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.