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Creating a business budget for 2020 will not only benefit your business in the next year, it will help establish a roadmap for success well into the future. A year ago I explained why your business would benefit from having a budget. This year, I'll get into the details of how to create one.

The primary benefit of having a budget is that it sets parameters. It forces you to make reasonable assumptions about how much your business is liable to spend in the coming year. That, in turn, helps you figure out how much income you'll need to cover your immediate expenses and also plan for long-term investments in the business.

While a budget is never exact, it's not just a wild guess, either. A budget's main value is to create an accountability tool. By setting a budget, you create a gauge for determining whether a particular initiative is working or whether you should change course before sinking more time, money or other resources into a losing proposition. A budget can also help identify successes that you should double down on.

Many people, including business leaders, think of "tax time" as an unpleasant obligation, like going to the dentist. But by preparing for it well before the year is done, you can avoid the stress that precedes tax season each year. Better yet, taking that deep dive into your financials can provide a wealth of insight that can help you meet or exceed your business goals.

Tax Prep: It's Not Just for Your CPA's Sake
As fall turns to winter, it's a good time to take stock of how your business performed this year. One simple way to do that is to gather the information that you're going to have to gather anyway, so your CPA can do your taxes. By keeping up-to-date books year-round, you'll make your CPA happy at tax time.

Beyond your CPA, have you ever stopped to consider the other people involved with your company who could make good use of detailed, accurate financial data? Depending on your business, that can range from your management team to your investors and shareholders.

Because Thanksgiving is such a family-oriented occasion, it's easy to understand why business leaders might not think to remember employees with their expressions of gratitude. But since employee retention is vital to maintaining a healthy business, it's important to thank your workforce as often as you can. This Thanksgiving makes a great time to start.

The Power of Appreciation
It's human nature. When someone thanks us for our efforts, we respond positively and are more likely to continue making the same level of effort, if not increase it. This is true whether we're thanked for simple acts, like holding a door for a stranger, or for more involved acts, like meeting a challenging deadline.

HR experts all agree: Thanking your employees helps keep them happy, which in turn helps keep them on your payroll. Whether you express your gratitude in the simplest, most literal way possible — by just saying "Thank you" — or by sweetening the deal with bonuses, gift cards or other perks, it's important not to neglect this important human connection.

As your business grows, so do the systems necessary to support it. Whether you have DIY bookkeeping or an outsourced bookkeeping services provider, your business may get big enough that you consider setting up an in-house bookkeeping department.

Some businesses may consider it a natural progression to move from outsourced bookkeeping to having an in-house department. However, continuing with outsourced bookkeeping services has many advantages over the alternative.

An outsourced bookkeeping services provider can be a great partner to your business — offering not only the skills you need at the levels you need, up to and including CFO, but also contributing valuable financial insights. And it all comes without the added expense and responsibility of hiring and managing new employees.

The Bookkeeping Expertise You Need Right Now
An experienced bookkeeping services provider doesn't have a steep learning curve. As pros who are familiar with a variety of businesses, they can quickly determine how much support you need in specific areas — whether it's a basic level, such as recording daily transactions and month-end close, or more detailed assistance, such as budgeting, planning and analysis.

If you're new to the nonprofit sector, no doubt you've already realized that the financial standards are stricter here than they were in the for-profit world. That can make end-of-year bookkeeping a stressful process — especially at the end of this year, due to new procedures that the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) has implemented for 2019.

So before any more sand slips through the hourglass, let's review the vital end-of-year bookkeeping tasks your nonprofit needs to accomplish to avoid fines or penalties — up to and including the loss of your nonprofit status.

Reconcile Your Restricted and Unrestricted Fund Accounts
As the names imply, the designations "restricted" and "unrestricted" determine how nonprofits can use different funds. Simply put, restricted funds can only be used according to the donor's specifications. This can be simple (e.g. funds for an event) or complicated (e.g. funds for the purchase of a particular item or to be held for a specified amount of time). These funds cannot be used or transferred without the consent of the donor and approval by the nonprofit's board of directors.

How you manage your business’ financial records when you open your doors can come back to haunt you if you don’t think ahead. Plan for success by setting up systems that will scale as your business grows — including your bookkeeping system.

Slicing a Bigger Piece of the Pie
Here's what we're talking about in practical terms: Say you have a side business selling home-baked blueberry pies at a local farm stand. Before you know it, your pies are the talk of the town and you decide to turn that sideline into a full-time business. Obviously, you can't just keep picking blueberries in your backyard and baking pies one or two at a time in your kitchen to meet the demand. It’s time scale up to a full-size bakery.

Moving into your new space is exciting and business is growing. You’ve made a substantial investment in new equipment, infrastructure, employees and vendors, so you might be tempted to try to continue with farm-stand-level bookkeeping. However, half-baked bookkeeping could be just as harmful to your business as half-baked pies.

Note: This blog first appeared in the Arlington Chamber of Commerce Blog.

Restaurant owners face unique bookkeeping challenges. Did you know, for instance, that if you include an automatic gratuity in the bill for larger parties, that's considered a service charge and not a tip — and thus has different IRS reporting requirements?

Combine potential regulatory banana peels with the long hours that restaurant owners typically work, and you have a compelling reason for outsourcing your bookkeeping responsibilities. But if you need additional convincing, here are a few more things to consider.

You Can't Combine Cash Accounting and Accrual Accounting
If you don't know the difference between the cash method of accounting and the accrual method — well, then we rest our case for why you shouldn't be keeping your own books.

But for the record, restaurants that generate more than $1 million of revenue per year must use the accrual method, while those that generate less have a choice — although you must formally notify the IRS before switching from accrual to cash. And under no circumstances can you use both methods at the same time.

With all the excitement around angel investing, many startups believe their good idea will make finding angel investors simple. In reality, it's not as easy as it looks in the movies and on TV. Most entrepreneurs hear a lot of "no" before they finally get to "yes."

I belong to a community of angel investors and regularly evaluate high-potential startups for early seed funding. I'm also a business advisor who works with companies on developing and executing key strategies, and on educating them about running their businesses. Helping small businesses achieve their goals is a passion of mine.

Here are six things you can do to improve your company's odds of finding financial benefactors.

Not all investment opportunities are the same because not all companies are the same. Some types of businesses are more attractive to investors than others. So the first thing you need to do is determine which type of business you have. That will make the process more efficient and less frustrating for prospective investors (and for you).

As a business owner, you're probably not looking forward to getting caught up on your end-of-year bookkeeping. But with a simple change of attitude and approach, you can transform that process into something positive. Don't think of it as filing your financials. Think of it as tapping into a valuable source of business intelligence.

You Have to Do It Anyway — Make It Work for You
Okay, we get it. No matter how you dress it up, bookkeeping sounds like a chore. This is particularly true if the year hasn't gone as well as you'd hoped.

Actually, that's all the more reason to immerse yourself in those numbers. End-of-year bookkeeping can be an insightful process that reveals not only where things went off track, but also what you can do to set them straight again. Here are some of the important questions it can help answer …

Business leaders, take heart. If you don't have a head for spreadsheets or if you have to dig into several reports to get critical information you need to manage your business, you're not alone. Many entrepreneurs and business owners are frustrated by these circumstances. They want to know as quickly as possible where the numbers stand so they can dive right back into their most important job: growing the business.

The hunger for real-time information that's easy to digest has fueled a movement among savvy business leaders toward using various types of dashboards.

That qualifier, "various types," is critical. There's no one-size-fits-all dashboard for every business or every business leader. The numbers that matter most to you, also called key performance indicators (KPIs), might not matter as much to the leader of a different type of business or even to a leader in the same field but with a different personality or approach.

The key to key performance indicators is to figure out which ones matter most to you personally.

Not even the best-run businesses are immune to Murphy's Law. Take TeKONTROL, Inc. (TKi). Over the course of three decades, this Florida-based company developed reliable bookkeeping systems for its global engineering support projects — difficult to do in the world of government contracts. Then it got hit with a one-two punch at the worst possible time.

First, the company's longtime bookkeeper retired. Then the vendor that provided TKi's enterprise resource planning (ERP) bookkeeping platform discontinued its support. Finally, the clincher: a pre-award audit from the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA). "It was a crisis," recalls Tom Kornegay, the company's Chairman, CEO and Founder. "Believe me."

A Timely Bookkeeping Solution
A short-term bookkeeping hire, combined with the trial use of temperamental new ERP software, turned what should have been a bump in the road into a massive pothole. To get around it, Kornegay brought in his former bookkeeper to restore "ground-floor reference points." But he knew he also needed someone to quickly and decisively take charge of TKi's bookkeeping from there.

With bookkeeping software leaders Bill.com and Intuit incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning into their products, it is clear that AI is playing a role in the bookkeeping field. How much of a role will AI play, and how will it impact bookkeeping services and businesses?

“Finance leaders will oversee the transition as robots take on more and more back-office functions … freeing people to grapple with high-level analysis and decision making that add value rather than ticking off to-dos.”

– strategy+business, spring 2019

Building a Better Toolbox
The terms “artificial intelligence” and “robot” scare some people, perhaps because they bring to mind dystopian science-fiction movies. But in reality, AI and robots are merely extensions of the kinds of tools most of us already use, like Google for online searches. And now the same basic principles are being refined for various specialized uses in the bookkeeping services field.

In business, the biggest problem is the one you can't see. And the reason you can't see it is that you have a blind spot.

One of your most important roles as a business leader is to help your team identify and address those blind spots. And one of the most effective ways to do that is to start by acknowledging your own blind spots. That also gives you the opportunity to set ground rules for delivering feedback in a positive way.

Hone Your Tone
I can't stress enough how important it is to set a precedent for positivity. Sometimes a simple change in tone can make all the difference in how your message is received.

I realized, for example, that one of my personal blind spots is a tendency to interrupt people. So, in order to break the habit, I asked the people around me to point it out when I do it. But I also asked that they do it in a respectful way — by calmly saying, "Hey, Dave, you're doing it again." That's so much more palatable for me to hear than if people were to sigh, roll their eyes and say, "You're doing it again, Daaaave!"

Now that you have decided to go forward with the expansion of your business into the U.S. market, the next step in the process is to decide which state will serve as your U.S. headquarters. Choose the best location for your U.S. subsidiary by considering not only state tax laws and regulations, but also geographic location, local culture and the professional community available to advise you in this new venture. Learn how you can use a location to your business’s advantage by looking at the example of setting up a U.S. subsidiary in Miami, Florida.

Example: Setting up a U.S. Subsidiary in Miami
Let's say you want to open a U.S. subsidiary of your Latin American company. Or maybe you have a European or Asian company and want to expand not only into the U.S. market, but also into Latin America.

A good starting point would be to investigate areas of the United States with a significant Latin American population. That could facilitate the kind of professional networking that will help you make the proper contacts. At the same time, you'll want to locate in a state with a friendly business climate — one with lower tax rates and fewer regulations.

The concept of "coaching" has become overused, and even abused, in the business world in recent years. That's unfortunate for a company like ours, Coaching Financial Concepts. We've been around for over 20 years, and we apply legitimate coaching techniques that we've adapted from a sports environment to give our client companies that winning edge.

For instance: To turn your company into a champion, you need the best players. And just as professional sports teams will offer creative deals to sign the top free agents, businesses at every level need to offer the best possible benefits package to lure the top talent in their given field.

The Difference Between 'Perks' and 'Benefits'
Different generations often have different priorities. Many articles have been written about the importance of company culture to millennials, for example. One recent study even found that many millennials would be willing to take a $7,600 pay cut in exchange for an "improved quality of work life."

For a nonprofit director, a budget is a blueprint, not a limitation. Once you realize this, you can drive your organization forward in ways you never dreamed possible. To get the absolute most out of your budget, however, you must find a bookkeeper with the proper combination of talent and expertise.

Nonprofit bookkeeping poses unique challenges, starting with IRS Form 990. At a minimum, you need a bookkeeper who is thoroughly familiar with the government's many nonprofit compliance requirements involving contributions and grants. Some grants carry specific classification guidelines that require tracking and categorizing expenses to a granular level rarely seen in the private sector.

There's no doubt that nonprofit bookkeeping can be intimidating. So, if nothing else, landing top talent will bring you peace of mind. You'll be free to focus on your organization's long-range goals without worrying that you or someone on your staff may inadvertently do something to jeopardize your tax-exempt status. You'll also feel more confident preparing for board meetings, knowing all your financial ducks are in a row.

Builders can now combine building management software with bookkeeping software to review real-time costs and monitor cash flow — right from the field.

Custom software applications have enabled many different types of businesses to operate more efficiently than ever before. New specialized cloud-based software tools, developed across broad sectors ranging from nonprofits to healthcare to information technology and professional services, are now essential tools required to enable entrepreneurs in their respective fields to compete and succeed in their markets.

Perhaps no industry could benefit more from this revolution in software than the building trades. Here's a look at how contractors can use these tools to be more successful.

Building a Better Toolbox
Even under the best of circumstances, the building trades are difficult to manage. It's the nature of the business. Buildings are big-ticket items that promise large potential profits, but only after the builder or developer lays out substantial cash upfront and waits patiently — years, in some cases — for the final big payday. Since most builders juggle multiple projects at the same time, while spending a lot of time in the field, keeping tabs on the company's expenses and cash flow is difficult, yet critical.

In 2006, Extension Engine was a $1.2 million business offering outsourced software development services. Fast-forward to 2019, and the company now focuses on creating custom online learning experiences and is projecting $15 million in revenue for the year.

Supporting Strategies has been there every step of the way, serving as the bookkeeping arm for Extension Engine's U.S. operations. We handle everything from data entry to financial analysis, providing accurate, up-to-date financials to guide leadership's strategic decisions.

Furqan Nazeeri, Partner at Extension Engine, explains that the business has undergone major changes in its bookkeeping over the past 13 years. "We've switched to new systems for time tracking and for expense tracking, and we've moved from QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online," he says. "Throughout those and other transitions, Supporting Strategies has been great. They've always been flexible and always managed to figure things out."

How much of a loan can your business really afford? Learn more about how lenders will determine your loan amount so you can evaluate your loan options.

Your Financial Picture
To understand where your company is financially, looking solely at the income statement can be misleading. Reviewing the balance sheet, statement of cash flows and understanding a company’s on-going capital requirements is crucial, and depending on the nature of your business and how you do your financial analysis, can be surprisingly difficult to nail down.

A good first step, for both your business and a prospective lender, is to be sure you have all the necessary documentation to obtain a loan. If nothing else, keeping a current balance sheet, P&L, etc., will give you an idea of where you stand financially at any given moment. (If you bring your financials up to date with the help of a bookkeeping services company, you might even find to your surprise that you don't even need a loan.)

It's always gratifying to receive an award for your work — especially when you had no idea you were even nominated. But that was the case recently when our Supporting Strategies | Chicago Far West Suburbs learned we had received the Turnaround Management Association (TMA) Pro Bono Transaction of the Year award for our role in helping a distressed nonprofit straighten out its financials and position itself for sale.

Assessing a Community Asset
West Suburban Senior Services (WSSS) in Bellwood, Illinois, had long been a valuable community resource. The nonprofit has provided adult day wellness support for seniors in western Chicagoland since 1972.

When some of its government funding dried up, however, several key executives and staff members departed. WSSS fell behind and missed several deadlines. It would be very difficult for any organization to find a buyer with those unmet obligations hanging over it.

As a consultant to some of America's most successful entrepreneurs, I can tell you with 99% certainty the biggest obstacle keeping your business from becoming the success you envisioned.

But fair warning: You might not like the answer.

Time to Look in the Mirror
Simply put: The biggest obstacle to your success is you. Or, more accurately, it's your lack of self-confidence. You believe successful business owners are privy to some secret formula that has somehow eluded you.

Truth is, most of those successful entrepreneurs were once as tentative and full of self-doubt as you. The difference is, they made the decision to overcome those doubts and move ahead with confidence. They became comfortable with being uncomfortable — with pushing past their self-imposed limitations.

You can do it, too. You just need to develop what I call a "champion's mindset."

File this under "Good Problem to Have." SASKIA, a Brooklyn jewelry startup, grew so fast that its bookkeeping demands soon exceeded the capabilities of its husband-and-wife co-founders.

Of particular concern was the company's irregular cash flow. At the start of each year, SASKIA had a lot of upfront expenditures for the materials needed to create their unique designs. The company relied on no-APR credit cards for purchases of up to $50,000, knowing the return on that investment wouldn't come until much later in the year. But in the meantime, they still had to meet their regular expenses, including payroll for eight employees. The math on how to accomplish that could get a bit fuzzy.

Into the Right Boxes
As is often the case, the first step in solving this problem was to acknowledge it. Partner/COO Scott Kerns, who had been doing the company's books, realized it was time to outsource that responsibility to a specialist. "We needed someone who could put things in the right boxes in the right way," he says, "Then we could look at all of the data together and make informed decisions based on where the money was flowing."

Note: This blog first appeared in the Arlington Chamber of Commerce Blog.

Small-business owners sometimes have trouble delegating responsibilities. We get it. Once you've invested so much time (and money, in many cases) in launching a business, it's difficult to relinquish control over key aspects of that business — especially the finances.

But as your business grows, you eventually realize there literally aren't enough hours in the day to do everything yourself. And unless your goal in launching the business was to become a full-time bookkeeper, that's one of the first areas you should consider outsourcing. Have questions regarding how to go about it? Here are some answers.

1. Will the bookkeeping services provider help you focus on your business rather than on bookkeeping?
The best bookkeeping services providers understand their role is to minimize your involvement in bookkeeping so that you can refocus on your core strengths. And they'll assert their expertise in accomplishing that — sometimes from day one.

According to a 2016 government report, a new franchised business opens somewhere in the United States every eight minutes of every business day. Franchises are highly popular because they offer many advantages for both the franchisee and franchisor.

Look at Both Sides of the Ledger
Both entrepreneurs and franchisors have a lot to gain from the franchise business model. For an entrepreneur who wants to become a franchisee, it's a great way to jumpstart a new business. The list of benefits includes:

• Instant brand-name recognition, which helps secure both bank loans and customers
• Access to a proven business model, which helps the franchisee avoid costly rookie mistakes
• Economies of scale that come with buying supplies in bulk quantities

The response to our post on setting up a U.S. subsidiary of a foreign company demonstrates there is great interest in this topic. Here is some additional information.

The most important step in setting up a U.S. subsidiary is to determine exactly what you hope to accomplish. Consider questions like these:

• If you're selling a product, have you done the research to determine who your established U.S. competitors are?
• Does your product meet U.S. safety standards?
• Can you simply export your product to the United States from your existing manufacturing facility, or do exorbitant tariffs make it more cost-effective to build a manufacturing facility domestically?

As a business leader, you're laser-focused on doing everything you can to improve your company. You explore every possible lead. You network with influencers. You read everything from bestselling business books to the most obscure industry-related websites.

But there's one area of your business that you might not realize is worthy of a deeper dive. And yet, it's an area that can yield some of the quickest and most tangible improvements: bookkeeping. Here's a brief guide to how you can gain financial insight from your bookkeeping services provider — insight that can drive your most important decisions.

By Determining If (and When) You're Ready to Grow
Most anyone running a business has considered expanding at some point, whether by hiring another employee or two, moving to a bigger office or opening a second location. As a business leader, you want to think through each potential move. Will a new employee help generate enough revenue to cover their salary? Will moving to a new office create too big a disruption? Would a second location spread time and resources too thin?

The phrase "interstate commerce" used to have a fairly straightforward meaning: transporting goods or services from one state to another. But the advent of ecommerce has blurred those traditional state boundaries. If you are based in one state but are doing business, or intend to do business, in other states — even if only via the internet — how do you stay in compliance with all applicable regulations?

The answer depends on the precise nature of your business as well as individual state laws. Here's an example.

Let's Cover the Easy Stuff First
Let's say you live in Delaware and decide to open a seafood restaurant near the Pennsylvania border. You might not even realize this, but you're already off to a good start because Delaware has such a good reputation as a business-friendly state that more than 1 million businesses have made it their legal home.

You've launched a small tech startup that makes an app for digital widgets. Business seems to be going well, but you can't tell for sure because the office manager who also does the books is always running behind and you don't know where your cash flow stands.

Finally, when your CPA prepares your taxes and straightens out some bookkeeping errors (running up a big bill in the process), you get confirmation: Business for the first year ran 50% ahead of what you'd anticipated.

That tells you two things. First, you should hire another sales rep and ramp up production. Second, you'd better get your bookkeeping squared away, and fast.

A Valuable Asset to Your Business
A strong bookkeeping practice can help you keep pace with your business today and better prepare to grow your business tomorrow. Here's how:

Most nonprofit organizations have multiple revenue streams. Tracking all those funds and their associated expenses can easily overwhelm the administrative staff, particularly at smaller organizations. Or, to put it another way: Admin costs often consume a disproportionate amount of a nonprofit's budget, measured in both money and time.

Here's how you can streamline your nonprofit's bookkeeping to cut admin costs:

Stay Current
Instead of allocating revenue and expenses as they occur, many nonprofits wait and assign them to funding sources as a separate process. But with so many buckets and so many costs, it's a poor use of time to do all that scrubbing, trying to back every dollar into where it needs to be. It can also be stressful, especially if mistakes or discrepancies start piling up.

When he became Executive Director at Arlington Thrive in March 2016, Andrew Schneider encountered a problem common among mature nonprofits: "Over time, as in any organization, internal systems develop that make sense to the people who are operating them but might not make sense to new people coming in."

In fulfilling its mission of providing same-day, emergency financial assistance to residents of Arlington County, Virginia, the organization relied on a steady flow of cash. A legacy bookkeeping system, coupled with a nearly indecipherable method of donor classification, threatened to disrupt that flow. Schneider needed to resolve the problem quickly. Supporting Strategies | Northern Virginia and Managing Director Indre Bauza delivered a solution.

A Clearer View
Supporting Strategies took a proactive approach to solving the problem — from modernizing the bookkeeping system to establishing monthly conference calls with the finance committee. The result? Real-time financial reporting, enhanced communication, and greater financial transparency.

This was not the usual request for vacation time. When she joined Supporting Strategies | Los Angeles, Financial Operations Manager Mary Rose informed me that at some point she'd need about three months off to row a boat across the Pacific Ocean. All by herself.

For a lot of employers, that would have been a deal-breaker. In fact, Mary, 48, had had to quit an earlier job the first time she took on the Pacific.

But Supporting Strategies is different. Yes, one reason we've been named to Entrepreneur magazine's Fastest-Growing Franchises list is that we consistently deliver top-notch customer service that puts the client first. But another key component is that we provide a flexible work environment for experienced bookkeeping professionals, with redundant systems and cross-training that give our team members the freedom to pursue their passions without giving up their careers.

Mary, Mary, Row Your Boat
Now, you might think that someone who sets out to row across the Pacific Ocean would have a track record of competing in extreme sports, or would at least be an elite athlete. But that's not the case here. Mary, a native of the Australian island of Tasmania, became a long-distance rower after attending an inspiring talk by Roz Savage, who used ocean rowing to raise awareness of her environmental advocacy.

Are you frustrated by the amount of time you spend on bookkeeping? Do you put off sales and networking efforts to take care of daily bookkeeping tasks? Many small-business owners are surprised by the extent to which bookkeeping demands can distract them from building their companies.

Few business owners actually want to do the bookkeeping. But many feel they have to, at least in the early stages when money is tight and business is light. This is particularly true in companies that started out as a sideline, where the owner learned to do the books along the way. Some owners might even become competent bookkeepers and enjoy it.

But then comes that inevitable moment of reckoning. As the business picks up, the owner (or business leader) wants to take advantage of new opportunities to grow the company — and they no longer have time for the bookkeeping tasks that had fit easily into their schedule before.

Now that the annual springtime flurry of activity that comes with filing your small-business tax returns has passed, you might think you can go on bookkeeping cruise control until you start processing 1099 forms next winter.

Here are some additional suggestions to help keep your organization's bookkeeping in order all year long.

The good news? Two new partners joined a small company and immediately increased sales. The bad news? The company's existing system of keeping the books — paying bills with handwritten checks and keeping tabs on the numbers through monthly visits with a CPA — was inadequate for rapid growth.

"We were losing tons of sleep because we didn't even know our numbers," says Brian Van Norman, ICU Technologies' Vice President and Co-Owner. "It was scary. Like, 'How much money have we got in the bank? What bills do we have?'"

Van Norman turned to the internet for a solution — and found Supporting Strategies.

Proactive Guidance
Karen Rinehart, Managing Director of Supporting Strategies | Central California, was on the case immediately. "Karen got the chart of accounts right, along with all the other stuff that we aren't experts in," Van Norman says.

Change has become a constant in the nonprofit sector. Recently we saw new regulations under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that eliminated certain deductions. The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) has also been hard at work instituting sweeping changes in procedures aimed at reducing complexities while making it easier to understand nonprofit financial information — notably, updates to the accounting standards in 2016 (impacting 2018 financial statements) and in 2018 (impacting 2019 financial statements).

Here's a summary of the most significant revisions.

New Revenue Recognition Standard Focus Clarifies Contributions
You might think that, when it comes to charitable giving, a dollar is a dollar. But in the nonprofit sector, it's important to determine the giver's expectations in providing that dollar. Are the expectations nonreciprocal and unconditional, meaning the nonprofit can spend that full dollar however (and whenever) it sees fit? Or does the giver expect something in return of equal (or "commensurate," in FASB parlance) value, thus an exchange transaction? That return could range from "membership" status to branded merchandise, like a pin or a mug, to funding clinical drug trials, performing public services or conducting scientific research under a grant.

Many small-business owners start out doing everything themselves: sales, marketing, HR, IT, even keeping their own books. As they stretch themselves thinner and thinner, they try to offload as many responsibilities as they can in an attempt to keep up.

If you're thinking of starting a small business, you can learn from this common mistake. Identify what's core to your business, and what can be outsourced, before you open your doors. Take advantage of all the cost-effective expertise that's available today. Because the DIY, learn-as-you-go approach to things like bookkeeping can result in costly, easily avoidable mistakes.

From Recording Transactions to Financial Reporting and Forecasting
In simplest terms, a bookkeeper records a company's financial transactions at regular chronological intervals — day by day, in most cases. While the definition is fairly straightforward, keeping up with a company's financial reporting can be time-consuming and complicated, depending on the nature of the business.

Note: This blog first appeared in the Arlington Chamber of Commerce Blog.

Like many business leaders, you made a new year’s resolution to stay current with your financial reporting. Now that it’s Q2, it’s time to make sure your resolution is staying on track.

Don't Just Keep Up — Get Ahead
This is the perfect time to take a big-picture look at the health of your business. Are there ways you can optimize your approach to achieve efficiency and gain a competitive advantage? Technology advances quickly, and there may be better solutions available for your business today than there were when you started — or even a year ago.

For example, it's now easy for small businesses to know their financial status in real time. Using records that update automatically, you can analyze your key performance indicators. Your KPIs can tell you at a glance how your business is performing relative to your budgeting and forecasting (which, by the way, will also be vastly improved with better financial reporting).

No business can succeed if it's not marketed properly. In light of this simple truth, it's remarkable that so many businesses treat their marketing as an afterthought.

It's time to put your company's marketing efforts top of mind, starting with an awareness of the three most common mistakes — and how to avoid them.

1. Silver-Bullet Syndrome
We've all been guilty of this. Basically, it's deluding yourself into believing that one simple change in your marketing approach will fix everything. For instance: "If I just do social media, that will be a game-changer."

The problem with this approach is that it relies on tactics rather than strategy. In the military, we used to say, "You always stay focused on the mission but flexible on the details."

In the scenario above, "doing social media" is a detail. It's not the mission.

How did you do this tax season with the new Tax Cuts and Jobs Act? The answers (and your grade) are at the end.

1. If your small business constitutes a "pass-through entity," how much of your net business income are you allowed to deduct?

1. 0%
2. 10%
3. 20%
4. I'm not sure what a "pass-through entity" is, but it sounds unpleasant

2. You spent $1.1 million in 2018 to repair your warehouse roof and buy much-needed new equipment. How much of that is deductible under Section 179?

1. All of it
2. $1 million
3. $500,000
4. Um … tell me what Section 179 is again

There's often a narrow margin between a successful business and a struggling one. Something as simple as credit-card processing fees can spell the difference between black ink and red. But if you think those fees are an unavoidable cost of doing business, think again.

When the Fine Print Isn't So Fine for You
As we trend toward a cashless society, more and more businesses have begun accepting credit cards — which also means accepting the processing fees that come along with them. But what many merchants fail to realize is that those rates are flexible. And the merchants often end up paying way more than they need to.

To give you just one example: Let's say your business accepts different cards with processing rates that range from 1% to 3%. Some third-party processors simply round everything up to the highest rate and charge 3% for all cards. So even if you accept four cards that charge 1% and just one card that charges 3%, you end up paying your processor 3% across the board. The merchants are actually entitled to rebates in that scenario, but few know enough to ask.

As a wealth management strategist for more than 30 years, I advise clients on how to build and balance their three pools of money. Retirement planning isn't just a matter of saving money; it's a matter of investing money and allocating resources in a way that delivers the best return. So the goal is to get the longest compounding curve out of the assets that are taxed the least.

Unfortunately, not enough people implement a net after-tax plan early enough to generate the assets they'll need to have the kind of retirement they want — or even to have a solid retirement at all. This is especially true of small-business owners, who are often so consumed with the demands of operating the business that they fail to plan for the future.

Plan for the End Right from the Start
A detailed exit strategy should be a part of every business plan. But it isn't enough to map out an exit strategy for the business — you need one for yourself, too. In fact, if you start your own business, it's even more important to factor in retirement planning than it would be if you simply kept working at a job somewhere. You'll no longer have access to your employer's plan because now you are your employer.

If you have a great commercial lease for your business, consider yourself fortunate. And don't take it for granted. Things can change at any time.

I had a client who had been in the same location for more than 20 years when the landlord summarily decided to raise the rent by $25 per square foot. With just a few months' notice, we had to scramble. We found a good building, and the prospective landlord loved my client — but evidently not enough to avoid nickel-and-diming them to death when it came time to sign the lease. I guess the landlord figured he had my client over a barrel because time was so short.

The landlord figured wrong. My client nixed the deal and continued looking. In the end, we found them an even better location, with a favorable sublease. Moral of the story: You don't have to let the landlord call all the shots when you negotiate a lease — even in a tight market like New York City (where my firm operates). The following are five tips to help you get the best terms.

Like many small-business owners, you started out as a jack-of-all-trades. Whatever needed to be done to keep the doors open in those hectic first months, you did it: sales, marketing, IT, maintenance, administration and bookkeeping.

As your business grew, you added employees, vendors, an attorney on retainer. Now you couldn't do everything yourself if you wanted to. To support the continued growth of your business, you need to implement some basic financial controls and best practices. How do you go about it effectively?

Glad you asked.

First, Figure Out Where You Are
This is actually a good time of year to take your business' pulse. You need to put your tax records in order, and you should be compiling a forecast for the new year. That's not a burden — it's an opportunity. Good, thorough bookkeeping records aren't just an indication of how you've performed in the past year, but are a blueprint for growth — if you know how to interpret them.

At Supporting Strategies, we stress to small-business owners the importance of acquiring a basic understanding of key financial statements. From balance sheets to cash flow statements, we cover just about every financial report a business might need.

For the most part, healthcare practices are no different from any other type of business. A healthcare practitioner needs to understand, say, a profit and loss statement. However, one financial report that all practitioners must be familiar with is the accounts receivable aging report.

Why the Healthcare Industry Has Different Priorities
Although governed by the same accounting principles as any other business, healthcare practices face unique challenges. Government regulation, for one, including compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). If you operate a healthcare practice, it's critical not only that you understand HIPAA laws, but that your bookkeepers and/or accountants do as well. (Here's one example of why this is so important.)

Suffice to say that if you want to avoid violating privacy laws, and the financial penalties that can result, you must carefully monitor the information you enter into the bookkeeping system.

"Beware the ides of March," Shakespeare wrote. Well, we have no idea what "ides" are, but we do know our tax deadlines.

Are You Prepared for the March Tax Deadline?
It never hurts to have a reminder about changes in tax laws, because each year brings new ones — especially this year.

You might have changed the structure of your business this year, which could in turn alter your filing status. For example, have you switched from an S corporation to a C corporation? If so, not only are you positioned to possibly pay a lower tax rate — a flat rate of 21% instead of the graduated scale from 15% to 39% — but your filing deadline also moves back from March 15 to April 15.

For S corps, partnerships and multiple-member LLCs, the deadline remains March 15. And don't think that the partial shutdown of the federal government will buy you any additional time. It does not affect any filing deadlines.

Is your healthcare practice's cash flow suffering from clogged arteries? Take our checkup and find out.

Open Your Mouth and Say "Aargh!"
Most practitioners enter the healthcare field because they want to help people, not because they want to run a business. But failing to observe good business practices can create cash-flow problems that impede your practice's ability to provide quality care. Furthermore, insurance reimbursements and a thicket of regulations make healthcare an especially complicated business.

The complexity starts with third-party billing systems, which have become as much a part of healthcare as jokes about hospital food. Any healthcare provider who accepts insurance as payment is required to submit a bill with a current procedural terminology (CPT) code to the billing department. While larger hospitals typically have an in-house billing department, most smaller practices outsource that responsibility to a third party.

This blog was originally published on the ricklochner.com website.

…we’re going to jump to light speed!”

I still remember the audience’s reaction to this scene in “Star Wars: A New Hope” in 1977. We had never seen anything like it on the big screen until then and, of course, now it seems almost archaic! Today’s 21^st century business environment can feel very much like everything is moving at perpetual light speed. It is also this metaphor we use to highlight the first of five Keys to Success initially mentioned in last month’s newsletter (click here to read). The first Key to Success is Get Ready to Warp (warp speed is faster than the speed of light). Simply stated, it is not the ability to adapt that matters as much as the speed at which the leader is able to adapt in order to stay relevant. Here are three things a 21^st century leader can do to stay relevant:

• How well do you know your industry? While I was once asked if I had a crystal ball to see the future, no one has that ability. However, we do have the ability to understand our industry well enough to understand key trends and how those trends impact the leader’s current and future business. In the May-June 2018 issue of “Harvard Business Review,” Jason Trujillo, IBM’s Director of Leadership Development sums up this dynamic with one sentence. He states, “IBM’s cultural transformation is aligned with the reinvention of our business, with almost half our revenue coming from businesses we weren’t in six years ago.” Six years to a company as large as IBM is virtually light speed!

Whether you own a startup or a growing business, a professional bookkeeper will help ensure you're following standard business practices and provide the financial information you need to make better business decisions.

From recording daily transactions in the general ledger to delivering in-depth financial reporting, here are several of the key tasks a professional bookkeeping service can perform:

1. Compiling Key Financial Reports
At a basic level, the goal of any business is to take in more money than it spends. But figuring out if the business is actually doing that can be surprisingly difficult. In order to fully understand what's going on, you need to review an array of financial reports. Of particular importance — especially in the startup phase, where cash is often in short supply — is the cash flow statement. If you or your bookkeeper don't understand the implications of this statement, the results could be disastrous.

The Sierra Nevada Children's Museum, a popular family destination in Truckee, California, is poised for growth with a projected 80% increase in visitation over the next 20 years. To keep pace with this growth, the museum needs to boost fundraising to finance building a larger facility.  

Working with a complex chart of accounts and item list, combined with a slow, server-based software system, occupied much of Executive Director Carol Meagher's time. She wasn't able to fully focus on fundraising and community outreach — which were vital for the museum to keep pace with its projected increase in visitation.

To compound this problem, the museum's bookkeeper decided not to return from maternity leave, and a prospective replacement didn't pan out. In order to reach its potential for growth, the museum needed to establish a strong foundation in bookkeeping that included special events tracking, operational reporting, grants management, and preparing financials for the board.

Fifty percent of new small businesses fail within five years. That statistic has held steady for so long, it might lead you to conclude that business is a game of chance and success is as random as the outcome of a coin flip.

That's not the case. With research and preparation, you can push your odds of a successful launch well above 50/50.

1) Do your market research.
Too many entrepreneurs think with their hearts instead of their heads. Just because you love to do something doesn't mean people will pay for your product or service in sufficient numbers for you to turn your avocation into a vocation.

So before you quit your job and sink your life savings into pursuing your passion for cupcakes and baking, you'd better figure out how many people would be inclined to buy your cupcakes, how much they'd be willing to pay, and whether you can bake your cupcakes cheaply enough at scale to turn a profit. If the numbers work, then go for it. If not — and you need to be brutally honest with yourself — then don't quit your day job.

With special thanks to Mariya Luqmani, CPA, MST, President of MLCPAS Inc specializing in business and international taxation, for her contributions to the article.

Lately a lot of my small-business clients have been asking me about C corporations. I understand why. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) has bestowed a very preferential 21% flat tax rate on corporations, replacing the previous graduated tax rate of 15% to 35%.

Does converting to a C corp make sense for you? Since the graduated rate was based largely on taxable income, the simple answer would appear to be to determine whether your company's taxable income is closer to the 15% mark (in which case converting would be a bad idea) or the 35% mark (in which case converting could be a great idea).

But as with most simple answers, the reality isn't so simple. This is particularly true of businesses that are still in the planning stages, where projecting the bottom-line taxable-income numbers is just that — a projection.

So what's a small-business owner to do?

If you run a small business, the holidays can be a distraction. It's easy to lose focus during the rush (if you're in retail) or the lull (if you're not). Either way, this is a crucial time. You need to take stock of where your financials are as this year ends and the next begins.

Don't drop the ball before watching the ball drop in Times Square. As the year ends, resolve to …

Keep good records all year long. Yes, we offered the same advice at this time last year. Did you follow it? And if you didn't, don't you wish you had? Wouldn't it be nice to relax and enjoy some holiday time with family and friends instead of scrambling to pull together 12 months of records?

It's worth repeating: At a minimum, performing monthly reconciliations and keeping accurate, up-to-date records — including all expenses, such as equipment updates or mileage, as well as W-9 and 1099 forms — will make your life (and your bookkeeper's life) much easier at tax time. It will also prepare you for any unexpected audits. Perhaps most important of all, thorough records give you insights into your business that can make it easier to create accurate budgets and forecasts.

"Small businesses lose almost twice as much per scheme to fraud" as larger businesses. That's just one of the disturbing findings in the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) "2018 Global Study on Occupational Fraud and Abuse."

According to the study, small businesses (which the ACFE defines as having fewer than 100 employees) sustained a median loss of $200,000 per fraud scheme, compared to $104,000 for larger businesses. Moreover, the study found that "a majority of the victims recovered nothing."

A Big Problem for Small Businesses
Why are small businesses particularly vulnerable to fraud? There are several reasons. First, many small-business owners start out in the corporate world (where high-level financial controls are part of the infrastructure) before venturing out on their own. So they tend to take security measures for granted and are too trusting of the people they bring onboard to operate their new business. Let's face it: No one hires an employee whom they think will try to defraud them.

Congratulations — you have an idea for a potentially lucrative small business. All you need is the funding. Several avenues are available, and you should take the time to explore them all before deciding what's best for you.

In case you missed the emphasis, the operative word there is best. With that in mind …

1. When evaluating financing options, remember that it's not always about the interest rate. Terms and conditions matter quite a bit. Even as a C corp, S corp or LLC, you can lose what you've invested, and you may be asked for "personal guarantees" that will entangle you long after a business fails.
2. Match the duration of your financing with the duration of your assets. If you have two-year loans with a big balloon payment at the end and you can't roll your debt in two years because of a major recession, that's a big problem. Ever hear of Lehman Brothers? Yeah, they did that.

Like many medical professionals who operate their own practices, Beverly M. Shafer MD, FACS (Fellow, American College of Surgeons), is under tremendous pressure to manage her time as efficiently as possible. "It drives me crazy when there are gaps in the schedule," says Shafer, a renowned plastic surgeon who has practiced on the North Shore of Massachusetts for over 30 years.

Shafer's combination of compassion and surgical artistry has created a high demand for her services. Meanwhile, her practice's back-office functions have become more time-consuming over the years, due to the growing complexity of insurance-reimbursement bureaucracy and a migration from paper-based to digital bookkeeping. Staff turnover compounded the problem; an outside CPA firm wound up doing many basic bookkeeping tasks. That wasn't cost-effective.

Specialized Bookkeeping Services for Healthcare Practices
A business contact encouraged Shafer to reach out to Supporting Strategies Founder and CEO Leslie Jorgensen. "I loved her immediately," Shafer says. A leading provider of outsourced bookkeeping services and operational support, Supporting Strategies began reconciling all of the practice's accounts on a monthly basis, "which is super-complicated, honestly," Shafer says. "They interface with my CPA to provide them the necessary information to do what they need to do, and they also interface with my paychecks company to get my staff paid and make sure that their taxes are correct."

Since 1979 Evergreen Speech & Hearing Clinic (ESHC) has become a respected source of comprehensive hearing evaluations and rehabilitation in the Puget Sound region. The healthcare practice has expanded from one location to three, with a staff of 28 that includes five audiologists and six speech therapists.

With the clinic’s growth came bookkeeping and back-office complexities. While ESHC used a robust, mid-market accounting system, they still entered vendor invoices and cut checks manually. Then ESHC's in-house bookkeeper gave two weeks’ notice.  

21^st Century Bookkeeping
On the recommendation of a business associate, ESHC called on Supporting Strategies. Despite some initial misgivings about outsourcing bookkeeping, ESHC soon saw the advantages. "The Supporting Strategies team optimized our entire system and brought us into the 21st century," says ESHC Project Manager Chris Norwood. "What felt like a crisis turned out to be a great opportunity."

Thanksgiving is a good time to pause and reflect on what matters in our lives: our family, friends and freedoms, our good fortune and good health.

It's also a good time to acknowledge something else that's essential to our sense of well-being — something that some small-business owners may take for granted: our clients.

Gratitude Is an Attitude
Do you remember when you landed your first customer or client? Remember how special that moment was? Your goal of running a business was no longer an abstract dream. It was real — and all because that first client had faith in your ability.

Remember how grateful you were? You vowed to reward that vote of confidence. Your goal wasn't merely to satisfy your client, but to delight them.

That should still be your goal today with every client. Delighting clients isn't just good for the soul; it's good for business. And it can lead to more business.

Disagreements with employees, clients, and independent contractors can create risks for your small business. By having certain employee and contractor documents in place, you can help safeguard your company.

Here's a quick look at some of those key documents:

• 1099s: Make sure your paperwork is in order before January, when 1099s are due.

• Employment records: Organize your employee records (e.g. applications, performance reviews, W-2s, non-compete agreements) and keep them in a central location. Plus, confirm the records for each employee are complete and up-to-date.

• Employee handbook: This is an important document for your business and will help you avoid potential employee issues. It should lay out expectations for your employees in detail and include your mission statement along with your anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies.

One of the most important — and complicated — changes established by the new Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) is Section 199A, which concerns the type of businesses known as "pass-through entities," also known as flow-through entities.

Basically, these businesses pass their profits on to their individual owners. That's how most small businesses work, including S corporations, partnerships and LLCs. (Sole proprietorships handle business income in a similar way using Form 1040 Schedule C and are also covered by the new rules.)

The good news is that if you own one of these businesses, you may get as much as a 20% reduction in taxes on business net income under the new rules. The calculations can be very complex, however. Several factors — including your level of income, your profession and the amount your business spends on wages and property acquired during the year — determine the actual deduction. Let's take a closer look.

Senator Marco Rubio has sponsored legislation requesting federal permission for Florida to switch to daylight saving time (DST) year round — or, failing that, for the entire country to do so.

I used to live in Indiana, which switched from year-round Eastern Standard Time (EST) to Eastern Daylight Time in 2006. Like DST proponents in Indiana, Senator Rubio and his supporters insist that later sunsets provide an economic benefit.

But do they really? That depends on who (and where) you ask.

Paying by the Hour
To anyone with a bookkeeping mindset, the economic argument for DST is a little unsettling. For starters, no one "gains" an hour of daylight with DST. Obviously, the extended daylight at the end of the day comes at the cost of an added hour of darkness at the beginning of the day. It's a zero-sum game.

That's just bookkeeping 101.

Many business owners think of a budget as a limitation. Instead, they should think of it as a set of guidelines.

The purpose of a budget is to identify the points at which you need to implement various contingency plans. And the process isn't necessarily restrictive; a budget prepares you to react not only when something bad happens, but also when something good does. If you find that a competing company is unexpectedly for sale, for instance, can you adjust your budget in order to buy them out?

You Can't Do the Math Without the Numbers
For a small business, creating a budget shouldn't take more than a couple of hours, and the benefits are tremendous. If you're doing it right, it forces you to consider the financial metrics that are actually driving your organization. Where is your company, and what can it achieve in the next year? Or three years? Or five years? What steps do you need to take during the next several months to get started toward those goals?

Once you've set your annual budget, you need to reevaluate at least once during the year to determine where you are relative to your projections. That simple process can make your company proactive rather than reactive.

Pop quiz: Your business recently landed a $50 million Department of Defense contract. You've let a couple of smaller jobs expire in anticipation of taking on the government work. You've invested in materials and lined up a series of subcontractors to help you meet the contract terms. Everything's humming along beautifully.

Then the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) pays a surprise visit and determines your accounting system isn't in compliance with their standards. What happens next?

A: The DCAA immediately terminates the contract.

B: The DCAA sets a reasonable deadline for bringing your system into compliance, and the work continues.

C: The DCAA suspends the contract until you come into compliance. You're solely liable for any lost revenue and for any money invested in materials and subcontractors to date, as well as the costs of reaching compliance.

D: None of the above.

With its cutting-edge shelter construction, World Housing Solution (WHS) addressed an obvious need for the U.S. Department of Defense. The small Sanford, Fla., company creates modular buildings that could be raised quickly in challenging circumstances ranging from refugee crises to natural disasters to rapid military deployments.

But securing government contracts meant negotiating a complex regulatory maze that included the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA). "Once you are a government subcontractor, you have to run all of your accounting through a DCCA system regardless of whether it's a commercial sale or a government sale," says WHS Director of Administration Michelle Theodoseau. "Our original accounting firm did not have the experience that these very specialized government contracts require."

You never know when or where the next hurricane will strike the United States. You only know that it will. As Hurricane Florence violently demonstrated once again, it's vital that your business have a solid continuity plan in place for the worst-case scenario.

People tend to use the term "major disaster area" generically to describe any region where a calamity has occurred. But when it comes to relief, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has specific guidelines that enable the president to issue a major disaster declaration, releasing federal funds for assistance in the stipulated region. While much of the relief funding is used to repair public infrastructure, some can also benefit businesses, often in the form of loans through the Small Business Administration.

If a business needs to be completely rebuilt and will be offline for a while, its employees or contractors might be eligible for Disaster Unemployment Assistance. In addition, the IRS grants many businesses in federal disaster areas extensions on certain filing deadlines.

Do you have a new business that shows promise or an established business that's having a growth spurt? Either way, at some point you'll probably wonder whether an infusion of cash could help you reach that highly desirable (though difficult to define) "next level."

Getting Your Priorities in Order
As a first step, make sure your records are organized and up-to-date. A number of bookkeeping issues, from misclassified expenses to improperly applied COGS, can jeopardize your loan application.

The key reports and documents you’ll typically need to provide are:

• Current P&L: This represents your revenue minus your operating expenses for a given period of time. If it's a negative number, then a loan won't fix your problems.

• A balance sheet: I covered this one in an earlier post. Basically, the balance sheet is a snapshot of your company's liability, assets and capital on a specific date.

Business owners strive to maximize the profitability of their companies. Determining your company's profitability can be trickier than you think, however. For example, say Business A generates $10 million in annual revenue against $9.5 million in total costs, while Business B generates $250,000 in annual revenue against $50,000 in total costs. Which is more profitable?

Measured in raw dollars, Business A comes out way ahead, $500,000 to $200,000. But in terms of profit margin, Business B trounces Business A, 20% to 5%.

The point is, there are different ways to measure profitability. There are also different ways to maximize your company's profitability. Let's take a closer look.

For small-business owners, eternal vigilance on important documents is more important than ever. That includes those seemingly routine year-end 1099 forms.

If You Wait, It Could Be Too Late
In an ideal world business owners would keep up with their 1099s all year long, as my colleague Jeanne Richards recently suggested they do. Haven’t given 1099-prep a thought yet? Don’t worry — it’s not too late. Now that it’s September, it’s the perfect time to check the status of your records and get them in shape before the end of the year.

Periodically evaluating your records keeps you up to date on which vendors or independent contractors (IC) are above the $600 threshold that requires a 1099. That’s a threshold that is easy to meet without realizing it. You might have given someone several small projects that were each well under $600, but together meet the threshold requirement. Or perhaps you forgot about an IC you used for a project early in the year — now is the time to make sure you have the records you need.

Like all good business owners, you started the year with a solid plan. But is your plan still as solid as you thought it was, or are there areas that could use shoring up? Here are some revisions to consider as the year winds down.

Look for Over- and Underperformers in Sales
This is the area that offers the greatest potential for improving your bottom line. It is also one of the easiest to analyze. Basically, all you have to do is review your year-to-date sales figures to see if you can root out both winners and losers — products or services that performed better than anticipated, as well as “dogs” that yielded disappointing results. (Here’s where budgeting, forecasting and ongoing analysis of your finances can be invaluable.)

With those figures in hand, it’s a simple matter of applying a little common sense. Increase your inventory and/or marketing efforts on whatever is performing well and sell off the underperforming products at a deep discount to generate cash. In the case of a costly or time-consuming service that isn’t generating a sufficient return, you can simply discontinue it — be careful to honor any commitments you have already entered into, of course.

Two years ago, I blogged about how outsourced bookkeeping services can help you keep your financial records up to date and enable you to avoid filing for an extension on your business tax returns. With the September drop-dead nearing once again (this year it's September 17 instead of September 15), it's a good time to revisit the topic.

Putting the Tension in Extension
The deadline extension exists to give businesses a break in the event of unforeseen circumstances. For example, if a natural disaster impacts the business or a personal health crisis affects a key employee just ahead of the March 15 deadline, it would be unreasonable for the IRS to fine the business for filing a late return. (To be clear, we're talking about small businesses that are structured as partnerships or S corporations. Note that the Final deadline for C Corporations and individuals (with extension) is October 15, 2018) An additional six months ought to be ample time to resolve any issues.

“As Told by Makers” is an event produced by Alice Chin of Your Other Half and the Supporting Strategies NYC team. The goal is to build a community of business people who want to support Makers as they develop their businesses. The event will be held on Wednesday, September 12th from 5:30 pm - 7 pm at WeWork on W 41st St. 

This is a structured Q&A event designed to give attendees the opportunity to listen, learn and ask questions. Each Maker is different and we want to give our guests and speakers the opportunity explore topics together.
 
What is a Maker?
For us, a Maker is someone who makes a tangible product that can be eaten, worn or held in your hand. We support this community of business people because they are making great things, improving our lives and creating local jobs.

Originally posted on the Bill.com blog.

You’d like to think your business is safe from fraud. But there are many, sneaky ways that those with ill intent — both inside and outside your organization — can take advantage of your company.

But, by noting the below risks, you can begin to plug any leaky opportunities for fraudulent activities.

Using paper checks
According to this survey of finance professionals, three out of four businesses were victims of check fraud and check forgery in 2016. Yes, you read that right. Seventy-five percent of businesses have been subjected to financial crimes.

The true culprit? Paper checks.

Those little pieces of paper give fraudsters everything they need to steal your money — account number, routing number, and even your bank and address. It’s like handing burglars the key to your house.

In 2009 Steven Conyers acquired a CMIT (Completely Managed Information Technology) Solutions franchise in Brooklyn, New York.

Demand for his franchise’s services, which range from IT troubleshooting to data security upgrades, grew steadily. So did the demands on Conyers’ time. Desktop-based bookkeeping, which lacked real-time functionality or integration with his project management platform, was a particular drain. Supporting Strategies found a solution.

More Time — and No More Fines
Although he had an outside accountant, Conyers still had to input much of the bookkeeping information himself. He often fell behind, which proved costly. "Like most franchises, we have to report on a monthly basis," Conyers says. "I was reporting late, and the fines were costing me money."

Originally posted on the Bill.com blog.

You love your B2B business — building it, adding new products and services, growing revenue.

And, most likely, winning new customers.

For most companies, the sales focus is on prospects. When new customers come on, they bring money, prestige, and great numbers to share on quarterly reports. But you still have to build trust, deliver as promised, and work to retain their business beyond the honeymoon stage.

Never forget that you already have a built-in source of contacts who trust your company and what it does: Your customers. And you shouldn’t overlook selling to them.

Studies show that it costs five times more to get new customers than keeping existing ones.

Another asserts that growing customer retention by 5% can lead to a 25% increase in revenue. Finally, this book discovered that the probability of selling to a new prospect is 5%-20%, while the chances of selling to an existing customer are closer to 60%-70%.

This is the final article in our three-part series on Client Delight. Click here to see the first article, "Why Client Delight Is Critical to Your Business." Click here to see the second article, "Measuring Client Delight: Are Your Clients Happy?"

Mastering the concept of Client Delight starts with seeing client/customer satisfaction as every employee's responsibility — and recruiting, training and treating your staff accordingly.

Since 2004, we at Supporting Strategies have built our business around a commitment to client service. Along the way, we've continually picked up best practices from experts in the field, our customers and our team members.

Here are eight points you should keep in mind with regard to Client Delight:

1. Client delight is a human resources issue. Keep it at the forefront of managing staff — from recruitment through evaluations, perks and promotions. Provide ongoing staff training around expectations, and include client satisfaction as a key measure of employee performance.

This is the second article in our three-part series on Client Delight. Click here to see the first article, "Why Client Delight Is Critical to Your Business."

Too often, we learn our clients are disappointed only after it's too late. After all, even the closest client relationships don't always offer up the information needed to measure client satisfaction.

The good news? Getting that information isn't as difficult as it may seem. While technology and social media have reduced business owners' control of the message, they've also provided new ways to assess Client Delight. The key is taking a multifaceted approach that includes a range of tools and strategies.

Surveys help you understand how you're measuring up in a client's eyes.

• Create quick surveys that take only two to five minutes to complete.
• Send exit surveys to clients when a project is coming to a close (e.g. if you're a landscaper wrapping up a one-time job with a client).
• Schedule bi-annual surveys for clients with whom you have an ongoing relationship.
• Always follow up on negative survey feedback as quickly as possible to salvage the relationship, if possible, or at least stem the tide of negative word-of-mouth.

This is the first article in our three-part series on Client Delight.

Client Delight is all about exceeding client/customer expectations and fostering long-term relationships. When done well, this strategy can boost referrals, increase revenue and set your business apart. HubSpot pushes the concept even further, making the case that client delight is about pleasing not just existing clients, but also potential ones, at every opportunity and brand interaction.

Focusing on Client Delight is much more than the marketing trend of the moment. In fact, mastering Client Delight might make the difference between seeing your business fade or flourish. We even have the data to prove it. Research shows:

• It's 50% easier to retain an existing client or customer than it is to attain a new one.
• It costs between five and 30 times more to attain a new client or customer than to retain one.

Those numbers make a compelling case that ignoring Client Delight can do significant damage to your company and its brand.

Starting a business is hard. Sustaining a business is even harder. And growing a business is hardest of all.

There are so many ways that even the best-conceived businesses can go astray once they open the doors. What seemed like a well-organized business plan in theory can wash away in a flood of day-to-day details. How can you avoid drowning?

It's Your Responsibility
When businesses fail, it's usually because key people lose sight of what's important. This insidious affliction starts when those at the top try to do too many things themselves.

Many small-business owners think they have no choice but to wear every hat. Those same owners also complain they have no time to devote to business development because the day-to-day stuff is all-consuming.

Guess what? If you find yourself in that situation, your problem isn't a lack of time — it's an inability to prioritize. Step back and be honest with yourself. Yes, you're busy, possibly to the point where you're approaching burnout. Feeling busy, however, doesn't mean you're being effective. Having a long to-do list might make you feel important, but many of the things on that list probably aren't the best things to be spending your time on.

Originally published on the Corporate Strategies & Solutions website.

I train and coach thousands of salespeople each year and have taken advantage of this incredible opportunity to collect important data that is significant in helping my audience understand the complex nature of the “sales beast.” I have learned volumes about the motivation, behavior, skills and beliefs that propel high performers to be the best and have concluded there are real hidden drivers that provide fuel for high-flying success.

Recently, I spent time identifying the critical attributes I believe drive sales success and their relationship with salespeople to impact their sales success. Initial interviews with my sales audience surfaced attributes like: persistence, personality, intuition and likeability as well as time management, however, when I dug deeper and even took a behavioral x-ray, I found a totally different set of characteristics. Many salespeople just don’t know what their success drivers are and never try to dig to determine them. They just blindly accept their success, whether limited or not, as a bi-product of their hard work.

Perhaps nothing hurts a small-business owner more than learning they've been defrauded by a trusted employee. Let's take a closer look at a recent case in which a bookkeeper embezzled $600,000 from a pair of Chicago restaurants and see what business owners can learn about safeguarding their finances.

Never Let One Person Handle the Bills
This is one of those lessons that seem obvious in hindsight. In the Chicago case, the bookkeeper was responsible both for cutting all checks to the restaurants' vendors, with no oversight, and for performing reconciliations. Over a six-year period, she wrote herself $604,113 worth of checks from the company account, then cut checks with the same numbers for the vendors. The restaurant owners didn't discover the scheme until a company accountant was setting up a new bookkeeping system and noticed the discrepancies.

The guilty party had been with the company for almost 20 years. But she found herself "in over her head" with credit card bills and other debts and yielded to temptation, according to the Chicago Sun Times. The paper also reported that "on her way out of the office, she offered some advice: 'Make sure the next bookkeeper you hire doesn't do the bank reconciliations as well,' the complaint states."

A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that has been hailed as a victory for tax collectors could also be a blow to small businesses. If you conduct online sales to out-of-state customers, you need to start paying close attention to laws regarding sales/use taxes (SUT) in every state where you do business.

Before the Wayfair decision, the same laws governing mail-order sales also applied to sales made through the internet. In other words, if you ran a business in California that made online sales to New York residents, you weren't obligated to collect New York sales tax because you didn't have a physical presence (or "nexus") in that state.

For a small-business owner, there's perhaps nothing worse than the shock of losing all the data on your computer. It happened to me years ago, even though I thought I had been following proper backup procedures.

If you've ever had a similar experience, you might have some healthy fears about relying on online systems, especially for your business. But having a better understanding of today's cloud technology — and its ability to keep your stored information safe — could put your mind at ease.

Not sure exactly what "the cloud" is? You're not alone. But chances are, you're already using it — e.g. if you use an online payroll services company.

In simple terms, using the cloud means your data is stored offsite, at a series of servers (and backup servers) in different locations. It's not stored on your laptop, phone or tablet (or on an expensive onsite server).

Bookkeeper Pleads Guilty to $1.5 Million Fraud Scheme

That headline represents a small-business owner's worst nightmare. The person you trusted to ensure your finances were handled properly and professionally instead exploited your trust for their own gain.

How can you be sure this will never happen to you?

Segregation of Duties Is Key
It's shocking how much damage an unscrupulous employee can do to a small business. In the case cited above, a bookkeeper at a Virginia construction company pleaded guilty to funneling $1.5 million into her own account over eight years.

The devastation can be psychological as well as financial. That's certainly the case when the guilty party is a trusted friend or even a family member.

From day one, you need to establish a system of internal controls that includes segregation of duties. It might feel awkward, particularly in a small family business. But delegating responsibility for, say, reviewing invoices to one person and paying invoices to another person is vital.

Supporting Strategies is proud to announce that our Northeast Florida office has been named a Top Accounting Firm in an annual ranking by the Jacksonville Business Journal. 

"We've been in business for three years, and this is the first year we've made the list," says Supporting Strategies | Northeast Florida Managing Director Pete Denholm. "I'm excited to be on the list with national firms and with regional firms that have been around for decades, and I look forward to continuing to grow and climbing up the list in the years ahead."

"This is a testimony both to the hard work that Pete and his team have put in, and to the basic soundness of our business model," says Supporting Strategies Founder and CEO Leslie Jorgensen. "It's gratifying when outside organizations recognize our franchisees' success."

California businesses might soon need to overhaul their staff compensation models, thanks to a ruling from the state's Supreme Court that sets a more rigid standard for determining "independent contractor" status.

As detailed here, the ruling puts the onus on employers to prove a worker's independent contractor status by satisfying all three components of a rigid new "ABC" test.

According to the court's decision, this test presumptively considers all workers to be employees, and permits workers to be classified as independent contractors only if the hiring business demonstrates that the worker in question:

1. is free from the control and direction of the hirer in connection with the performance of the work, both under the contract for the performance of such work and in fact;
2. performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity's business; and
3. is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as the work performed for the hiring entity.

The iconic portrait of a bookkeeper — hunkered down with an adding machine, an eyeshade and a stack of paper — is hopelessly outdated. Bookkeeping has gone digital. And the way paperwork is done has changed too, with most documents now stored online, in the cloud.

If you run a business that traditionally generates tons of paperwork that must be tracked, logged and stored in space-hogging filing cabinets, this is wonderful news.

Scrap That Paper
Have you made the transition to online banking with your personal finances? Well, just as you can now pay certain bills automatically, or transfer funds remotely without filling out deposit or withdrawal slips, you can simplify many of your business transactions. And you can eliminate a ton of paper in the process.

One of the hardest things about starting a business is, well, just getting started. Here's a checklist to help you organize and prioritize.

Research your market:
You've been working at a sideline — more of a hobby, really — for years. Now you're finally ready to quit your day job and pursue it as a full-time business. Before you take that plunge, here's what you need to explore:

• What is your target market?
• Is your target market large enough? Are enough people interested in paying for your product or service for you to make a viable living?
• Who is your competition? What can you do better than they do?

Write a business plan:
As this article suggests, your business plan doesn't have to be elaborate — nor will it ever truly be finished. Still, in order for you to get started, it should include the following:

Small-business owners often get themselves into trouble by taking on too many responsibilities. Bookkeeping is one area especially prone to DIY-itis. The consequences can range from burnout for the owner to stunted growth for the business. Learn from other entrepreneurs in these examples from some of our recent case studies.

Can You Scale for Success?
Some business owners with a knack for numbers find they can do their own books quite well during the launch phase, when the volume of work is low. But what can start out feeling like a cost savings can end up feeling like a quickening treadmill as business picks up.

It worked that way for Adam Merrill. In 2016 he launched a custom home building business in Florida. With a modest goal of five homes per year and what he called an "accounting mindset," he assumed he could do the books himself. But as his business boomed, Merrill quickly revised his projection to 12 homes a year. Before long he was devoting a full day each week to bookkeeping rather than focusing on the growth of his business.

Originally published on the Hackler Flynn & Associates website.

On April 30, 2018 the California Supreme Court issued an opinion that makes California one of the least hospitable jurisdictions in the nation for utilization of independent contractors. As a result, many companies that were in compliance with the labor laws in California related to independent contractors yesterday may be out of compliance today.

The ruling came in a case originally filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court by a worker named Charles Lee. Lee claimed that Dynamex Inc. improperly classified him as an independent contractor. The case drew attention from the media and legal minds alike because it involved the hot-button issue of independent contractor versus employee. The distinction is that an employee is subject to wage and hour laws and entitled to benefits such as workers’ compensation.

Originally posted on the Bill.com blog.

You’ve done it! You’ve successfully transformed your passion into a viable business. But before you deem yourself the “Ultimate SMB Rockstar” you need to face the cold, hard reality of business.

80% of new companies will fail in the first year.

Now, we don’t say this to scare you. In fact, we think you're awesome — we want your business to succeed! And the best way to do this is through your finances.

Sure, 80% of businesses may fail, but what are the key reasons why? According to this report:

• 29% of small businesses fail because they run out of cash.
• 82% fail because they experience cash flow problems.

Which is why we’ve compiled our top five ways to ensure your business's financial success.

Tip #1: Go digital.
Small businesses don’t run at a leisurely pace. And your payments shouldn’t either.

The days of printing and mailing communications, invoices, and payments have gone, and what’s replaced it is technology. The cloud can now easily handle tasks that were formerly bound to paper.

Congratulations to Cheri Giglia, Managing Director of Supporting Strategies | North Shore Long Island, who was an honoree at the Long Island Power Women in Business Awards & Networking Event on May 9.

The event recognized some of Long Island's most successful business, community, cultural, political, civic and religious female leaders. The evening included a business expo and trade show with networking, followed by a dinner and awards ceremony. Proceeds from a raffle benefitted rock CAN roll, a nonprofit hunger relief organization and think tank.

"It was a thrill to be part of this event and inspiring to share the spotlight with so many amazing women," Giglia says. "I'm very grateful for the award."

Prior to becoming a Supporting Strategies franchisee in 2015, Giglia held a series of financial executive positions in large corporations and technology startups. She has enjoyed applying her expertise at Supporting Strategies to serve growing businesses across the North Shore.

We join the Long Island community in recognizing Giglia's excellence and consider ourselves fortunate to have her as part of the Supporting Strategies family.

Since 1983, Chris Ledet has created affordable dream houses for clients in and around his hometown of Thibodaux, Louisiana.

His company, Chris Ledet Homes, later expanded to include Building Specialist Nancy Bernard and Chris' son, Paul, who is now the Owner and Project Manager. With this growth, and up to 12 building projects a year, old-school bookkeeping became a time-consuming challenge.

Spread Too Thin with Spreadsheets
As a Building Specialist, Bernard was responsible for meeting with clients to help them plan the details of their custom homes. But after bookkeeping was added to her list of duties, she found herself spending additional time creating spreadsheets to track expenses. This approach worked while the business was small. As the number of clients and spreadsheets grew, though, she was soon spending too much time in front of her computer and not enough time sitting with clients.

One of our favorite business payment solutions, Bill.com, recently asked me to share my top tips for better bookkeeping. I shared five quick tips that will help entrepreneurs start a business or take their business to the next level.

You launched a small business several years ago. Things are going well after a few early missteps. You have a vague notion that you'd like to sell the business at some point, but for now you're just enjoying the ride. Beyond including some boilerplate language in your business plan, you haven't even thought about an exit strategy, let alone put one in place.

That's a mistake.

Plan Your Plan
You can't sell a business overnight. SCORE, a resource partner of the U.S. Small Business Administration, estimates that it takes six months to two years to complete the process. And that's once you've decided to sell. Just getting to that point takes even longer. "Start planning two to five years in advance," SCORE advises, "and learn the due diligence process."

When he launched River City Title in 2016, President and CEO Eric Blocker knew he'd have to process reams of legal paperwork. That goes with being an escrow agent in a growing Florida real estate market. What he didn't anticipate was a separate stream of bookkeeping paperwork, which soon became a flood.

Spurred by positive reviews and referrals, River City Title grew rapidly in its first year. Blocker quickly expanded his staff from two to six, including an office manager who was responsible for bookkeeping. When Blocker saw that part of his company's financial records consisted of paper receipts taped into a binder, he realized he needed to adapt this system to an online world.

A meeting with Pete Denholm, Managing Director of Supporting Strategies | Northeast Florida, led to an efficient, cost-effective solution: outsourced bookkeeping services.

Did you take our tax-prep quiz last year? If so, you were probably a lot better prepared for tax time this year.

We've updated our test for 2018 — take it, and see how you do. The answers (and your grade) are at the end.

1. You made a $100,000 equipment purchase in October. What's the maximum amount of that cost you could deduct this year?

1. 0%
2. 50%
3. 100%
4. A $100,000 equipment purchase? I wish.

2. Now that you've filed your employment taxes for 2017, you can safely discard your records from:

1. 2016
2. 2015
3. 2014
4. 1973

When starting a small business, it's important to keep your business finances separate from your personal finances — particularly when it comes to expenses.

Tempting though it might be to use your personal credit card to buy a smartphone as you launch your business, that sets a dangerous precedent. If you don't treat your personal finances and your business finances separately, the law won't, either. This is known as "piercing the corporate veil." And it could mean, among other things, that you lose the liability protection that ought to come with incorporating.

Here are some tips on how to avoid that potentially disastrous scenario.

Don't Jump the Gun
Starting a small business can be stressful and time-consuming. It's easy to fall into "just-for-now" rationalizing. You'll purchase equipment and other startup essentials from your personal checking account. And then once you get up and running, you'll file all the proper paperwork to become a corporation and open a bank account dedicated to the business. No problem, right?

As part of my presentation on value stream analysis, I often ask business owners what their most difficult problems are. The answers are all over the place: inventory, communication, costs, cash flow, late fees, etc. But what most business owners identify as problems are actually just symptoms.

To determine the root cause of these issues, I conduct a value stream analysis.

A Five-Step Process to Solve Business Problems
I can't do a value stream analysis alone. Someone from the business needs to be a willing participant. And they have to be honest. Only then will they benefit from the full value of this five-step process:

1. Identify your company's value streams. (I define a value stream as any process that creates value within a company for either external or internal customers. There are multiple value streams in any organization.) Decide, as a group, which value stream to examine first. Choose one of the value streams that either needs the most attention or creates the most opportunity for increased value.

A year after launching John Merrill Homes, a custom builder in Jacksonville, Florida, Adam Merrill, had an enviable problem: His business was growing three times faster than anticipated. Realizing it would be nearly impossible to keep up with this growth using DIY bookkeeping, Merrill turned to an outsourced solution with Supporting Strategies.

A Built-in Challenge
Building custom homes is a business that's especially susceptible to bookkeeping challenges. "It's heavy on payables," Merrill says. "There's a lot of check processing. We take in five to seven checks per job, but we write about 500 per job."

In addition, building homes is a long-term process. It often takes a year for John Merrill Homes to see income from a project. That could easily lead to cash-flow problems, particularly at a rapidly growing startup. "I knew the bookkeeping could get overwhelming," Merrill says. "So outsourcing made a lot of sense." He reached out to Supporting Strategies | Northeast Florida for help.

The new-for-2018 tax bill, a.k.a. the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), will have a wide-ranging impact on businesses of every size. And while it's too soon to fully process all the implications of such a massive piece of legislation, we can certainly take a high-level look at some of the changes.

Focusing primarily on small businesses, we've broken the changes down into government "giveaways" and "takeaways."

Giveaways

• 100% depreciation: A big potential giveaway for small businesses involves depreciation. Businesses can now claim a 100% deduction for any equipment, new or used, placed in service not just in 2018, but retroactive to Sept. 27, 2017. This will provide a major benefit to businesses that are equipment-intensive, such as construction. For retail and service businesses that might need to replace only a couple of computers over the course of a normal year, the benefit will be far less significant. (The 100% depreciation will begin to phase down in 2023.)

Two years ago, I compared the annual "March Madness®" of the NCAA Division I college basketball tournament to the madness that surrounds the March 15 deadline for corporate tax filing. With basketball's March Madness upon us once more, it's a good time to revisit (and revise) those guidelines.

Buzzer-Beater
A game-saving shot at the final buzzer is the most exciting moment in basketball. But if you own a small business, being behind late in the game by not having complete, accurate records to present to a tax preparer isn't exciting; it's just stressful. This is especially true if your last-second attempt at a buzzer-beater is off target. Spare yourself (and your tax preparer) this anxiety by maintaining good financial records all year long. An outsourced bookkeeping services provider can help on this count.

Individuals and tax preparers need to be aware of a significant impact on charitable giving that likely will result from a provision in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA).

While the consequences of the law, passed in December 2017, might be unintended, they are no less real for taxpayers — especially for charities. Vikki Sprull, President and CEO of the philanthropic network Council on Foundations, projects the new law "will result in a decrease of $16–$24 billion in charitable giving every year."

Subtraction by Addition
The bad news for charities came about as a result of what was supposed to have been good news for taxpayers. Under TCJA, the standard deduction doubles to $12,000 for individuals and $24,000 for married couples.

For lawyers managing a small or independent practice, maintaining client trust accounts (CTAs) can present serious challenges.

Attorneys establishing a practice must set up a CTA or accounts designated specifically for funds that a client or third party pays against future services, such as advances on fees, costs, legal settlement amounts or escrowed amounts (e.g. for business or real estate transactions). Such accounts must be kept separate from personal or business bank accounts.

Rules governing the above accounts vary by state, but one thing is true across the board: The rules are complex, and violations can result in significant consequences — even disbarment.

In our work with growing law practices, we've identified several guidelines that are key to managing CTAs:

Experience had taught Florida entrepreneur Jeff Davis that tackling too many responsibilities could lead to burnout. When he launched an executive networking startup in 2013, he identified one of his weak spots, bookkeeping, as a prime area for outsourcing.

Helping Others by Helping Himself
Having previously built and sold a successful business, Davis knew how valuable it is to be able to meet regularly with other entrepreneurs. That inspired his next business: Plan the Attack/12 Mavens. The idea was to sell memberships to a think tank in which Jacksonville-area business leaders would gather periodically at high-end locations to exchange ideas and map strategies.

At small- and medium-sized businesses, business owners have many roles. One role is business manager. As business manager, many approach bookkeeping with dread, particularly during tax season. They want to get the process over with as quickly as possible so they can get back to the important business of managing the company.

What many managers fail to realize is that a trained bookkeeping professional can provide information that is not only vital to satisfying the company's tax obligations, but also to managing the company more effectively. The key is to know what to look for.

Getting Ahead of the Game
Imagine coaching a basketball team without ever looking at the scoreboard. You'd have a hard time knowing whether you were winning or losing, let alone what steps you could take to make the team better. That's essentially what you're doing when you try to manage a business with no understanding of basic bookkeeping principles. You might think your team is playing well, only to learn after the final buzzer that you lost by 20 points.

Once you see bookkeeping for what it is — a way to analyze vital data to make informed decisions — you can become a much more effective manager.

The cost of goods sold (COGS) is a key component of many small businesses. To determine the profit you make by selling something, you must know how much you spent on the raw materials to create it.

Miscalculating COGS can cause you to pay higher taxes than necessary. It can also give you an inaccurate picture of your company's financial health and lead you to make poor decisions when making strategic plans for your company.

COGS vs. CODB
The level of complexity of COGS, and the method used to calculate it, vary greatly from one business to another. But in general, to determine COGS for a given year, you start with the total value of the inventory at the beginning of the year, add the total of all materials and labor used to create additional inventory during the year and subtract the year-end inventory (inventory remaining after sales, in other words).

With Special Thanks to Jay Bloom

Small Business Administration (SBA) loans have steadily increased in recent years, and it's easy to understand why. With funding available from as little as $500 to as much as $5.5 million, an SBA loan can be just what you need to launch a startup or take a growing business to the next level.

Could you get an SBA loan? Do you even need one? To find out, consult a bookkeeper.

Time for a Credit Check
The SBA doesn't make loans — it merely guarantees them (up to 85%). That gives the lender more flexibility with its credit requirements, which makes SBA-backed loans ideal for early-stage companies that don't have sufficient collateral or profitability track record for a traditional bank loan. 

The key to an effective business services relationship is for each side to make a good-faith effort to understand the other's goals, priorities and methods. Here are three simple ways to meet that objective.

1. Manage Expectations
For service providers: Be very clear about your available scope of services, working hours, turnaround times and pricing. While there are some areas where they can be more flexible and adapt to a client’s specific needs, sophisticated service providers should primarily stick with a set of core processes, systems and protocols that they work best with for optimum efficiency and results.

Focus on what you can do exceptionally well and be transparent about what you can't. Put yourself in your client's shoes and understand the intended value of your relationship from their perspective. Also, take time to clearly communicate what you expect of your clients to enable a productive, collaborative relationship.

Note: This blog first appeared in the Arlington Chamber of Commerce Blog.

In managing your small business, you're always looking for ways to boost efficiency, reduce costs, increase profitability and improve performance. The right software solutions can allow you to do all of that and more.

At Supporting Strategies, we often steer clients toward software and other technology solutions that help them run their business better. Here are eight examples. 

1) QuickBooks Online
Remember the huge improvement you gained in efficiency by switching from paper-based bookkeeping to QuickBooks for your desktop? (And if you're still using paper-based bookkeeping, we really need to talk.) Well, as Georgean Schmidt, Managing Director of Supporting Strategies | Central Ohio, noted in a recent blog, the upgrade from the desktop version of QuickBooks to QuickBooks Online (QBO) can be just as dramatic.

If you need funding to take your business to the next level, it's vital that you button up your financials at this level first. Make sure your records are organized and complete to help the process proceed smoothly.

Here are some of the common issues that can jeopardize a funding round.

• Misstated revenues: Deliberately misstating revenues — such as recording sales before you've received payment — constitutes fraud. And even if you misstate revenues through ignorance rather than by design, prospective investors will take an exceedingly dim view of it.
  
  
• Misclassified expenses:
  If you run a business, you might be tempted to use the company's credit card or checking account to purchase a personal item, with the idea that you'll reimburse the company later. But if even one of those expenses ends up being charged to the company, that undermines the integrity of your entire financial history.

Staring down tax-related deadlines can be the stuff of nightmares if you haven't prepared in advance. Taking a few simple steps sooner rather than later will make life a little easier for your small business this coming tax season.

Here are our essential time-saving tax preparation tips to close out 2017:

1. Clean up your vendor records. Confirm that you have W-9 forms on file for all vendors. Plus, merge duplicate vendors and deem as "inactive" any vendors that have gone unused for two years.
   
   
2. Collect W-9s. Each time you take on a new vendor, be sure to collect a W-9 form to determine eligibility for 1099 status. In fact, make submission of a W-9 a requirement before issuing the first check — you'll find vendors will comply faster. When requesting W-9s manually, don't use email (which is notoriously non-secure). Rather, use a tool like Track1099, which allows you to request, obtain and store W-9s securely.

Yes, a competent and reliable bookkeeping team is important at tax time. But that can be just as important at year's end, if not more so. Having clean, audit-ready books will not only help you at tax time, but can also help you prepare accurate budgets as you a build a business blueprint for the coming year.

Garbage in, Garbage Out
That saying is as true of bookkeeping as it is of computer programming. If you've neglected to keep organized, accurate financial records throughout the year, there's only so much your accountant can do for you. Lost a stack of receipts? Forgot to record your mileage last March? Inaccurately logged a sales transaction last summer? You might be out of luck. And even if you're able to enlist a CPA to straighten it all out, it's not a good use of their time or your money.

That's why if you don't have the in-house talent, it's critical to use an outsourced bookkeeping services provider all year long. By establishing thorough, transparent procedures and employing shareable online tools, your bookkeeper will keep an eye on the critical details that business owners often overlook.

If you are starting a law firm, or have an established firm and are looking to expand, you might find invaluable support where you'd least expect it.

Outsourced bookkeeping services.

A Scalable Solution
One of the great challenges for any new law firm is deciding how much to budget for full-time staff. Given the importance of thorough, accurate trust account management, there might be a temptation to bring on a full-time bookkeeper from day one. But if your billable hours are lean early on, you could find yourself with a budget shortfall.

On the other hand, if you try doing the books yourself, or if you delegate the job to a paralegal or office manager, you run the risk of making a crucial mistake with billing or trust accounts.

Note: This blog first appeared in AccountingWEB.

A lot of people assume April is the most stressful time to be an accountant. But if you specialize in accounting for small- to medium-sized businesses, January can be just as bad.

Come January, your clients have barely closed their books for the year, and they have to scramble to distribute their 1099 forms by the end-of-month deadline. And if your clients are scrambling, that means you're scrambling.

Here's a trio of tips to help you protect your sanity when filing that flurry of 1099s.

1. Get Clients to Focus on 1099s All Year Long
The 1099 season was bad enough when clients had a cushion between the filing deadline for distributing 1099s to vendors and the filing deadline for the IRS. Starting in 2016, though, employers had to submit 1099s for "non-employee compensation" (a.k.a. "box 7") not only to their independent contractors but also to the IRS by the same deadline, January 31. That's eliminated any margin for error.

As we inch closer to the end of another year, now is a great time to think about how you’re running your business. Have you been putting things off because you don’t enjoy doing them or you think, “I’ve got plenty of time to get that done”?

In general, people tend to procrastinate about tasks they don’t enjoy performing. Unfortunately, for most business owners, one of the tasks that frequently tops that list is bookkeeping. Without good, up-to-date books and accounting procedures in place, any plans you make for the future will not be accurate.

It’s not too late—now is a great time to reflect, catch up, and plan.

At Supporting Strategies, we're always on the lookout for industry-specific software integrations that can improve bookkeeping efficiency. Clio, which is designed for the legal profession, is a great example.

A New State of the Art
If your law firm isn't already using the cloud, you need to make the switch now — particularly if you have a startup or a small independent outfit. My colleague Pete Denholm already made a case for the cloud, with an airtight argument that would make any lawyer proud. So rather than relitigate that topic, I'm going to focus solely on the advantages of Clio.

Why Clio? "If you are shopping for law practice management software for your firm," lawyerist.com noted in a five-star review, "Clio should be on your short list of options to test."

Investment banker Mark Quigley founded Deziner Software in 2014 to help entrepreneurs land investors. He quickly realized that building his own successful business meant optimizing the use of his time, with the help of reliable partnerships. Enter Supporting Strategies.

Filling the Missing Link
Quigley is exceptionally talented at identifying the missing link in a startup's success story — and filling it. In 2014 he launched Deziner Software to help entrepreneurs create custom business plans and tailor proposals for potential investors.

As he built his business, Quigley grew active in networking circles, where he connected with members of the Supporting Strategies | Chicago Far West Suburbs leadership team. He took particular note of the Supporting Strategies outsourced bookkeeping model, knowing he'd soon be ready to reap the benefits of their services.

If you're wondering whether your business needs a bookkeeping service, it probably does. If you're wondering whether it needs a chief financial officer (CFO), that answer is a little more complicated.

Even the smallest of small businesses needs professional bookkeeping. There are simply too many ways you can get yourself in trouble, either with cash flow or with the IRS, if you don't follow the proper protocols. And while you can certainly learn to do it yourself, chances are you'll be too busy with other aspects of running the business to risk spreading yourself too thin and perhaps making a critical error.

What Is a CFO?
The first thing you need to know about CFOs is what their job is. Unlike a bookkeeper, a CFO generally doesn't get involved with day-to-day record keeping. It is the CFO's job, however, to ensure the company's financial records are complete and accurate. These numbers are the foundation of your company's future. They must be solid.

At Supporting Strategies, we're committed to staying on the front lines in the fight against hackers. We encourage small businesses to do likewise, and there's no shortage of advice available on the web when it comes to installing the latest antivirus software.

But it's a mistake to assume that simply installing antivirus software ensures your small business' information security system is impregnable. No software can safeguard against the greatest threat: human error. You and your employees must remain ever vigilant. Here are six tips to help.

1. Be Sure Every Computer Is Secured
This applies on two levels. First, all computers — desktops, laptops, tablets — must be physically secure with a lock or some other device. On that note, employees should never leave a laptop or tablet unattended in a car, hotel room, airport lounge or anywhere else, no matter for how short a time period.

Manufacturing is a complicated business. The actual manufacturing is often the simplest part. It's all the other steps that make it so challenging.

For example, you have to locate a supply of raw materials at a reasonable price. In addition, you have to plan your inventory so you avoid a costly overstock that will leave you strapped for cash, but also keep up with demand so you don't lose prospective sales. Add inventory storage and shipping, along with all the bookkeeping requirements that are part of any business, and — well, again, it's complicated.

Software Solutions
At Supporting Strategies, we noted in an earlier post that QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise Advanced Inventory is an ideal solution for a small manufacturing enterprise (SME) whose greatest challenge is integrating inventory tracking with bookkeeping.

In 2016, Autex Acoustics, a New Zealand-based company that uses sophisticated fiber technology to manufacture ceiling tiles, panels and flooring, decided to open a U.S. sales subsidiary. They needed help navigating complex regulatory filings and tax codes. Supporting Strategies provided that — and more.

Flattening the Learning Curve
The United States was the key market in Autex Acoustics' planned international expansion. But the company feared their lack of familiarity with U.S. regulations could disrupt that effort. "The U.S. is so different from our other markets, and we really had a steep learning curve," says Phil Goodin, Autex Acoustics' General Manager in North America.

Supporting Strategies stepped in to help. "We've had to lean heavily on Supporting Strategies to make sure the taxes and filings were set up," Goodin says. "They've also helped us navigate all the different rules state by state." In addition, Supporting Strategies helped Autex Acoustics clear various logistical hurdles, such as setting up merchant card-processing services so the company could accept credit card sales in the United States.

Supporting Strategies has addressed the importance of disaster readiness for small businesses in recent posts by Pete Denholm, Managing Director of Supporting Strategies | Northeast Florida and Andy Hale, Managing Director of Supporting Strategies | Austin and Dallas. But it's important for business owners to understand that it doesn't necessarily take a widespread natural disaster to shut a company down.

Unfortunately, even a small, localized event can have disastrous consequences. In fact, small disasters can be even more devastating because, unlike major hurricanes, they often happen without warning.

Multiple sales platforms and fulfillment centers enable ecommerce companies to accumulate revenue through a variety of channels. But the hodgepodge of reporting timeframes, formats and protocols can create a nightmare for any company committed to following GAAP-compliant revenue recognition and inventory reconciliation processes.

Recently, Supporting Strategies | Los Angeles partnered with a client that purchases large quantities of inventory at a time. The company then sells the products through various channels and collects upfront payments from many customers before shipping fulfillment. (This business model requires that we record the company's revenue and expenses on an accrual basis rather than a simple cash basis.)

Boston-area CPA firm Moody, Famiglietti & Andronico (MFA) found a bookkeeping resource they can trust in Supporting Strategies.

The Need for Consistent Bookkeeping
Moody, Famiglietti & Andronico (MFA), like many CPA firms, relies on clean, consistent, audit-ready financials from their clients. Working with books that are missing information can cause delays, unexpected work, and additional cost. One way to ensure consistency is to provide bookkeeping services directly to your clients. However, this may not make business sense for many CPA firms.

Referring your clients to a bookkeeping services provider is a great solution—if it’s a company you can trust.

To maintain good financial health, nonprofit organizations should adopt the same bookkeeping best practices as for-profit organizations.

Here are some simple bookkeeping tips to help keep your nonprofit on the plus side of the ledger.

Get with the (Software) Program
There's no shortage of bookkeeping software you can use at your nonprofit. However, you should also consider applications that will integrate with your accounting software to drive operational efficiencies through workflow automation. If you haven't already graduated from using basic accounting software, now is the time to do so.

A law firm set up their bookkeeping processes right by hiring professional bookkeeping resources. However, they found that bookkeeping services are not all the same — and they needed to rethink their approach to find a successful solution.

Losing Billable Time
Founded outside Boston in 2002, Company Counsel is a boutique law firm that provides virtual general counsel services to emerging companies, venture funds and angel investor groups.

As their business grew, Company Counsel tried the

 same outsourced approach with their bookkeeping and operational support, working with individual bookkeepers and then a small bookkeeping company. However, the firm's partners were soon spending too much time handling operational matters and answering questions from the bookkeepers — time that could be better spent on client work.

If your company was formed through the Small Business Administration's 8(a) Business Development Program, you're in excellent position to secure government contracts — just like major defense contractors.

That's the good news. The bad news? You'll be required to meet Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) requirements — just like major defense contractors.

Get Your Foot in the Door (Without Getting It Slammed)
When people think of defense contractors, they tend to think of companies like Lockheed Martin, the international corporation whose core business is supplying sophisticated technology systems to the U.S. government. It's no surprise that Lockheed Martin has to contend with massive amounts of red tape. (The company is subject to 70 different DCAA audits.) But with an estimated 97,000 employees, Lockheed Martin is also large enough to maintain a dedicated staff to focus strictly on compliance issues.

Hosted by Supporting Strategies, the Business Fundamentals Bootcamp is designed for the CEOs and CXOs of early- and growth-stage companies. The events include speakers and panelists who lend their expertise on tactical issues and opportunities for growing businesses focused on topics in marketing, finance, law and human resources. View the full schedule online and register to join us at one of these events.

If your business isn't already conducting transactions in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency, it probably will be eventually. Here's what you need to know.

The biggest differences between cryptocurrency and conventional currency are that cryptocurrency isn't issued by a specific government, and there are no banks serving as middlemen when cryptocurrency "tokens" are traded from one party to another.

In the traditional banking system:

• First, a government's central bank issues money in the form of their national currency.
• Then people invest in that government's currency by trading it for other foreign currencies or by accepting it as a form of payment for goods and services.
• When one party wants to pay money to another party using a check, a credit card, automated clearing house (ACH) or wire transfer, the payer's bank records the transaction in its own ledger, and the recipient's bank records the same transaction in its own separate ledger.
• Each day, all the banks around the world spend a substantial amount of time and resources comparing their respective ledgers with each other to agree on how much money each bank has to transfer between the other banks to settle their customers' trade debts.

To keep pace with its robust growth, Solarus Technologies needed an upgrade from its legacy desktop bookkeeping technology.

The challenge for the IT support provider was to integrate an online interface between ConnectWise, the industry-standard software among IT service professionals, and QuickBooks Online, the leading software provider for in-the-cloud accounting.

Solarus Cofounder and President Matthew Nikravesh turned to Supporting Strategies for a solution. After reaching out through its extensive in-house email support network, Supporting Strategies | North Shore Long Island recommended Wise-Sync, an app created for the specific integration challenge at hand. That enabled the development of a customized platform tailored to Solarus' growing needs.

"With us, it's all about gaining efficiencies through technology," Nikravesh says. "That's exactly what Supporting Strategies helps us do."

In April, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced the approval of a 2018 budget that included straightforward tax cuts for the middle class along with more complex fiscal measures. Let's unpack how those changes affect accounting professionals and tax preparers.

Sweeping Personal Income Tax Cuts
The tax cuts, also called the Middle Class Recovery Act, will eventually benefit 6 million New Yorkers. The cuts apply to two income brackets: those making between $40,000 and $150,000 a year and those making between $150,000 and $300,000 a year.

The lower bracket will see a reduction of 0.12% a year, reducing the rate from 6.45% to 5.5% by 2025. Those in the higher bracket will be see a reduction of 0.08% over the same time period, decreasing their rate from 6.65% to 6%.

With two major storms, Harvey and Irma, already having made landfall in the United States this hurricane season, it's a good time for small businesses to put emergency financial preparedness top-of-mind. After all, research has shown that 90% of businesses fail within a year of being taken offline by a natural disaster if they're unable to reopen within just five days.

Having spent 10 years building and implementing disaster recovery plans for several Fortune 100 companies with headquarters in Texas and offices/distribution centers throughout North America, I've seen how basic preparation can save lives, save business assets and speed up the recovery effort.  In a previous blog post, my colleague Pete Denholm, who is based in Florida, outlined the basics of a business continuity plan, such as storing financial records in the cloud.

Not all events that raise funds are fundraisers. If you operate a nonprofit, it's critical that you know the difference. Because holding an event that isn't properly identified and recorded appropriately in the general ledger could cause problems for you down the road.

Here are a few things you need to know.

Is the Event Tax-Deductible?
Nonprofits have lots of ways to raise money. Awards banquets, raffles, "fun runs" — there's no shortage of creative ideas.

Whether you call an event a "fundraiser" matters less than whether any of the amount guests pay to attend is tax-deductible. Organizations should always publish a full disclosure (on invitations, electronic media, etc.) of all information related to tax-deductibility. This is usually done through fine print with wording such as this: "Amounts over $xx are tax-deductible to the extent provided by law. (Organization name) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, federal tax ID number xx-xxxxxxx."

Since becoming Managing Director of Supporting Strategies | Hartford in May 2016, Tanya Maher has helped the company establish a positive presence in Central Connecticut. Recently, she was featured as a West Hartford Chamber of Commerce (CoC) Spotlight on Success recipient and was interviewed by the Innovation Hartford website.

The Value of Networking
"I was really inspired to see this large group of people who were dedicated to building their businesses," Tanya says in the Spotlight on Success video, explaining the value of joining the West Hartford CoC. It's a prime example of how Supporting Strategies franchisees can quickly establish themselves by networking with other small-business owners.

"We really do view ourselves as their partner," she adds, emphasizing the collaborative nature of the relationship between Supporting Strategies and its clients.

In 2016 EV Connect reached a critical point in its development. The California company, which provides a cloud-based platform for electric vehicle charging stations, had evolved from a startup to a mature company with millions of dollars' worth of contracts.

Bootstrap bookkeeping was no longer enough. The company needed more robust support, from establishing efficient, scalable accounting processes and improved financial reporting to cash flow management and strategic financial planning. Essentially, the company needed a bookkeeper, a controller, and a CFO, but it couldn't afford three full-time staff members for each of these roles.

The solution? Establish outsourced support for financial leadership, streamlined bookkeeping services, and small business operations.

Just as life insurance can protect a family from financial distress if the head of a household dies unexpectedly, key-person insurance can help a small business survive the untimely death of its owner or a crucial employee.

In fact, key-person insurance is life insurance. The only difference is that instead of providing benefits to the deceased's family, the policy provides money to the deceased's place of business. What the business does with those death benefits depends on the circumstances.

Can Your Business Live Without You?
If you work strictly for yourself, the question of key-person insurance is moot. When you die, so does your business. (You should have a conventional life insurance policy to protect your family, however.) But if you have one or more employees, you ought to consider how your sudden death would impact them.

I’ve run in to a few business owners who are foggy about the different finance professionals who help businesses make money and grow. It’s not that surprising; unless you’ve owned a business or worked in accounting or business finance, why would you know about their roles?

However, these professionals are critical to the success of your business, so let’s take a look at each.

What Does a Bookkeeper Do?
Bookkeepers are business historians; they track what has already happened. They look at all the transactions that have occurred within a defined period and organize them. This activity provides the data needed to create basic accounting reports (e.g. income statements, balance sheets, cash flow statements).

Westwind Recovery Residences needed help with bookkeeping, financial reporting, cash management, and also with customer relationship management (CRM).

The organization never expected to find a single solution for all of this…until they met the Supporting Strategies team.

Growing Pains
Westwind is part of a group that operates 16 sober living homes in the Los Angeles area. Soon after its founding in 2014, the company started experiencing rapid growth. While that was a welcome development, it also stressed the company's finances. "It became clear that we could no longer run the business based on how much cash we had on hand," said Westwind Co-Owner and Intake Coordinator Justin Wells.

At every growth stage, companies tend to accentuate the positive and project the best possible outcome for investors. But as any good business attorney knows, most investors also want to minimize risk by eliminating as many unknowns as possible. The best way to do that is by preparing solid financial records.

Here's a look at what should be a company's top financial priorities at each stage.

Planning a Successful Launch
Even small businesses need to raise funds to get off the ground. Determining how much money you need to get started — and who might be willing to provide it — is one of the most daunting aspects of starting a business. It's important that you secure enough financing not only to open the doors but also to sustain you through the startup phase.

At Supporting Strategies, we take great care to protect ourselves and our clients from online hackers. We're committed to training our staff in the latest security protocols and online practices.

Along those lines, we often issue staff bulletins warning of new threats from hackers. For the benefit of readers of this blog, we've decided to publicly share information from one of these recent bulletins. Please read on to learn about a dangerous new online hazard.

Beware of PRMitM
We all have online accounts that require personal information for password-recovery purposes, such as "mother's maiden name." Hackers have devised a way to steal that information to hijack your account. It's called PRMitM, for "Password Reset Man-in-the-Middle."

Meals on Wheels West (MOWW), a nonprofit based in Santa Monica, California, was looking for something more than data entry from its bookkeeping services provider. As a nonprofit, it needed someone who understood the nuances of bookkeeping for nonprofits, could implement systems to streamline the audit process, and prepare detailed financial information for their Board of directors.

MOWW delivers more than 80,000 healthy meals and services per year to the coastal communities near Los Angeles. Supporting Strategies | Los Angeles assigned their Nonprofit Practice Leader, with 30 years of nonprofit expertise, to evaluate MOWW’s needs.

Note: This blog first appeared in the Arlington Chamber of Commerce Blog.

When you're overwhelmed with all the details of launching a startup, it's easy to convince yourself that you can figure out the bookkeeping later. But "later" might be too late to save your business.

Before you launch, it's important to determine how you'll track your company's financial health on a monthly basis. Regular reports can not only alert you to potential financial problems, but also help you chart the most direct course to growth and profitability.

Large law firms have long had advantages over new or small law firms — an established name, existing clients, support staff and resources. But newer technology has helped level the playing field for small law firms when it comes to system infrastructure and management.

Small startups are often in a better position to take advantage of cloud-based case-management and accounting software. Harness the power of the cloud, and your firm can move with speed and efficiency well beyond your numbers.

A Case Management System Case Study
Let's say your firm lands a new client that posts an initial $10,000 deposit to handle their case. That money immediately is recorded in the trust account on your case-management system. From that point on, every increment of time, whether it's 15 hours or 15 minutes, gets logged into the case-management system for that particular case. The time of anyone at your firm who is working on the case is recorded at the appropriate billable rate. You can also invoice your clients directly out of that system while accounting for all relevant expenses.

The bootstrapped solopreneurs of New York City impress me. You can balance sales, marketing, operations and administration: you're all warriors and you have my respect. As your clients multiply there comes a time when you need to let go of some of your responsibilities. Giving up control can be scary, we get it, but so is burnout. Let's look at a common scenario.

Weekend Bookkeeping
Here is a story we often hear from solopreneurs: you just finished a super productive week. Suddenly it's Sunday and you must choose between spending time with your friends or family, doing client work or catching up on administrative tasks.

The solution? Outsource the tasks that someone else can do better, and focus on building your business and fitting in relaxation time with friends and family.

Nonprofits pose a special challenge to providers of bookkeeping services. The financials are complex and multilayered — and they must be presented to a board of directors that often lacks financial expertise and experiences frequent turnover.

Because maintaining a variety of funding streams (public, private, grants, events, etc.) is vital to a nonprofit's survival, the ability to make clear, easy-to-follow presentations is critical.

Strike the Right Tone
A good nonprofit financial presentation is a tightrope act. You have to balance a high-level overview with enough specifics at the individual program level for the board to carry out its fiduciary responsibility and achieve the organization's mission.

Growing a business involves many tasks that aren't directly related to the core product or service that you're selling. From bookkeeping and operations management to raising capital and sales and marketing, small business owners wear many hats! As Director of Strategic Accounts for Supporting Strategies | Los Angeles, I've heard from a number of emerging business owners that one of their biggest challenges is networking.

Networking is a great way to build your business, whether you're looking to raise money, recruit talent, find new customers or establish strategic partnerships. And just like business owners can learn how to read a profit and loss statement, they can also learn how to make the most of a networking event.

Keep Up to Date on Your IRS Forms
Many small businesses rely on a network of "service providers" — e.g. accountants, electricians, contract laborers — in addition to full-time employees. If you pay an unincorporated service provider more than $600 during the year, you must provide them with a 1099 form at the end of the year. It is good practice to have all new service providers fill out a W-9 form before paying their first bill. Take the time now to make sure you have a W-9 form for each service provider. If the service provider is a corporation, then there's no need to send a 1099, with one exception: All attorneys (paid more than $600) need a 1099 whether they're incorporated or not.

It's the paradox of the small-business owner: You have a passion that inspires you to go into business for yourself. But before you know it, the myriad demands of actually running the business can take center stage.

That's the situation Dr. Tresha Grissom faced at Lewisburg Animal Hospital, a veterinary practice south of Nashville, Tennessee. Dr. Grissom had purchased the former Lewisburg Animal Clinic in 2009 and refashioned it into a companion-animal practice. Her slogan reflects her appreciation of the special bond between people and their pets: "Your other 'family' doctor."

CEOs and CXOs of growing businesses from coast to coast attended our Business Fundamentals Bootcamp Series this spring.

Participants enjoyed panels and breakout sessions on a wide range of topics: Finance and Administration, Strategy and Marketing, Legal and Risk Management, and Management and HR, all of which featured dynamic, insightful, inspiring speakers. In between sessions and over coffee, lunch and even cocktails, participants continued the conversations while expanding their networks and learning new skills.

There’s a poisonous idea that revenue is the most critical goal in business. I disagree — revenue is a critical goal in the very early days of a new business but revenue cannot become profit unless you become efficient. When growing a small business, efficiency is the difference between success and failure.

In creative firms where the work is on a project-to-project basis, seeing where you can become efficient is a unique challenge. Each project is a little bit different — it’s not like you’re churning out the same widget over and over. You need to take a different approach.

Before you can answer the question posed above, you need to understand the difference between the two types of accounting.

Essentially, cash accounting is just what it sounds like — a pay-as-you-go approach that documents your payables and receivables in real time, more or less. With accrual accounting, there's a lag between the time you receive your "accounts payable" goods or services and the time you actually pay for them; the same is true on the "accounts receivable" side of the ledger.

As long as it all comes out in the wash, does it matter which one you use? The answer often comes down to timing — and to IRS regulations.

Opt for Cash Accounting
Let's say you have a modest nail salon and follow the standard calendar tax year (Jan. 1 – Dec. 31) for your financial reporting. Most of your work consists of manicures or pedicures that cost relatively little, and your customers pay in full each time. You reorder supplies and replace equipment on a regular basis.

Are you a creative professional working in a small, project-based environment? If so, we're holding a free lunch-and-learn event just for you.

The event will take place from noon to 1 p.m. on Tuesday, May 30, 2017, at the WeWork Penn Station at 315 West 36th St. in Manhattan, Room 9A. Spend an hour with Supporting Strategies and learn concrete skills for building project budgets, communicating business goals and getting the most out of your team.

I'll lead the conversation along with Michael Mellen, an in-demand speaker, trainer and consultant who can pack a lifetime's worth of lessons into 60 minutes. He'll arm you with the skills you need to make your projects and people shine.

You've built up considerable experience working for a large law firm. Now you're ready to fulfill your lifetime ambition by starting your own practice. While you relish the freedom, you also understand you can no longer rely on a large support staff to manage the day-to-day responsibilities of running the business.

The U.S. economy is the largest in the world by a wide margin. In fact, it's roughly equal to the next three largest economies combined. So it's easy to see why so many foreign companies want to do business stateside.

Naperville Community Television interviews Supporting Strategies | Chicago Far West Suburbs Managing Director Dawn Hershik. Hershik discusses Supporting Strategies’ bookkeeping services and operational support services for small- to mid-size businesses. She shares information about Supporting Strategies’ “team of two” approach, its scalable model, and its use of the latest technology to increase efficiency for clients.

E-commerce has eliminated barriers and connected consumers and companies worldwide. But as traditional boundaries between towns, states and countries have disappeared — and as e-businesses have created new revenue models that involve service-by-subscription — new challenges have arisen for accountants and bookkeepers.

Building an effective human resources department from scratch can be an intimidating prospect. But with that challenge comes opportunity. By following a thoughtful, informed process, you can position your business for success with a department that helps attract and retain top talent.

Over the years, I've advised many small businesses on the steps to take before even posting that first job description. Here are a few to keep in mind:

Draft an employee handbook.
Unless you're a company of one, your business needs to lay out company policies in clear terms. Employee handbooks are in everyone's best interest. In drafting one, be sure to tap legal expertise to cover everything from disciplinary procedures to safety plans.

If you're an entrepreneur planning to sell a new product or do business in a new area, there's a lot to take into consideration. Before rushing ahead, make sure you understand all the tax requirements in front of you.

Supporting Strategies | Midtown Manhattan is hosting More Profit per Project, a lunch-and-learn event for creative firms that want to increase their bottom-line profit.

You vowed to get your tax information to your CPA on time this year. But despite your good intentions, you still ended up in a last-minute rush. Here are five steps you can take to prevent a repeat performance next year.

If you're an attorney, careless bookkeeping with trust accounts could ruin your career.

Just about every week I hear from someone who talks about how they save their business money by using someone other than a trained professional to keep their books. Often it's their spouse or a member of the office staff who takes on bookkeeping in addition to many other duties. Some business owners even do it themselves.

Time for an honest look at how you did this year in getting your tax paperwork to your CPA on time and in an organized fashion. Take the quiz below to see how you scored and how you can improve. The answers (and your grade) are at the end.

Property accounting, or accounting for residential and commercial properties, has its own unique set of challenges. The tasks of accounts payable and accounts receivable become intertwined with executing leases, managing tenants' billable charges and tracking common area maintenance costs.

Do you often find yourself scrambling to do a month-end close — and then later reopening your books to fix a bunch of errors? If so, it's time to re-evaluate your approach.

Recently, a client in the financial services industry decided to open up several new locations over a 12-month span. I asked if they had a budget in place and a definitive timeline for opening up each location. Nothing concrete, they told me.

Previous articles on our blog have explored why small-business owners should consider outsourcing portions of their bookkeeping, operational and controllership services. Reasons include introducing controls against internal fraud or theft and the ability to ramp up during temporary periods of high demand.

If you run a small business, one of the most important decisions you face is selecting the right payroll service. After all, as difficult as choosing a payroll solution is, transitioning to a different solution is even more difficult.

Even if your business is profitable, it could still be at risk of failing unexpectedly if you don't track your money properly. And yet every day we see companies launched with little to no budget for professional bookkeeping services.

That's a formula for disaster.

You Don't Get What You Don't Pay For
The reason new businesses skimp on bookkeeping services is simple: They think they're saving money. But just as you can save more than you spend by hiring a professional to prepare your personal income tax returns, you can minimize the "loss" portion of your company's P&L — and maximize the profit — with the help of skilled bookkeepers.

Think about what you have estimated for revenue and make sure your budget for controllership and bookkeeping services is commensurate. If you expect to have a high cash flow, you want to plan for it and not rely on barebones or bootstrap bookkeeping.

Italia. The land that brought us Mediterranean seascapes, the language of love, Michelangelo's "David" and, of course, the origins of keeping good books.

For accounting services professionals, the New Year always brings new regulations. Here's an overview of some of the key ones up ahead.

I once did the books for a restaurant owner who kept confusing the bottom line of his profit & loss (P&L) statement with his actual cash flow. If he hadn't had someone looking over his shoulder, the results could have been disastrous.

Working remotely opens a whole network of possibilities. You can collaborate just as effectively with a client who's halfway around the world as one who's right around the corner, provided you account for the difference in your time zones.

Recently I’ve been approached by several clients looking for a way to automate collection on their recurring credit card payments using QuickBooks Online (QBO)—one of the best web-based tools for small business bookkeeping services.

In a recent post, Supporting Strategies' Garrett Smith made a compelling case that growing companies should consider outsourcing select non-core business functions.

Everyone in the accounting services industry has a horror story about not being able to obtain source documents. Maybe a client routinely makes bank deposits without recording where they came from. Or they stuff all invoices and receipts into a folder and wait until the end of the month to sort through them.

Whether you set formal New Year’s resolutions or not, now is a good time to think about what you want to accomplish in the new year. Maybe you just started the business and want to grow sales by 30%, or perhaps you’ve been in business for years and need to figure out how to keep your products or services fresh. Whether you’re in year one or 20, the tips below can help any business kick off the New Year right.

I'm a big proponent of third-party applications. After all, with the right app, you can customize an accounting system like QuickBooks to streamline many of your specific accounting processes and save a considerable amount of money and time on bookkeeping.

In our digital age, miscommunications in emails are an all-too-common occurrence. How can you avoid making mistakes that may have significant consequences for your organization?

Insufficient oversight of vendor relations can drain your company's resources and lessen your bottom line. Lost potentials range from money left on the table due to not taking advantage of available or possible discounts, to insider scams perpetrated by dishonest employees or vendor salespeople.

One of the stickiest aspects of accounting for not-for-profit (NFP) entities involves allocations — how these entities account for where they spend the funds they receive.

For-profit businesses don't have to worry about this too much. If you have a pizza parlor, it doesn't matter if you use the profits from your pizza sales to pay the rent and the profits from your soda sales to pay the utilities (or vice versa). The customers don't care what you do with their money, as long as they get their pizza and their drinks.

It's not so simple at an NFP entity.

How You Got the Money Can Determine Where You Spend It
Many NFP entities receive funds that are earmarked for specific purposes. For example, let's say an organization receives a grant expressly to provide wheelchairs for the physically challenged. The organization can't use that funding to sponsor an event instead. They have to spend it on wheelchairs — and they need documentation to prove they did. (This is called "direct identification.")

Could your small business survive a six-figure loss and the ensuing turmoil? Unfortunately, many can't. And that highlights why instituting internal controls is so important.

Supporting Strategies | Los Angeles appreciates the opportunity to work with clients that make a difference in people's lives.

At Supporting Strategies, we often recommend that our clients use QuickBooks Online for their bookkeeping and accounting needs because it is inexpensive and offers many time-saving features. But for those in the manufacturing sector, we recommend QuickBooks Enterprise — in particular, QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise Advanced Inventory.

Important Update:

Days before the new FLSA policy was to be implemented, a U.S. District Court Judge issued a temporary injunction blocking implementation. It is not known at this point when the new overtime policy will go into effect.

However, it’s always good business practice to have a consistent and reliable procedure for time tracking. Tsheets is a great program for tracking time accurately so you can better understand your payroll costs and profitability. Read the blog below to learn more.

Urgent memo to business owners: Unless you want to risk a lawsuit, make sure you're keeping precise employee time records when the new Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) overtime regulations take effect on Dec. 1, 2016.

Important Update:

Days before the new FLSA policy was to be implemented, a U.S. District Court Judge issued a temporary injunction blocking implementation.

What should employers do as a result?  ADP posted a helpful article about how to respond to the block of the overtime rule.

Whatever happens regarding this law, it's good business practice to make sure your employees are classified and compensated properly. Read the blog below to learn more.

On Dec. 1, 2016, new regulations go into effect under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) regarding the minimum threshold for classifying salaried employees. The purpose of the threshold is to determine whether or not non-exempt salaried employees should be entitled to overtime pay for working over 40 hours in a week.

Twitchell Becomes Managing Director of New Franchise

Recently, at a roundtable discussion with fellow services professionals, the topic of e-commerce came up. Most people, when they hear this term, imagine that it only refers to the use of the Internet to sell goods and services. 

The American workplace is becoming increasingly mobile. Research from GlobalWorkplaceAnalytics.com shows that about a quarter of the U.S. workforce now works remotely at least some of the time, and that 80 to 90 percent of U.S. workers say they would like to have the flexibility to do their jobs remotely.            

What's the key to being a successful accounting professional today? One answer, according to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants: "Understand emerging technologies."

As an accounting services professional, I love working with new start-ups. These entrepreneurs are ambitious, enthusiastic, and creative, but all too often I see them running into the same stumbling blocks when it comes to their accounting. Here are four tips for staying on top of accounting for your new or growing business.

1. Make Time for Accounting
   Accounting is not your core business, but having good accounting practices can help your business be successful. It is worth your time to be involved. If you’ve hired accounting services professionals, meet with them on a routine basis, and make sure you understand the data they provide. If you’re handling your accounting on your own, I recommend using a top-notch cloud-based software such as QuickBooks Online.
   
   
2. Pay Later, Get Paid Sooner
   The impulse to pay on time is, generally speaking, a good one. But many of the business owners I work with find themselves in a difficult position when they pay their invoices right away, while their own clients and customers have yet to pay them.

Many businesses have a number of filing requirements, which can vary from state to state. There are not only annual and quarterly filing dates, but also, in some cases, monthly. If your business needs to comply with filing requirements in different states, this can be a daunting task. No one wants to miss a filing deadline and lose out on a Certificate of Good Standing, as this can add delays and additional costs when you’re looking for investors, grants, or other forms of financing. 

There's a lot of look-back involved in accounting. We document the month-end close, or last quarter, or last year. But clients who look at financials only in this way — who see just the end number or the cash balance — never get a real picture of what their business is about.

Many nonprofits try to do more with a smaller budget. This is a challenge when it comes to bookkeeping, as there are specific regulations and tracking and filing requirements for nonprofits.

For these nonprofits, the simplest, most cost-effective solution may well be to outsource their bookkeeping functions. Does your organization fit this description? Here are five signs to look for.

1. You Suffer from "I've Got It/You Take It"
   Businesses with limited budgets may decide to add bookkeeping tasks to people who were hired to do other jobs. This may be expedient in the short-term, but it can be problematic to have people who aren't trained in or knowledgeable about bookkeeping for nonprofits serving in this role.

Are you familiar with QuickBooks Statement Writer? I think it's one of the industry's best-kept secrets — a tool that only the most skilled QuickBooks users seem to know about.

As international business becomes business as usual, many of my clients who come to me for bookkeeping services ask for guidance about how to manage payments in foreign currencies. If you also need to make payments abroad, here’s what you need to know about making payments, how exchange rates affect payments and invoicing, and some of the tax implications of making foreign payments.

Making Payments Abroad

They say that no man is an island. Well, it’s true for business as well. Not only does your business rely on the talents and resources of your own staff, but also on the partnerships your business forms with other businesses in your community.

Franchise Business Review recently published its 2016 Top Low-Cost Franchises Report, and we were pleased to see that Supporting Strategies made the list.

Like most bookkeeping services professionals, I love QuickBooks. It’s one of the best accounting software options out there, used widely by small businesses, individuals and professionals in the bookkeeping services industry. This software offers a lot of tools for organizing and reviewing your finances. One of these tools is the “Classes” option, which is a must for businesses with multiple sources of profit.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) calls it Continuity of Operations, or COOP. It's a plan to ensure essential government agencies continue to function in the event of a disaster. As the devastation recently wrought by Hurricane Matthew made painfully clear, private businesses should have similar plans in place.

I’ve never liked the terms “outsourcing,” or “sending work out-of-house.” These terms seem to imply that you’re sending parts of your business out of sight and out of mind, but as a provider of outsourced bookkeeping services, I know that this is far from the case. This is why I encourage my clients not to think of what they’re sending out so much as what they’re bringing in: a team of experts, a new set of resources, and most important, a valuable partnership.

Working in the bookkeeping services business, I use an array of web-based tools to help my clients. When these programs work well together, keeping organized becomes that much easier. 

It wasn’t long ago that cutting-edge business technology was the exclusive purview of large enterprises, which gave them a competitive advantage over small business. 

Congratulations to Dawn Hershik, Managing Director of Supporting Strategies | Chicago Far West Suburbs, who was recently named Woman of the Month by the Naperville Area Chamber of Commerce.

Riggs Becomes Managing Director of New Franchise

As a business owner, you're required to provide a variety of financial forms to different entities, including investors, lenders and the IRS. You might find this process a chore. Instead, think of it as an opportunity. These forms are like cameras that give you a clear, comprehensive picture of your business.

Whigam Becomes Managing Director of New Franchise

Leading finance and accounting operations for over 100 different organizations across a diverse set of industries over the past two decades has taught me a great deal about what it takes to run a successful business. It all boils down to people, processes, and systems. The abundance and variety of affordable and innovative software tools available to small and medium businesses is transforming the role of finance and accounting professionals from after-the-fact score keepers to the kingpins of business intelligence.

The Right Tools

No one likes to update software. Like hitting the snooze button on your alarm in the morning, it always seems easier to click the “remind me later” button and kick that task down the line for some undetermined date in the future. The result of this is, of course, that you might end up never updating the software and find yourself left with old or obsolete technology.

You can’t avoid being barraged by news coverage about the upcoming presidential election. Hillary or Donald? Red or Blue? A never-ending stream of opinions, polls and speculations fill the newspapers, dominate water cooler conversation and crowd our Facebook newsfeeds.    

It was an expensive lesson for California auto dealer Danny McKenna. He found that two of his most trusted employees had systematically drained $600,000 from his five dealerships.

When we founded Supporting Strategies 12 years ago, we built it around the premise that experts working remotely and using best-of-breed technology would deliver the highest level of client service.

A number of my clients ask me questions about expense management. While most business owners know that they need to track and document their expenses, they are not sure of how best to do this, or which expenses need to be tracked and why. 

Did it happen again this year? You didn’t have all your books in order so your tax preparer had to file an extension. It’s OK, it happens, but wouldn’t it be nice to have your books up-to-date so you’re not worried about filing on time? The deadline to file extended business tax returns is September 15. If you miss that deadline late fees and penalties can be applied, costing you money needlessly.

To get the most from your accounting services provider, it’s helpful to supply them with incorporation documents and contracts. Many of my clients are confused when I ask for these documents. Here are three ways your bookkeeper can use the information from your contracts to help you better run your business.

torchlight has been a Supporting Strategies | 128 & South Shore MA client since 2014, so we're well-aware of the company's important mission. The Boston Globe recently showcased torchlight's work with an article highlighting its online service supporting caregivers of individuals with special medical needs.

Nana is a 98-year-old (soon to be 99), strong, beautiful, amazing woman living by herself in East Boston, MA—the home she has had for the last 70 years, the home where she and Gramps raised their children and hosted a lifetime of memories for grandchildren, great grandchildren, and great-great grandchildren.

At one point during my career as an accounting professional I provided bookkeeping services for the U.S. Sales offices of a multinational company. We regularly had to make payments to foreign vendors.

Many of us are aware that saving receipts is an important way to be prepared not only for the annual tax return, but also for a potential audit… but we don’t know much more than that. What makes a receipt relevant to the IRS? Does any receipt qualify? Do I need to save all my receipts or just some of them? 

What are small business owners looking for in CPAs and other accounting professionals? A new e-book has the answers — and features a number of insights from Bryce Ledet, Owner and Managing Director of Supporting Strategies | New Orleans.

At Supporting Strategies, our job is to address clients' accounting needs so they can focus on growing their business. It's a real pleasure for us to see clients reach key milestones on the path to long-term success.

Many business owners live in fear of one word: audit. Often this fear has little to do with any possible result of an audit. Rather, it’s a fear of having to go through your records at the last minute, sorting through heaps of old documents and receipts in a desperate attempt to get organized. However, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and that means the time to get organized is now. Here are some tips on how to get your financial records organized ahead of time:

You have probably heard the term “double entry accounting” but might not know what it means, or why it matters to you and your business. It is a common bookkeeping method that you or your bookkeeping services provider are probably already using.

As a bookkeeping services provider, I often work remotely with my clients. This means that I’m always on the lookout for ways to improve and streamline remote communication. Hubdoc.com has quickly become one of my favorite tools for sharing and managing documents. Hubdoc is a cloud-based document management platform that has changed the way I share information and work with my clients. Here are four reasons you should check it out:

The latest initiative of the Digital Public Library of America, Inc. (DPLA), a long-time Supporting Strategies client, was recently featured on the official White House blog.

Ellermeyer Becomes Managing Director of New Franchise

Your accounting services provider is in a position of trust—he or she works with the finances of your company. Ideally, your bookkeeper is your trusted advisor, a valuable member of your team who works to help achieve your company’s vision and goals. That’s why it’s disheartening to hear stories about bookkeeping services providers abusing this position of trust.

Craven Becomes Managing Director of New Franchise

If you or your bookkeeping services provider is in the process of preparing your business’ financial statements, then you’ve probably heard of a Trial Balance. A Trial Balance is a snapshot of your books on a particular date—an internal report that lists all balances in your business’ General Ledger accounts. Bookkeepers use a Trial Balance to uncover errors.

Congratulations on deciding to start a new business! It is empowering to become your own boss and to pursue your dream of starting a business. However, there is a lot to learn about setting up a business, and there is a lot that needs to be done in the beginning. Here are three tips from a bookkeeping services professional on how to give your business a financial head start:

1. Establish a Business Entity
One of your first actions as an entrepreneur should be to establish a business entity–whether it is a Sole Proprietorship, an LLC (Limited Liability Company), or a Corporation. Do your homework and consider consulting a lawyer to find out which type of entity will best serve your business. A Sole Proprietorship is fairly easy to set up, but has more liability than an LLC (which offers protections for the proprietors). Or, it may be preferable to form a corporation, which will better position your company for outside investment. 

Ramey Becomes Managing Director of New Franchise

Mark Wald, Managing Director of both Supporting Strategies | Santa Monica and Supporting Strategies | Los Angeles, has earned the company's inaugural President's Club Award. The announcement was made at Supporting Strategies' annual meeting, held in May 2016.

Maher Becomes Managing Director of New Franchise

Gilpin Becomes Managing Director of New Franchise

Palmer Becomes Managing Director of New Franchise

Now that you have made the decision to outsource your bookkeeping—hiring a professional bookkeeping service rather than doing it yourself or asking one of your employees to take it on—how do you decide which company to choose?

Wise Becomes Managing Director of New Franchise

At Supporting Strategies, we're fortunate to witness on a daily basis the amazing things our clients are capable of accomplishing. Sometimes we even get to play a supporting role.

We at Supporting Strategies | Chicago Far West Suburbs are happy to announce we've earned the 2016 Best of Naperville Award for bookkeeping services. The award recognizes "exceptional companies that help make the Naperville area a great place to live, work and play" and "enhance the positive image of small business through service."

They say that a satisfied customer tells one or two people about their experience while an unhappy customer tells ten.  It’s no surprise – we all know that a bad consumer experience can stick with you.  And while I believe it’s true that an unhappy customer will be more vocal than a satisfied customer – I have a feeling that a very happy customer might be the most vocal of all.  

I personally love to give a good review.  A great new restaurant opens up and I’ll tell everyone I know.  A movie wows me and I don’t stop talking about it for a week.  I know I’m not alone in this.  People love to pass on an exceptional review – this means both exceptionally good and exceptionally bad.  The clients who leave unhappy might drag your name through the mud around town – but the ones who leave happy will be the best advertising you can get.  

So what’s the value of a happy client?  Your bookkeeping services team may not be able to put an exact dollar value on a satisfied client, but we know that a happy customer is more likely to be loyal, to stay with you for a long time, and to recommend your business to friends, family and associates.  

Considering this – you should work hard to keep your clients happy and do anything within your power to mitigate their concerns as they arise.  That said – concerns will arise.  But don’t despair.  A customer who comes to you dissatisfied with some aspect of their experience or the service they received is not a lost cause.  If you meet their concerns with sympathy, openness, and respect – this dissatisfied customer can become your most ardent supporter.

After all, a dissatisfied customer whom you were able to make into a satisfied customer might be your most vocal advertiser of all.  Great business leaders understand this and focus on these two things: how to keep the happy clients happy and how to respond efficiently to the concerns of the unhappy clients.  You should be as methodical about these aspects of your business as you are about your bookkeeping services or your staffing: create a team responsible for addressing client experience and make sure that everyone is on the same page about the proper process for addressing concerns and complaints.

As a professional in the bookkeeping services industry – I recommend checking in on your clients actively and regularly – the same way we advise businesses to do with their books.  Rather than waiting for them to come to you, actively solicit client feedback and dialogue.  This will allow you to make great use of your clients and strengthen the way you do things – but it will also make your clients know that their needs are important.

Naperville, Ill. – February 18, 2016 – Supporting Strategies | Chicago Far West Suburbs is marking one year of providing efficient and effective bookkeeping and operational services to growing businesses throughout the area.

Andersen Becomes Managing Director of New Franchise

Successful entrepreneurs are always looking for an edge and asking themselves “What new approaches can I take to make things run better, faster, and more efficiently?”  Many of the entrepreneurs that I see in my capacity as a bookkeeping services provider owe their success to this quality: they try to fix what’s not necessarily broken.  I tend to emphasize this to all my clients – one of the most important hallmarks of success is the ability to maximize personal productivity and to find streamlined ways to manage tasks and/or employees.  Keeping up with the latest technology might be a great way to do this.

Without a doubt, there’s a ton of great apps out there that will serve your specific industry.  But here are a few of my favorites that will definitely be useful and enriching for any kind of business:

1.  Tallie 
This is one of my go-to recommendations, and your bookkeeping services professionals will thank you for using Tallie's great service.  They offer an easy to use platform for tracking, recording, organizing and processing business expenses.  Not only will this make life easier for you and your bookkeeper – your employees will thank you too.  This is much easier than saving receipts and copying them over later.  This often leads to error and sometimes employees lose those receipts, which can create a big mess.  Now employees can simply snap a photo of the receipt right onto the app.

2. Confluence
Confluence is an amazing way to get your office all on the same page – literally.  It’s a platform that allows communication and sharing to occur quickly and easily between employees and across departments.  Basically it becomes the online mirror of your business, and keeps everything in one place (while still allowing different teams, projects and departments to store their work and organize their communications separately and easily).  It can be accessed on all your devices.

3.  LinkedIn
By now you probably know about LinkedIn.  It’s been a dominant force in online business networking for years, and I still find myself recommending it to any clients who haven’t yet gotten on board.  It’s recently been upgraded to be faster and imbued with some new features, but essentially has stuck with its original mission: to connect professionals all around the world.  They have over 400 million members, arguably the largest and most powerful business network in the world!

Finding new applications and software solutions can change the way you do business – eliminating old problems and opening new doors.  The key is to be curious about what’s out there, as the list is always expanding.  Start following the latest news in business technology.  Tech.co is a great resource for keeping up with latest tech trends for entrepreneurs.  And you can always check in with your bookkeeping services provider as well to get recommendations for great financial and accounting apps, as well as industry-specific solutions perfect for you.

More time to play since I don't have to fetch my bills!  Thanks @hubdoc #hubdog

Today's post, the final one in our Bookkeeping Services Best Practices series, looks at scheduling quarterly and annual bookkeeping tasks. If you haven't read them yet, please check out previous posts on scheduling daily, weekly/bi-weekly and monthly tasks. 

With hundreds of franchise brands in the United States, we were thrilled to see that Supporting Strategies ranked among the top 200 franchises in a new report by Franchise Business Review.

Welcome back to our Bookkeeping Services Best Practices series. So far, we've covered best practices for scheduling daily and weekly/bi-weekly bookkeeping tasks. This time, we set our sights on monthly bookkeeping tasks.

Supporting Strategies is pleased to have made Hubdoc's list of the Top 50 Cloud Accountants of 2015. Calling Supporting Strategies "a powerhouse," the roundup recognizes "bright and inspiring accounting professionals" who lead in bringing cloud accounting services to small and medium-sized businesses.

Last week, we kicked off our Bookkeeping Services Best Practices series with a post on scheduling daily bookkeeping tasks. Now we'll shift our focus over to bookkeeping tasks that must take place on a weekly or bi-weekly basis.

To most people in the U.S., “March Madness” refers to the NCAA Division 1 college basketball tournament. This has become one of the most widely watched sporting events in the world and many people rearrange their work and personal calendars in order to catch the games on TV. This year the games start on March 15^th  – a  date that is significant for another type of March Madness as well.

As someone who runs a business providing bookkeeping services, networking is something I’ve always tried to prioritize, as it doesn’t necessarily come naturally to me.  It’s not that I don’t like meeting new people and forming new connections.  But when those meetings happen in the highly contrived context of a networking event – I find myself unable to drum up small talk.

As a provider of accounting services, I’m often approached by business owners who are unsure of how to represent owner notes and loans on their balance sheets. They may also be concerned about how to represent such notes to potential lenders and buyers. The issue of business owners and how they relate to their business’ finances is complex, so it is always best to confer with your accounting services professionals to make sure that these transactions and loans will not appear unsightly to lenders and investors.

“Location, location, location” is not only the rule of real estate, but very often the rule of business as well.  This is of not just true of businesses that rely on foot traffic and walk-ins, but all businesses.  More and more large companies are rediscovering the importance of finding the right neighborhood for their offices, and many, it seems – are choosing innovation districts.  It’s a relatively new concept in urban planning and refers to a symbiotic mixing of university research facilities and businesses.  It’s an arrangement that’s increasingly common at research facilities in big cities across the country, and in the case of MIT in Cambridge, has proven very successful.

As a provider of bookkeeping services in Columbus Ohio, I was excited to read in Bizjournals.com that Ohio State is taking steps to transform parts of it’s campus into a new innovation center.  This kind of investment can be pricey, but has shown to pay off in transforming the local real estate market and drawing in respectable tech companies.  In the case of MIT’s Innovation District –  Google, Amazon and Microsoft have joined the ranks as Cambridge residents.  

Many of the business owners who have come to me for bookkeeping services have begun to rediscover the benefit of geographic industry clustering – something our entrepreneurial forebears understood in the past.  In the case of an innovation district, however, it’s not just that businesses benefit from one another, but also from the resources and partnership of the research university.  

Steps are already being taken to renovate Ohio State’s West Campus.  Right now the West Campus is largely dominated by small buildings and big parking lots, as well as farmland.  Keith Myers, Ohio State’s associate vice president of physical planning and real estate, has assured that the farmland will mostly be preserved, while other features of the campus will make room for the infrastructure of the district, including transportation, housing, and green spaces.

Perhaps the most exciting feature of all is the way in which Innovation Districts encourage students and enable them to start businesses.  While these districts are designed to attract the big players like Google, they’re not a success unless they have space for new growth as well.  As someone who provides bookkeeping services to new and growing businesses, this seems like a wonderful allocation of resources for the University to make for its students.  

Adhering to timely bookkeeping practices is critical to managing a business.

Besides having the peace of mind that comes from knowing your books are up-to-date, you'll enjoy the confidence of making good decisions based on relevant data. Scheduled correctly, bookkeeping also allows you to drive your business proactively, looking ahead into the horizon rather than backwards out the rear window.

1. Failure to file –Whatever the reason, this is never a good idea. If you haven’t kept your books up-to-date throughout the year you may feel overwhelmed at the thought of getting everything organized for your tax preparer.  Most business owners believe they can handle the bookkeeping work themselves – how hard can it be? Even if the bookkeeping is fairly simple it’s usually not a priority in the mind of a busy owner. Chances are, after spending 12+ hours a day working on their business they don’t have the energy or inclination to work on the bookkeeping. By outsourcing the bookkeeping services everything will be up-to-date and readily available for the tax preparer – saving time and expense.
   
   
2. Not Filing for an Extension – If you don’t have everything ready to file your taxes by the normal deadline your tax professional can file an extension for you. This will allow you some extra time but don’t wait to get things in order. In most cases, hiring a bookkeeping services company to get your receipts out of the shoebox and into an organized system will be more cost effective then having your tax preparer do it. If you do have to file an extension get help as soon as you know this is what’s happening. Waiting will keep you in the same spot you’re in now and possibly lead to penalties and more taxes if you miss the extension filing deadline. 
   
   
3. Waiting Until the New Year to get started – Most people procrastinate about things they don’t enjoy doing and bookkeeping and taxes are high on that list. Waiting to get your books up-to-date in order to have your taxes prepared will cause a domino effect and in some cases more taxes and penalties that can be avoided. Employing a bookkeeping services firm early on will ensure you some peace of mind and you’ll be able to do some intelligent planning before the end of the year that may help you in the next year.
   
   
4. Keeping meager records – Of course an outsourced bookkeeping service can help you keep better records, like keeping track of itemized receipts to explain those charges on the credit card statement. A good service will also recommend efficiencies for the business that you may be too busy to research on your own. Having the business run more smoothly and efficiently will save valuable time and money.

Avoiding tax filings will catch up with you eventually so it’s important to stay on top of your record keeping to ensure you can get this task done on time. That may mean hiring someone to do the bookkeeping for you. Spending money on a bookkeeping service now can save you big money in the long run.

Many of the clients who come to me for bookkeeping services ask me about Off Balance Sheet Financing.  What is it?  Why use it?  How does it work? The answer to the question, “What is it?” is deceptively simple.  Off Balance Sheet Financing is financing that will not appear as a liability on your balance sheet.  The answer to the other questions, however, is a little more complex.

Off Balance Sheet (OBS) Financing can be a desirable strategy for many businesses that don’t want their balance sheet to reflect an overly high debt-to-equity ratio.  That sort of thing will scare off investors.  But the use of OBS Financing is limited to certain contexts to protect those investors and make sure that they’re not missing out on information that they need to know.  You should check in with your bookkeeping services providers to find out exactly which uses of OBS Financing are allowable under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).  

Common uses for OBS Financing are Partnerships and Operating Leases.  Let’s start with Partnerships.  When a company is part of a partnership, it is not obliged to show the partner company’s liabilities on it’s own balance sheet.

Using OBS for Partnerships is a common practice.  It also happens to have been Enron’s infamous strategy for concealing its liabilities.  This is another reason why you want to work closely with your bookkeeping services providers when it comes to OBS Financing to make sure you’re staying well within the boundaries of acceptable and ethical practices.

OBS Financing is also widely used for Operating Leases.  If your company is in need of a car or another piece of equipment, you have the choice of leasing or renting (and then buying at the end of the lease period) or buying outright.  Both situations have the same result, which is you owning this equipment, but arrive at this point in different ways that will be reflected in the books differently.  With an operating lease, you can record only the rental expense and not the full cost.  If you were to buy the equipment outright you would be obliged to record the asset (your new equipment) and the liability (it’s price) on your balance sheet.  Going the path of the Operating Lease, then, will show much less liability on your balance sheet than buying outright.

If you’re looking to clean up your balance sheet for potential lenders, OBS Financing, accurately practiced, can be a great option to reduce your debt-to-equity ratio.  Additionally, it can be important when seeking additional funding as your previous funding may have involved a lender covenant specifying that your leverage ratios remain at a certain point.  Go to your bookkeeping services providers to get even more details on how it can work in the specific context of your own company.

Harlan Gleeson Becomes Managing Director of New Franchise

As a bookkeeping services professional, I’m always looking for that balance between streamlining processes and keeping good controls.  Being highly efficient and accurate is the name of the game when it comes to bookkeeping services – and you don’t want one to come at the expense of the other.  If you’re like me and looking for ways to optimize your bookkeeping efficiency without losing that attention to detail, here are some great tips from a great book, Just-In-Time Accounting, by Steven Bragg:

1.  Preapprove Customer Credit: This is a simple way to be proactive and efficient.  Have your credit team review the credit of potential customers before your sales team ever makes the first call.  This way, by the time that call is made, the customer already has an assigned credit rating.

2. Review Your Customers’ Credit More Than Once: I recommend doing this two or three times a year.  Your customers' financial situation may be in flux – and you’ll avert potential issues if you keep an eye on their credit and stay ready to eliminate credit if need be.

3.  Don’t Delay Your Invoicing: I’ll never understand why so many professionals who deliver their products and services with such great consistency and efficiency are so disorganized when it comes to invoicing.  This is your moment to get paid!  And no one is going to remind you to do it but you.  That’s why you should deliver the invoice at the same time the product is delivered and just get it over and done with right away.  Make this part of your product delivery protocol.

4.  Call on Your Customers' AP Departments: Now that you’ve sent your invoice, don’t forget about it.  Make a follow-up call to the AP department as part of your routine to make sure that the invoice has been received and approved.

5.  Match Payments Against Accounts Receivable…Now:  Like invoicing, updating your Accounts Receivable is best to do at one specific time: right away!  If you just got a payment, match in A/R right now.  Don’t delay!

6. Forgo Sending Those Month-End Statements: this takes up valuable time, which would be better spent making collection calls.

Of course, there are countless strategies that bookkeeping services professionals use to streamline business-as-usual.  Those are just some of my favorites, but you should consult with your own bookkeeping services team to hear theirs.

When looking to outsource, payroll services are usually one of the first operations that business owners send out-of-house. This is no surprise. If you’re not an experienced accountant who knows all the ins and outs of the tax code, doing your own payroll can become a nightmare, and hiring a fulltime in-house employee to do it is simply not an option or a necessity for many small businesses. As a bookkeeping services provider, my clients often come to me asking just what they should be looking for in a payroll services provider. Here’s a few things I tell them to keep in mind:

We at Supporting Strategies like to keep our clients on the cutting edge of cloud accounting tools  Tallie is a great example of such a tool, as it allows our clients' employees to efficiently report their expenses, seamlessly integrates with the business' accounting systems, and provides instant collaboration between the employees, their managers, and with us, the business' outsourced accounting services team.  For these reasons, we have recently selected Tallie as our preferred expense reporting option for our clients.  

Expensing reporting can obviously be a pain.  Many know the heartache of not being able to find a receipt or flat out procrastinating an expense report until it’s forgotten or simply too late to submit.  Luckily, with Tallie, the expense reporting process is made simple and painless.  By using the app you can snap photos of receipts on the go, directly import credit card transactions, track mileage and submit expense reports directly for approval and processing.  Tallie's solution is a win-win-win as it allows ease of use and real-time data access for business' employees, their managers, and their accounting services team.  We are excited to add Tallie to our cloud accounting tools toolkit!

In my perspective as a bookkeeping services provider, when it comes to getting your new business up and running, organization and proper reporting are key. A lot of my clients, when they’re just getting started, are focused on other new business priorities like staffing, training, and marketing. But keeping an eye on the numbers will keep you connected to what’s going on with your business, and will become your greatest tool for maximizing growth as you move forward.

So where do you look for the numbers? There are many ways to examine your business and you should consult with your bookkeeping services provider about the reports that will be most important to you. That said, there are three main reports that will be crucial whether you are selling shoe polish or operating a traveling circus: these are your income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement.

In an online discussion forum I participate in, a startup founder recently posed this question, “I'm an early stage startup with minimal, but growing, accounting needs. Should I pursue an agreement with a cloud service, or an offline accounting firm using QuickBooks?  Tangentially, my goal is to be seeking venture capital funding within the next 12 months, and I'm wondering if VC's have any preference?”

Abraham Lincoln has been credited with the following quote: “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” Regardless of the context, the premise holds true, especially in business.  To a business owner, the tool isn’t an axe but can include technology, people, capital, knowledge, experience, and yes… actual tools. I find that many of my clients have very valuable tools at their disposal, but they often aren’t as sharp as they should be or they aren’t being used correctly.  Based on my experience providing bookkeeping services for small businesses, I’ve seen three ways that tools are being underutilized.  Here’s what they are and how to avoid it.

1.  Even the Greatest Hammer Won’t Cut Down a Tree
You’ve got to put your tools to the right use, otherwise they’re useless.  I often see this kind of misallocation when it comes to a company’s people.  Your team is your most valuable asset.  Take the time to hire the right people for each job, and make sure your employees are given the freedom to focus on their areas of expertise.  Don’t slough off the bookkeeping services onto the office manager, for example.  When each task is handled by someone competent, trained and enthusiastic – morale and efficiency skyrocket.  

2.  You Don’t Know Which Axe to Buy
Sometimes our tools are software solutions or outsourced firms that provide us with payroll or bookkeeping services.  These kinds of services can be a boon to your business, bringing it valuable outsider experience and great new technologies.  But you won’t get to benefit if you don’t know what you’re looking for.  As a provider of bookkeeping services, I often see clients struggle to decide between QuickBooks Online or QuickBooks Desktop.  They also may be overwhelmed in the search for the right Payroll Services Firm.  Because of this, it becomes incredibly important to become an informed buyer.  Read reviews online, speak to other business owners about their choices, and call in your trusted advisors, be they your bookkeeping services team, your grandma, or any other consultant you confer with.

3.  Your Axe Isn’t Sharp
This is the issue Honest Abe was focused on, and I think it’s especially important to consider here.  How do we make sure our axe is sharp in business?  Well, first off one needs to realize that there’s more than one axe that needs sharpening.  To succeed in your business means putting in consistent effort, and not growing complacent.  Evolve your training processes as your business grows.  Help your employees grow and develop within the organization.  Review how operations are carried out and ask yourself if something needs to be updated.  And remember that your most valuable tool is yourself -so keep yourself sharp!

Buying a business, or investing in one, can be risky. What are these risks? Of course some of them are physical. Could the buildings be damaged by fire? Is there a manufacturing process associated with serious financial liabilities? There are technological risks as well. How secure is a business’ data and what’s the back-up plan for when the system is down? In addition to this there are the business risks. Will consumer trends change in a way that’s favorable or unfavorable to the business? Will people be interested in this product/service at all?

If you have an inventory intensive business, managing your inventory can become a major component of managing your business’ finances. It’s no surprise that many business owners turn to their bookkeeping services provider for guidance in this area.

If you’re considering outsourcing certain operations within your business, chances are your first question is “why?” For many business owners, even after they’ve settled the “why” question, are at a loss on how to go about it. The “when,” “what,” and “how” questions still remain.

Scott Severance Becomes Managing Director of New Franchise

I love the idea of New Years. What I like most is that it provides all of us an opportunity to look back at how things have been going (the good and the bad) as well as an opportunity to look forward to make changes to our trajectory by setting new goals. Each year I try to figure out changes I need to make to be happier, healthier, and more financially sound. I assume you do the same. Heck, there are even lists available of the top New Year’s Resolution ideas and how to achieve them should you need some assistance with personal resolutions.

There are common challenges that business owners face, regardless of the size of business. See below for ways that outsourcing your bookkeeping services can address some of these challenges.

The business world is best navigated with a mentor. While it’s important to learn how to follow your inner compass, having a network of advice givers and sounding boards is always a boon to an entrepreneur. I suggest that small business owners make mentors wherever they can find. This can be your father, mother, accounting services provider, or even a beloved podcaster.

As an employer, the true cost to hire an employee is more than just the wage or salary you offer them. When we build budgets & forecasts for our clients, the additional costs we consider are primarily employer payroll taxes, insurance, and employee benefits. Here are some tips to help entrepreneurs and small business owners budget for the total cost of adding staff:

All small business owners know that entertainment expenses are a part of doing business. We take clients out to lunch, participate in charity golf tournaments, and try to catch a ball game every now and then. While these may seem like basic business activities, deducting these expenses can be a bit tricky. As an accounting services professional, I frequently get asked to clarify the rules around these expenses, so here’s the basic rundown on the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to entertainment deductions.

Here’s some advice from a bookkeeping services provider on what to look for when hiring a bookkeeping services provider.

Working with a skilled bookkeeping services provider is a surefire best practice for your business. Outsourced bookkeeping services, in particular, have unique benefits. These services and their professionals have experience with a wide range of businesses and can become a part of your team while maintaining a valuable outside perspective on your operation. Still, when it comes to outsourcing any aspect of a business, many business owners will worry about how to remotely maintain quality control. This is why it’s important to understand just how your bookkeepers are self-checking for accuracy.

By the time my clients get to me they’ve already considered outsourcing their financial operations to a bookkeeping services provider. Every year it seems that more and more businesses are sending certain operations, like accounting and finance, out of house.

As a bookkeeping services professional, I love working with new startups for a few reasons. These are people who are just starting out, hungry to grow, and enthusiastic about their new enterprise, usually with good reason. But one of the challenges I see startup owners running into time and again is profit projections. Sure it takes bravado to create your own startup business, and that kind of confidence will serve a startup owner well. But unrealistically high-profit projections can set the wrong expectations for you and any partners you may have in the business. Here are some things to consider when projecting profits for your startup:

1. Take a Look Around
According to American Enterprise Institute the public tends to overestimate the profits of most companies, assuming that most US firms make 36% profit despite the fact that this is about 5 times too high. It’s possible that business owners are also getting a little too optimistic about profits, especially in the early years of a business. Industry standards are widely available online and provide a good idea of what can be expected. This is not to say that an industry standard will define your company’s earnings. The nature of an average is that there are always outliers on both sides, but the average can be a good guidepost. You can check out industry standards for profit here on Yahoo Finance, and you’ll see that 7% seems to be the general average for American businesses. Speak to your bookkeeping services professional as well. If he or she has worked with other clients in a similar industry, it’s likely that they will be able to help you project a realistic profit margin for your company.

They say that time is money, but they never say how much time or how much money. If only there was a time-to-money exchange rate printed in the daily papers. Maybe then it would be easier to determine exactly what our time is worth.

Managing Director John Gleason Launches His Second Franchise

To be sure, deducting the cost of meals at restaurants is one of the more delicious parts of running a business. But as a bookkeeping services provider for many small businesses, I get a lot of questions about how to go about deducting these expenses in the proper way.

Whether you do your own bookkeeping or work with a bookkeeping services provider, you should aim to reconcile your books to your tax return every year. As a provider of bookkeeping services, one of the first things I do when I take on a new client is a reconciliation between their last tax return and their QuickBooks' general ledger. Ensuring that the client's QuickBooks file is on the same page with the CPA's records makes it much easier for my team, the client, and the CPA to communicate about the numbers, especially when it is time for tax planning as well as preparing for the next year's tax filing.

Any bookkeeping services professional familiar with law firms will tell you that bookkeeping for a law firm is subject to its own set of rules and guidelines. One important thing to understand, as a legal professional or a bookkeeping services professional working with a law firm or practice, is how to handle client trust accounts. Set up properly, QuickBooks is very well suited for handling client trust accounts. If you’re wondering how to do it, here are some tips:

Stephen Manasco Becomes Managing Director of New Franchise

Having a solid on-boarding system in place for new employees is extremely important and can have a major impact on how long an employee stays with your company. If your company also employs remote employees, you need to ensure that each new hire feels welcomed and a part of the company despite the lack of physical presence, and you also need to ensure that your new team member has the tools, training, and support to hit the ground running. One thing I have learned in managing a team of remote accountants that provide our clients with bookkeeping services is that the following steps are critical in having each team member properly on-boarded.

In recent years, the accounting industry has been flooded with a wave of new technology solutions that have really shaken up the way we do things. It might seem natural to wonder if these developments are slowly replacing the bookkeeper to the extent that, sometime down the line, computers will do all of the work that bookkeepers have typically done. Speaking on behalf of bookkeeping services providers everywhere, these technologies are something to celebrate rather than to worry about. These new technology solutions are enabling us to automate the experience of routing and entering accounting transactions and have also allowed us to move our clients' books and records to the cloud, which allows us to focus on helping our clients keep their businesses on track and also gives us all real-time access to the information to make decisions and keep the business' operations moving.

Many of my clients travel regularly for their businesses, hopping around the country and boarding planes as often as some of us get in a car. But no matter how seasoned a traveller they are, they often turn to me for some guidance about which travel expenses are tax deductible and which aren’t. As a provider of bookkeeping services, I deal with business travel expenses often.

These days it’s not so rare for a small business to operate internationally in addition to their U.S. operations. We live in an increasingly globalized world and businesses that outsource abroad and do business abroad are more and more common. Earlier in my career, I provided bookkeeping services to a company that was based in the Cayman Islands, developed its software in Ireland and had a sales office in the U.S. While this company enjoyed many benefits in setting up its operations in this way, it did create the bookkeeping challenge of dealing with multiple currencies.

As a provider of bookkeeping services to small businesses, I cannot stress enough how important it is for business owners to maintain insight and understanding into their financial statements. When business owners don’t check in with their own financial statements, they end up operating in the dark. Here is a look at the key reports to look at and how to make sense of them.

While you have likely heard of a CPA, or certified public accountant, you may not have heard of an EA, or Enrolled Agent.  There are only about 48,000 EA’s practicing in the US, compared to over 650,000 CPA’s.  EA’s can be a great resource to a small business with tax-specific issues.  EA’s are typically less expensive than CPA’s, but are also subject to a certification exam, and complete annual continuing education requirements, similar to CPA’s.  EA’s can represent any taxpayer anywhere in the U.S.   Below is a chart detailing the nuts and bolts of a CPA and EA. 

I recently read an interesting critique of the current state of California's investment culture. And it got me thinking about Supporting Strategies' place in it all.

One of the first decisions you’ll have to make as an employer will be about vacation and time-off policies. There are a lot of options and, lately, a lot of buzz surrounding the issue as unlimited vacation policies gain popularity. Whatever path you choose, make sure that your decision reflects both your respect for your team’s work-life balance as well as your respect for your business. While the development of the policies may fall to your human resources go-to, we have learned as a bookkeeping services provider, that is is critical to establish a system to record and track employee's paid time off (PTO), and in some cases, depending on your policy, including your accrued vacation time liability on your company's balance sheet.

If you’re looking through your books and feeling a little lost and overwhelmed or you keep seeing that pile of receipts that hasn’t been entered yet, it might be time to get some professional bookkeeping services support for your business. See the following checklist to help you assess if you are ready for this next step:

As a bookkeeping services professional, I see that many clients become confused when it comes to the issue of revenue recognition. Specifically, the question is when to recognize revenue. Is it when you receive payment or when you start your contract? Or do you recognize the revenue over the course of the contract term?

As a small business owner, your company’s balance sheet is an extremely important report for you to understand and tool for you to use to manage your business. It is a key source of insight into the financial health of your company because it shows your assets, liabilities, as well as your equity position, all at a certain point in time. Here at Supporting Strategies, as an outsourced bookkeeping services provider, we are presented with business' balance sheets all of the time as they on-board with us as new clients. A very common theme is that the business's balance sheet is both out of date and incorrect. One of our very first tasks is to reconcile every account on the balance sheet to create an accurate report, which we then present to our client, the business owner. The result is a report that allows the business owner to best understand in real time, as an example, how much cash she has, how much her customers owe her, and how much she owes her vendors.

If you are a small business owner and are using a program like QuickBooks to run your accounting function, you are likely interfacing with your books on a daily or frequent basis, entering in transactions to invoice your customers, pay your vendors, and perhaps even to pay your employees. All of these transactions are feeding into your business' financial reports in the background, so that at the end of the month, you can run the reports and see how your business is operating.

In my experience providing outsourced bookkeeping services to small businesses, I have learned that we can deliver considerably more value when our clients view their relationship with us as a partnership rather than a vendor relationship.  We serve as a virtual extension of our client’s team, supporting them on the financial and operational aspects of their business. Our job is to work with the client to make their transactional processes most efficient and to give them actionable data and meaningful financial reports to most effectively manage their business. The following provides some tips to help you make the most out of your relationship with your outsourced bookkeeping services provider.

As someone in charge of a growing business you’ve probably considered outsourcing your bookkeeping services to an outside firm. You might also be thinking about bookkeeping software, hiring your own in-house bookkeeper, or trying to fill that role yourself. To help you make the best decision, read below to learn more about the outsourced bookkeeping option.

As a provider of bookkeeping services at Supporting Strategies, I’ve had the opportunity to help optimize my client's bookkeeping processes using several great accounting apps.  These tools can save you and your team a lot of hours and effort, freeing up your valuable time to focus on other areas of your business. Your provider of bookkeeping services can show you around these tools and help you decide which ones are best for you.  Here are five of my favorites:

Living in New England, the first thing I do each morning is check the weather forecast. A little forward thinking can go a long way and can be the difference between being caught in that summer storm with an umbrella, or without one. Forward thinking is crucial for your business as well. Preparing a budget will help you predict where your business is going, and a forecast will help you track progress and respond to changes along the way. As a provider of accounting services, I know that running a business can be just as prone to sudden changes as the weather in New England. But if you budget and forecast well, you’ll be able to prepare your business to best handle the weather any unexpected storms.

Did you know that every 90 minutes, someone is diagnosed with ALS and every 90 minutes someone loses their battle? Help me in joining the fight for a cure! 

If you’re trying to go paperless at your office (a great way to simplify organizational systems and communication, save money, as well as help the environment), Bill.com can help you make this transition.

I recently read an article about a woman arrested for stealing over $200,000 from her employer over the course of a year. These kinds of articles are all too common As many small businesses employ an internal bookkeeping staff comprised of one person, it is quite common for the business owner to place 100% trust in that individual, and throws oversight to the wind.

If you ask any child what they want to be when they grow up, you’ll probably hear “firefighter,” “princess,” or “Spiderman.” A little bit older, and they might tell you they want to be a rock star or a video game tester. But if you think you see a future accounting services provider at the table this Thanksgiving, here’s what they need to know going forward.

As a Financial Operations Director at Supporting Strategies, I'm always looking for new ways to help our remote employees feel like they're part of a cohesive team.

If you’re like many other small business owners across the States, you’ve probably considered outsourcing your bookkeeping processes to an outside firm. As a provider of outsourced bookkeeping services, I’ve advised many potential clients on this issue before. Here are the top five reasons to make the switch.

If you follow the payroll administration world, you've probably heard about the dispute between red-hot startup Zenefits and payroll services giant ADP. Unfortunately, some innocent bystanders — i.e. shared customers of the two companies — are feeling the effects. Perhaps you're even one of the affected customers.

Recently an acquaintance approached me with an issue regarding Quickbooks Online – specifically how to do progress billing.  Sometimes it can be helpful to have a friend in the bookkeeping services business, for just these kind of situations. Having worked with this software quite a while now, I turned her towards the following work-around for this problem, sourced from fundera.com.  Once you get it, you’ll never have trouble with progress billing on QBO again.

For all you small business owners out there, I thought you might like to learn about a useful framework for basic business management. It's called the "Trinity of Management."

According to Chicagonow.com, 80% of small businesses using financial management software are using QuickBooks. It’s safe to assume that these businesses are generating their internal financial reporting using QuickBooks. Therefore, the structure of the QuickBooks chart of accounts is critical, as it's list of categories will be what builds up the labels on many of the QuickBooks financial reports, including the income statement and the balance sheet.

When taking stock of your own small business, it’s important to seek out new approaches to old problems.  This becomes especially vital when examining your approach to your accounting.  Here are three easy-to-overlook hurdles facing many small businesses today, and how your business can overcome them.

Supporting Strategies Boston was proud to see several former and current clients highlighted by Inc. Magazine as some of “Boston’s Fastest Growing Firms.”  Supporting Strategies, a provider of outsourced bookkeeping services , looks back at their time with these clients.

Assuming you are not a CPA or bookkeeping services company, the recording of financial transactions including purchases, sales, receipts, and payments is likely not one of your business' core processes, but rather a "supporting" process.

Bookkeeping has come a long way from its development in 13^th Century medieval Europe, yet for too many people trying to find the best in bookkeeping services for their businesses, medieval bookkeeping reigns. One pictures a solitary bookkeeper, dressed in monastic robes, slowly logging transactions into a ledger in a candlelit chamber. 

Imagine attending a basketball game without a scoreboard. This is the scenario put forth in an article on insightfulaccountant.com.  While the scoreboard might not seem so crucial (someone on the sidelines can always keep track) it greatly affects the viewer’s experience – where’s the tension if you don’t know who is winning and who is losing and by how much?  Even more crucially, it affects the players' performance.  The scoreboard, it turns out, is more than just a way of keeping track of numbers. It’s a way of evaluating performance which has the potential to change the outcome of the game.

Paper or paperless payments? For many accounting professionals, the answer is clear: Paperless payments are the way to go, due largely to the reduced risk of fraud.

Making sense of the proposed changes to overtime rules may seem daunting when it comes to payroll administration, but it's important that small businesses take the time to get it right. Although the rules haven't yet become law, it's not too early to consider their potential impact.

If you don't enjoy bookkeeping (and what small-business owner does?), Business 2 Community author Catherine Lewis has good news: "It is now easier than ever to manage your business finances."

One of our referral partners, Christine Searle of Searle Business Solutions, has a great blog. She recently posted an interesting article on the benefits of paying for qualified employees that she has graciously allowed us to republish here. Thanks, Christine!

One of our referral partners, Christine Searle of Searle Business Solutions, has a great blog. She recently posted an interesting article on breakeven analysis that she has graciously allowed us to republish here. Thanks, Christine!

If you own a growing business, chances are you'll hit a crossroads at some point: Continue using free or inexpensive online accounting tools or upgrade to professional accounting services? And if you choose to step up to the latter option, how can you make sure you pick the right resource?

Supporting Strategies client ClearView Audio is making waves with its award-winning Clio™ speaker, and we couldn't be happier for them.

An entrepreneur recently posed the following question:  “When is the right time to hire a full-time CFO versus a part-time CFO, a Controller or simply a Bookkeeper?”  I believe that the core considerations should be to best address the needs of the company while minimizing spend. How many hours are required of a CFO-level resource, vs how many hours are required to complete lower level tasks? A good CFO or Controller will hold the company's cash preservation as a top priority and should identify opportunities to bring in lower cost resources to do as much of the time-intensive lower level tasks as possible, minimizing your time demands and cost for higher-level resources.  So working with a responsible higher-level resource on a part time basis can yield more value while saving you time and expense.

Commonly abbreviated as ADR, Alternative Dispute Resolution refers to any means, process or method of mutually resolving conflicts & disputes outside the court. ADR typically includes early neutral evaluation, negotiation, and conciliation, however mediation, and arbitration remain two primary forms.

As businesses strive to stay ahead of the constantly changing economy, outsourcing is becoming more and more common. Many businesses have discovered the benefits of outsourcing not only for IT, but also for other departments and job functions. One area to seriously consider: bookkeeping.

Businessman. Investor. NBA team owner. Top Shark on TV's "Shark Tank." Mark Cuban has enjoyed success in a variety of areas, so I'm inclined to listen to what he has to say.

WalletHub, which bills itself as "the social network for your wallet," recently ranked cities across the United States for their small-business work environments, based on factors like job growth and variety, health insurance offerings, and employee earnings.

Many startups, small businesses and nonprofits overlook basic security standards because they have many competing priorities to focus on. That's an unacceptable excuse.

I'm pleased to announce the newest member of the Supporting Strategies | Texas team: Stacy Conrad, who will serve as a financial operations associate.

As a Dallas/Fort Worth local, I've long known about the area's welcoming attitude toward businesses. Now a few more people do, too.

As I reported a couple weeks ago, Supporting Strategies founder and CEO Leslie Jorgensen was named a finalist for the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2015 Award in the New England Region.

EY announced last week that Supporting Strategies founder and CEO Leslie Jorgensen is a finalist for the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2015 Award in the New England Region.

I'm pleased to announce that Supporting Strategies - Northern Virginia has joined forces with Remodelers Advantage, a Maryland-based support organization for owners of remodeling businesses. Remodelers Advantage has worked with thousands of firms of all sizes to help business owners improve company performance along with their quality of life.

As the "Millennial" generation grows up — and expands its purchasing power to rival that of the baby boomers — it's worth considering what sets this group of consumers apart from the generation that came before it.

It's exciting to work with businesses that are innovators in their field. That's why we're so happy to count Online Trading Academy as one of our clients.

"But how do you guard against employee fraud?"

The Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) is a program that helps middle and high school students succeed by teaching them the entrepreneurial mindset — non-cognitive skills that help place education in a context of real-world success.

I'm an accounting and finance professional who has worked both as an internal and outsourced bookkeeper. My experience has highlighted for me the benefits of the outsourced model.

Launch DFW's Raj Daniels, an official Friend of Supporting Strategies, recently got some nice publicity for a podcast that he promotes, "Startup Dallas."

Congratulations to Supporting Strategies client Ditto Labs, which recently revealed it has raised $1.3 million in its latest round of funding. According to a Boston Business Journal article, "the company has now raised more than $4 million in funding since its founding in 2012."

Accounting and business advisory firm Kahn, Litwin, Renza & Co. offers a handy record retention guide that lays out how long to keep records of all kinds. Time cards for hourly employees? Four years. Expired contracts and leases? Seven. Accident claims? Forever and always.

Supporting Strategies - Santa Monica services the accounting needs of a growing number of managed IT service providers, commonly referred to as MSPs.

As your corporation or LLC grows, you may begin to consider expanding outside of the state where you do business. This article will help you understand what's involved in getting up and running in a new state.

In a recent article by Joe Daraskevich in The Florida Times Union Jacksonville.com, Ben Davis, owner of Intuition, a craft brewery located in Jacksonville, offers advice to others about starting a brewery. Davis passes along his advice in the form of 5 Do’s and Don’ts. It does not surprise us that Davis site not hiring a bookkeeper as one of his 5 biggest mistakes during the startup phase. He ended up doing what many other entrepreneurs do: overtasking someone who’s talent should be focused on managing and/or growing the business rather than entering transactions and reconciling bank accounts. In his case Davis hired a General Manger, who was responsible for “anything [Davis] didn’t want to do himself and that was way too much on top of all the accounting duties”. Many other entrepreneurs end up doing the bookkeeping themselves, which, for the same reasons, can inhibit the ability of the business to grow. At Supporting Strategies we specialize in helping startup businesses get off on the right foot with efficient and effective bookkeeping processes.

In the past four years have you been able to increase your revenues from at least $200,000 to over $2 million? If you answered “yes” to this question, then you are off to a great start and you deserve recognition. Inc. magazine may have the right venue for you to showcase your story. Check out this blog from our friends at Chief Outsiders. There a great video with Alan Taylor of Chief Outsiders discussing in an interview “What Does it Take to Make the List?” The application is due April 31st. Sharpen your pencil or warm up that keyboard it is time for your company to get the word out…

Running afoul of [federal and state] laws, licenses, permits and regulations can result in steep fines and IRS penalties." That's one strong argument in favor of entrusting your bookkeeping needs to Supporting Strategies.

Writing about small business loans for The Simple Dollar website, Saundra Latham makes the case for exploring online loan options. She also touches on traditional loans from banks, credit unions and the Small Business Administration.

You might already have concluded that coaching can be a critical piece of employee development. But as someone who has experienced the benefits of coaching from all sides — as a manager, employee and coach myself — I know how important it is to get the timing and circumstances right.

Sorting out what belongs in your employee files can be a big task. And getting it right is extremely important.

Second only to labor costs, supply chain management can eat up a hearty chunk of your operating expense budget. The process of negotiating with suppliers can also take up a hefty amount of another valuable resource: time.

Cash flow refers to the balance available after allowing for all receipts and payments from your business. This includes rent, payroll, taxes, supplier invoices, loan payments and asset purchases — the lot.

If you missed this headline in the bustle of the holidays, you may want to take a look now. As of January 1, 2015, the IRS has made changes to the IRA rollover rules in the wake of the U.S. Tax Court's decision in Bobrow v. Commissioner.

If you're in the business of sending invoices, no doubt you've experienced the frustration of sending second, third and fourth requests while the bill remains unpaid.

We often boast about the value our clients bring to the marketplace, but it's nice to see our opinions backed up by hard numbers. Boston-based Smarterer, a Supporting Strategies client, recently sold for $75 million.

Congress finished up 2014 with a bang, passing the mammoth HR 5771, Tax Increase Prevention Act of 2014. The bill extends several dozen tax breaks retroactively for one year, through 2014.

As business development manager for Supporting Strategies – Boston, Jared Gould's days are filled with opportunities to discuss goals, challenges and strategy with people in different fields. A recent day spent at the Massachusetts State House touched on similar themes with a very different — and much younger — audience.

It's official! Working in sales is one tough gig. The constant up-and-down rollercoaster ride can be stressful — and can really test your motivation.

Want to get some interesting insights into the Supporting Strategies back story? Check out a recent interview with Steve Schultz, our VP of franchise development, on the "Against the Grain" podcast.

Dear Southern California-based entrepreneurs: If you're a little unsettled by LaunchpadLA bowing out of the startup accelerator market, we're here to put your mind at ease.

Facing a group of board members with a pile of presentation notes brings its own particular brand of queasiness. Fortunately for all of you SaaS companies out there, InsightSquared quizzed financial leaders on the five key performance indicators your board needs to hear and how best to present them.

Not everyone could turn a stirring moment on a Moroccan mountaintop into an important lesson in customer relationships, but that's exactly the kind of thing we expect from Mark Jaffe.

We know there are some critical pieces to accounting done right — core elements like separation of duties, process controls and independent bank reconciliations each month. Jim Counts, CPA/CFTA, brought to our attention a recent case of employee theft that illustrates what can happen when those basic principles aren't met.

As we mentioned in our latest e-book, "What You Need to Know About Cloud Accounting," most small or medium-sized businesses can manage their accounting needs using QuickBooks. But there's a big gap in what QuickBooks offers: financial analytics that laypeople can understand. Supporting Strategies client InsightSquared is filling that gap.

There are many reasons why we've had so much success using the cloud accounting tool Bill.com, not least of which is their superb customer service. The company's commitment in this area is well-known, with founder Rene Lacerte covering the merits of it, along with the how-to's, in his popular public speaking appearances and on Inc.com.

I just heard yet another story of a trusted employee embezzling funds from a small business. It happens time and again: A small family business has a trusted employee who handles the deposits and bill paying — while also taking a little something off the top. In this most recent example, the guilty party was a bookkeeper who had worked for the business for years and had become, they thought, like part of the family.

The unfortunate reality is that every employer should know how to protect a small business from embezzlement. But how do you do so without feeling you have to retain day-to-day ownership of the books?

We already knew that Texas and South Carolina are great places for growing companies. After all, both states are home to Supporting Strategies offices where we've seen clients thrive. Now Area Development magazine has chimed in, counting Texas and South Carolina as two of the top states in which to do business. That's good news for all of you out there working to grow your business — or your clients' businesses.

Intuit QuickBooks has long been the 800 lb. gorilla in the accounting software space. But with competitive cloud products like Xero and Intacct gaining steam, is its dominance coming to an end? 

What is small businesses' confidence level in cloud-based accounting software? A new study provides some interesting insights.

In my role as Financial Operations Associate at Supporting Strategies, I often handle cumbersome, multi-page PDFs with only a page or two that I actually need. I've tried different ways to split those unwieldy documents. But the options were expensive, took too much time to use and/or pointed me to an online site I didn't trust with such sensitive material.

Not so long ago, managing our clients' 1099s was a paper- and time-intensive process for Supporting Strategies. That was before our associates started using the cloud accounting solution Track1099.

Laura Bottino had a good thing going in the corporate world. Her career was progressing nicely, and she liked the work. But with a young daughter at home, she decided earlier this year it was time for a change. The path led her to Supporting Strategies, where she now serves as a financial operations associate for our Stamford, Conn., office.

With everything a business owner has to do on a daily basis, it can be hard to find time for strategic and business planning. And yet with 2014 drawing to a close, now is the perfect time to do just that.

We're pleased to announce the recent openings of two more Supporting Strategies offices, in Northern Virginia and Manhattan's Financial District.

Federal immigration rules require that U.S. employers verify the identity of all newly hired employees. Employers must also confirm each new hire's authorization to work. A form called a "Form I-9" must be used for this purpose.

Last year, Supporting Strategies began offering franchise opportunities. Earlier this month, Jeff Coombs of Stamford, Conn., our first franchisee, celebrated his first year in business. He's building an impressive success story for our other franchisees to emulate.

Through our 15 office locations, Supporting Strategies serves hundreds of small businesses from coast to coast. Hear from two clients who rely on us for expert bookkeeping and operational support: 603 Brewery and ISI Technology. 

Posted By: Mark Wald

Posted By: Leslie Jorgensen

Posted By: Leslie Jorgensen

Posted By: Lori Coleman

Posted By: Leslie Jorgensen

Posted By: Mark Wald

I’m partnering with the Santa Monica Small Business Development Center and Process Green to present 2 workshops for entrepreneurs and small business owners this month—they’re FREE so register today!

Posted By: Mark Wald

Big thank you to Marina Lee of the Women in Tech Network for inviting me to the awesome workshop this past Friday at ROC in Santa Monica! The Application Developers Alliance put on an excellent event with a great set of panelists and a very energetic, interesting mix of attendees. Shout out to the event sponsors too, especially Mike Brough from m2catalyst – looking forward to doing some business with you soon, Mike!

originally posted by Gesmer Updegrove

The Five Things You Have to Know to Run a Business Well

Contributor: Mike Gammage

The article at the link below highlights some key changes that are happening to the workplace. Employees that are given the ability to create their own work schedule are able to make time for work and for those activities that are most important to them – family, exercise, you name it! I will add that the option to telecommute also gives employees the freedom from a daily commute – time saved sitting in a car driving to and from an office can be used on much more valuable activities. 6 Ways to Save Your Life -- and Your Company

Several weeks ago we published an article entitled “What does it take to be an outsourced CFO and/or BPO Business” in which we interviewed John and Laura Redmond and Peter Cullen, who separately run two businesses that in some cases blur the lines between being a BPO and/or a CFO type of business.

As we expected, the article was well read, so we are following up that article with a couple more in which we will continue to explore exactly what these types of businesses are, how they operate and how you can turn your business into one (if you are interested in going that route).

Tallie is cloud-based business expense report automation software that streamlines the entire expense management process—from point of purchase to accounting and reimbursement. Tallie provides powerful integrations with leading accounting systems, bill pay & SaaS solutions as well as a suite of enterprise-grade policy compliance, internal control, and analytics tools.

Tallie has been ranked by Inc. Magazine as a Top-50 high-growth software company and named a 2014 Awesome App by The Sleeter Group. Learn more at usetallie.com.

Many small business owners are reluctant to reach out to a bookkeeping services professional. It seems like yet another daunting task in getting your fledgling business up and running. However, poor financial management can be a cause of small business failure. Establishing a strong accounting system is an important part of making your business a success.