 3-5 years with new emails. It is worth the time.
Too many email addresses
Spam will come in to all the email addresses you use, so if you have two email addresses, you may get twice as much spam. Keep the number of email addresses you use to an absolute minimum.
Scrapers
Avoid placing your email address on your website or in public forums where it can be “scraped” by robots that will place your email on lists without your permission. Even so-called reputable companies employ scrapers; it’s more common than we’d like to think.
Also, some of the more aggressive websites will capture your domain and/or email address from cookies, so beware. With Google Chrome, you can browse “incognito,” and we recommend you do that.
If you’re challenged with spam, try one or more of these ideas to save time.
Wow, can you believe that 2015 is half over already? Now that we’ve crossed the halfway mark, it’s time to see if we’re on track for our 2015 goals. To do that, we need to see if we’ve met our mid-year milestones.
Managing By Milestones
A milestone, in project management terms, is simply a point along a project timeline. It’s marked so that project managers recognize when that portion of the project has been completed. We can use milestones to see how we’re faring toward financial goals as well.
Assuming our business is not seasonal, we should have earned half of our target revenues for 2015 as of the June 30, 2015 income statement. If we’re falling short, we can recognize that and perhaps add some promotions or sales to spike revenues so that we can correct the shortfall before the year has ended. If we’re ahead of the game, we can see what is working so well and make sure to replicate it.
Either way, with milestones, we can be more proactive in reaching or surpassing our goals.
By the Numbers
Some of the numbers you may want to set milestones for include:
- Revenue to date
- Expenses
- Profit to date
- Debt paid down or debt taken on
- Assets acquired or sold
- Number of employees added or lost or both
- Number of clients added or lost or both
- Accounts receivable aging
Project Performance
Milestones don’t have to be numeric. You can also use them to determine if you’re on track with internal projects. Perhaps for 2015, your goal was to replace 5 PCs and convert your shopping cart software. You can set milestones to monitor specific phases of these projects or just monitor when you start and complete them.
Mid-Year Milestone Report
Document your accomplishments in a mid-year milestones report. It feels good to write them down, plus you’ll have a history of how much you accomplished as well as what worked.
The report can include the milestones as well as a narrative explaining the performance to date. If you’d like our help creating this report, please feel free to contact us.
Accounting for milestones can help you become more proactive toward reaching your business goals. Plus, it’s great to see how far you’ve come since the beginning of the year.
Cool Tech Tools: Customer Portals
If you have a business where you have to send documents of any kind to your customers, then you may benefit from a portal. You can save time on customer service and possibly postage and labor. You will also look most professional while increasing service delivery.
What Is a Portal?
A portal is software in the cloud that allows users to upload and download files from a secure space that only they have access to. For each client you have, you can set up a private virtual filing cabinet where only you and the client will have the key. Your client will have their own user ID and password into their area of the portal. There, they can upload and download documents. Some portals also have secure signature capability to help you take the paperwork out of obtaining signatures.
How Can I Use a Portal?
Think of all the paperwork that occurs between you and your customer, and that will give you several ideas about how to use a portal. If your business is data-intensive, you will definitely benefit from a portal; imagine moving all of those documents out of email and into a clean, private filing folder in the cloud.
Businesses that would benefit the most include:
- Any small business with remote employees: a portal can be where they pick up and drop off work.
- Mortgage companies where the loan officers are collecting a great deal of information for the underwriters.
- Construction companies: each subcontractor could access the schedule, estimates, material details, invoices, and certificates of insurance.
- Real estate agents to collect the details of home purchases and sales
- Accountants, attorneys, consultants, coaches, and other professionals who deal with private customer information.
- Web design, ad agency, and marketing companies
Types of documents and files you can upload and download from portals include:
- Contracts, estimates, and legal documents
- Invoices and credit card authorizations
- Instructions and training materials and aids
- Company policies and procedures
- Brochures and marketing materials
- Reports and spreadsheets
- Forms and applications, blank and completed
- Graphics, drawings, and photos
You don’t necessarily have to set up a portal for every client; perhaps it’s cost-effective to use a portal on your largest customers or vendors.
Where Can I Find a Portal?
One of the leading vendors in the portal space is Citrix Sharefile. You can find them here: http://www.sharefile.com/. Your industry may have specific solutions for you as well, especially if you have regulations such as HIPAA that you need to follow.
You may also have heard of DropBox and Box.net. These companies offer file transfer and don’t have a dedicated user area, so they are useful, but a bit different than a portal.
Look for software that provides each user with their own unique login, and that will distinguish the software as a true portal.
If you decide to implement portals for your business, you can private-label them with your logo and place a direct link to your portal login page for easy client access.
Using portals will keep your inbox cleaner, save time looking for lost emails and documents, and help you look professional in the eyes of your clients.
If you need cash fast, there’s nothing like having a sale to increase your bank account quickly. Here are ten excuses you can use to tell your customers you’re having a sale.
1- It’s Your Birthday (or Your Business’s Birthday)
We all feel generous on our birthday, so why not have a sale on your special day. You can even tie to discount amount to your day of birth. For example, if you were born on the 14th, then you can offer customers 14% off.
Similarly, you can hold an anniversary sale on your business’s anniversary date. It’s a good way to let customers know how long you’ve been in business.
2- Your Partner Is on Vacation
If you have a business partner, you can use the excuse, “When the cat’s away, the mice will play.” You can pretend that your partner knows nothing about the sale, but has left you in charge and you’re going to have this sale. The customers will enjoy the reason and feel like they are getting away with something fun.
3- Holidays
Most stores have holiday sales, and you can too. There are so many unusual holidays that you can tap into just in case the holidays are at an inconvenient time. Here’s a website that will give you a list of special days, weeks, and holidays: http://www.holidayinsights.com/moreholidays/
4- The Full Moon
Why not? It might be the best sale you’ve ever had. The next full moon is July 2, 2015, and you’re in luck because July has a blue moon (when two full moons occur on one month) on July 31, 2015.
5- Small Business Saturday
November 28, 2015 is Small Business Saturday. It’s one day after Black Friday and the Saturday before Cyber Monday. Small Business Saturday is relatively new, but has been gaining momentum in the past few years.
6- Tax Holidays
In some states the sales tax authority provides exemptions for a few days on selected categories of items. For example, in August, Texas allows one weekend where sales tax does not have to be paid or collected on school supplies. You may not even have to mark down your items to generate a crowd for sales tax holidays. Here’s a Wikipedia page on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_holiday
7- Old Inventory Items or Overstock Conditions
A great reason to have a sale is when you have old inventory items you need to clear out. Similarly, if you’re overstocked on certain items, a sale will help them move.
8- Your Kid’s College Tuition Is Due
You can have a lot of fun by advertising that you simply need to make your tuition payments. Customers will get a smile out of helping you out and relating to a familiar need.
9- The Stock Market
If the stock market goes up or down, you can have a sale based on its performance.
10- Seasonal Dates
Dates such as the first day of summer, Spring Equinox, or even April 15th, tax day (in the U.S.) can be potential sales days for your business. Think about seasonal dates related to your industry.
Try these ten ideas to get your sale noticed.
Google Drive, which used to be called Google Docs, is a great way to collaborate with team members and stakeholders that are in a different location than you are. Here’s a quick introduction (or refresher) on how to use this powerful collaboration tool.
Google Drive is a browser-based application that allows you to create documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and other documents that reside in the cloud. They can easily be shared with others, and both of you can see and edit the document at the same time.
Using Google Drive
To get started, you’ll need to have (or set up) a Google account. If you have a gmail account, you can use it. Log in to your gmail or Google account, and at the top right corner of your screen, you will see a square made up of nine small squares. You can click on it and select Google Drive. Alternately, you can go to drive.google.com.
Time to Create
Once you’re on the Google Drive main page, you’ll see a large red CREATE button on the top left. Click it to create your first Google document. Select among the choices of spreadsheet, document, presentation, and more. Give the document a title, and start editing. The commands are very similar to Microsoft Office®, so there’s no learning curve.
Time to Share
When you are viewing a document, you’ll see a blue SHARE button on the top right side of your screen. Click it to enter the email address of a person you’d like to have see and/or edit the document.
You can tell who else is viewing the document at the same time you are because you’ll see a colored box and perhaps their picture on the top right side. You can also tell where their cursor is in the document; it will show up in another color.
As you create documents, you will see your list growing under My Drive. If someone else created the document and shared it with you, you’ll see it under Shared With Me.
So Many Uses
Here are a couple of ideas on how you can use Google Drive.
- As a bulletin board for your employees or customers
- For status reports on projects
- As a to-do list when multiple team members are involved – they can check off the items as they go
- As a collaborative note-taker when you’re brainstorming with another person
- With a client when you need to explain part of a document – you can copy and paste from Word or Excel to Google Drive (but check to make sure everything came over)
Google Drive is great for productivity and makes communications easier. Try it and let us know how you use it.