Saturday, March 22, 2008

Tips to Find a Good Accounting Bookkeeping System Service

Where should you start a search to get a good accounting book keeping system service located near your home? Finding an accounting book keeping may not be something you are excited about doing, but I have found that with the proper research it is not impossible. In fact, coming up with a local accounting book keeping system is just like finding any other service, and I have found that all it takes is a little bit of time and a couple of resources. Here are some tips you should remember as you seek out an accounting book keeping system service.

First in your search for a accounting book keeping system service you should do is to figure out what type of bookkeeping system service it is that you need. Many of these services specialize in various parts of book keeping, so it is important that you know what you need before you go looking. For instance, one accounting service may be great if you just need someone to do your taxes for you, but you may want a totally different business if you are looking for help with a small business or something along those lines. In other words, before you start your search for an accounting book keeping system service you need to know exactly what it is that you are looking for.

Once you know what you are seeking in an accounting book keeping system service, then you should start thinking about location. It is true that there are many accounting book keeping system services that are willing to come to you within a certain area, but you need to understand that it is more likely that you will be expected to make an appointment and go to them. With that in mind, limit your search to providers in your area and to which you would not object to traveling.

Now that you know what you want and where you want to find it, you can really start getting together a list of accounting book keeping system services that are going to work for you. As with most any search, I suggest you check on the internet first. If that does not work, or if you want a second resource, you can check your local yellow pages as well, which is always a great source for finding local businesses. To begin, log onto your computer and do a search engine search for accounting book keeping system services located in your area. This may take some savvy in searching, but you should be able to find any in your area that have websites. Many such websites will give you location, soem information about the company, and maybe even some estimated prices. No matter what, though, a company with a website may be showing you that they are an up with the times company that can help you or your small business do the same.

Maybe you do not find what you are looking for online, or maybe the accounting book keeping system service search is one you want to include a couple of different resources. If that is the case, I would suggest your local yellow pages. Usually the yellow pages is available online and is also something you will have in print around yoru home. You may choose to use the print version or the online version of the yellow pages. Either way, you will get much of the information you need including precise location and contact information. Get together a list of the accounting book keeping system services that you have found on line and or in your yellow pages that strike you as possibilities. Once you have done that, you really just need to start getting in contact with each business to find out what services they offer and what their fees are like. The service with the best price and best services for your situation will be the best one for you to hire.

I do not enjoy having to seek out a new service provider of any sort, and I am sure you probably don't either. It is, however, a necessary evil in life sometimes. When the time comes that you must seek out an accounting book keeping system service, or any other daily living service for that matter, for you or your business, just keep the simple tips above in mind. First, make sure you understand what type of book keeping service, exactly, it is that you need. Most of these business specialize, so you need to know which ones to check out. Next, make sure you know how far you are willing to travle for the service. Lastly, start doing your homework by checking out websites and your local yellow pages to find the service that will work best for your particular situation.

If you would like to view more of my articles on book keeping services, please feel free to visit my accounting book keeping website!

Tax Tips for New Ecommerce Entrepreneurs

New ecommerce entrepreneurs can find them confused and confounded by the tax and accounting requirements of their venture. And that’s a shame: If someone’s spotted a great new category and successfully built a web presence, heck, that someone shouldn’t find themselves bogged down with the accounting minutia. The entrepreneur should focus on increasing traffic, expanding margins, and growing cash profits.

With that in mind, I offer up the following tax and accounting tips:

Tip #1: Don’t Incorporate

A true corporation—whether a C corporation or an S corporation—saddles your business with more complicated tax accounting and a bunch of state filing requirements. You don’t want to deal with this redtape—or at least not until you’re profitable.

Instead, operate your business as a sole proprietorship. If you’re concerned about legal liability protection, note that you can setup a one-owner limited liability company, or LLC. A one owner LLC is treated as a sole proprietorship for income tax purposes.

Tip #2: Start Your Business Before Making Investments

Expenditures you make before you’re actually in business-in other words, before you’ve got a business license and before you’re selling or trying to sell your stuff—aren’t very deductible.

Specifically, you can probably deduct the first $5,000 of these expenses. But any amounts in excess of the $5,000 must be amortized over the next fifteen years.

What this means is that you want to start your business before you start spending money on advertising, training, web development, accountants and lawyers and so on.

Tip #3: Automate Your Bookkeeping & Accounting

By law—and some people don’t know this—you’re required to maintain an accounting system that lets you clearly measure your income. As a practical matter, this means you need to use a product like Quicken or QuickBooks.

But you ought to go one better than simply using desktop accounting software. Make sure that you’re taking advantage of online banking and bill payment features which integrate your accounting system with your banking. As much as is possible, for example, you want to be able to move money from PayPal to your bank to QuickBooks simply by typing a few keys or clicking your mouse a few times.

Tip #4: Hire a Payroll Service Before Hiring Employees

Many successful ecommerce business owners can run their operations without employees. And if that’s true for you, hey, congratulations. If and when you do need employees, however, don’t try to handle the payroll yourself. Oursource the payroll to one of the large payroll service bureaus like ADP, Payroll, or QuickBooks.

These services are expensive. Figure $1000 to $2000 per year. But the services let you avoid the bookkeeping nightmare called payroll and prevent you from getting into payroll tax trouble.

Tip #5: Consider S Corporation Status After You’re Profitable

I’ve written and talked much about how S corporations save taxpayers money and how the right way to set up an S corporation is first create a limited liability company and then ask the IRS to treat the LLC as an S corporation for tax purposes.

Let me review the basics here again, however. Suppose that you’re making $90,000 a year off your web site. If you just treat your business as a sole proprietorship—or an LLC treated as a sole proprietorship—you might pay $12,000 in income taxes on the $90,000 and then another 15.3% self-employment tax, or roughly $13,500 on the $90,000.

If you set up an LLC and have the LLC treated as an S corporation, you’ll still pay the same $12,000 in income taxes. But you’ll only pay the 15.3% self-employment tax on that portion of the profit that you categorize as wages. If you categorize, say, $50,000 of the profits as wages, you’ll pay $7,500 in self-employment taxes. (The other $40,000 in remaining profits, by the way, gets paid out as a dividend-like “distribution.”)

Note, then, that the S corporation saves you roughly $6,000 every year. Sweet, right?

Starting an eCommerce business? Looking for some easy ways to save taxes and minimize headaches? Consider these tax and accounting tips from QuickBooks for Dummies author Stephen L. Nelson, CPA.

Texas LLC formation expert Stephen L. Nelson CPA has written more than 150 books. Formerly an adjunct tax professor at Golden Gate University, Nelson is also the author of QuickBooks for Dummies. He also edits the s corp web site.

Five Accounting Tips for Your Small Business

Tip #1: Keep it Separated

Too many business owners mix and mingle their personal and professional finances. Even if you are a sole proprietor keep you business business, and your personal personal. Set up separate checking accounts and if you need some funds from your small business, write yourself a check, or make a cash withdrawal. This will help come tax time when you need to separate business expenses. Even though the form of business is a path-through, you should still make sure a separation takes place. This will make expense tracking and budgeting much easier on you.

Tip #2: Keep Up to Date

Falling behind on your bookkeeping will only make matters worse. Set a specific time aside to deal primarily with record keeping. This will make tax time easier and quicker for you or your accountant. If you simply do not have the time necessary to complete the task, then look at outsourcing the work, or bringing in a part-time bookkeeper. This necessary function of business is so crucial to the success of the business that if cannot be put off and forgotten.

Tip #3: Use Your Numbers

Your financials can tell you a lot about your business, you just have to know what to look for. Check with your financial guru (CPA, bookkeeper, financial analyst, and/or consultant) at least quarterly and have them give you a thorough breakdown of your financial position. These individuals should be able to give you a written and oral report on how your business is functioning. Which areas are weak, and which are strong. Along with that they should also provide advice and an action plan on how you can go about strengthening your financial position.

Tip #4: Know When to Recognize

Recognizing revenue and expenses can make a difference in how your business performs month-to-month and how your taxes are calculated. If you use the accrual basis accounting system your year and month end numbers will be quite different then the cash basis accounting. Be sure you know what accounting method you are using, and how to recognize revenues and expenses correctly.

Tip #5: Check, Check, and Double Check

If you do not use an automated accounting software program (QuickBooks, Peachtree, Great Plains, etc) then there is a chance you will not balanced at the end of every period. By using a Trial Balance you can catch mistakes early and often, this saves from year-end headaches and added expense from your CPA while he/she finds the problem associated with your calculation error. Even if you use accounting software you can still enter erroneous information, be sure to reconcile your bank account against the program every month, this will allow you to catch errors that may have happened when filling out checks, invoices, or journals entries.

Jayson Cardwell is the Founder and President of Serium Consulting, LLC a non-profit and church consultancy. Serium Consulting specializes in helping board members, directors, pastors, and leaders in the business aspects of running an organization. This is accomplished through consulting in the areas of Financial Management, Analysis, Strategic Planning, Executive Development, Organizational Development, and Management Consulting.

For more information about Serium Consulting and how they can help you visit them on the web at http://www.SeriumConsulting.com

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Double Check Your Annual Payroll Figures and Tax

Payroll administration is a specialized section of accounting. Payroll software lightens the burden on many employers significantly. If used properly, a payroll system can add value to the business.

The biggest source of revenues for tax authorities is employee tax. Tax regimes are mindful of this, so regular audits and inspections are conducted on the payrolls of businesses.

A common discrepancy is the variance in total salaries for a year, in the income statement of the business, and the actual salaries paid. When business tax returns are furnished, the salaries amount may differ from payroll salaries declared for tax. The relevant tax office could identify this anomaly, and demand an audit. Stiff penalties could be levied.

Since software makes life easy, many users may be unfamiliar with the double entry that should integrate with the accounting system, which in turn is relevant for tax returns. A manual process of double-checking payroll totals and how it relates to the accounting system should be performed.

Please note that cash or bank payments to employees do not constitute total salaries. This is a common mistake and leads to numerous problems later on. I will expound by way of this example below,

Salaries and wages DR

Taxes and other deductions CR

Bank/cash (difference between the two above) CR

Taxes and deductions DR

Bank/cash CR

Analyze payroll schedules carefully, and determine if it conforms to the above sequence. If it does not, than that explains why your payroll does not balance with your ledgers and/or salaries expense.

For a large payroll, the help of a payroll accountant will be needed. The software supplier should ensure that the payroll software interfaces with the accounting software, or alternatively, produces accurate reports that enables bookkeeper to post the transactions to the accounting books.

A majority of audits on small to medium sized businesses targets tax, salaries and special perk discrepancies. Annual reviews of payroll figures will go a long way in addressing the above-mentioned shortcomings.

Accounting and finance related queries can be addressed, on our website.

Feel free to visit Sean Goss's site by clicking on the url below.

website: http://www.sgafc.co.za

Payroll Accounting Software

Payroll accounting software is essentially a comprehensive tool that has been designed to be able to the accounting needs of small businesses, companies, institutions, non-profit organizations, multinational corporations, as well as other institutions. This software helps in calculating tax withholdings, employee wages, salaries, bonuses, and tax deductions through an accurate yet timely manner.

This kind of software has a lot of features that minimizes manual labor as well as paperwork. It would be the perfect choice to be able to keep track of the weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual paychecks, as well as the payroll tax-related forms. Additionally, it helps in preparing the comprehensive MIS reports, return forms, utilities, transaction entries, graphical representation and master entries. Through the utilization of payroll accounting software, you would be able to eliminate a substantial amount of time and effort required in manual processes, as well as make the processing of payment a lot more accurate, simpler and quicker.

This is able to easily integrate with the accounting systems, the general ledger, as well as the vertical business solutions. A lot of the available payroll accounting software has numerous options and can incorporate easily to the present environment you are in.

Today, there is a wide selection of different payroll software packages, which are available online at very affordable prices. Choosing which payroll accounting software would be best for you could be a challenge because of the big number of the companies offering them. You could always try out a product before purchasing to make sure that it would be one that would fit your requirements.

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Outsourcing Your Payroll Processing - A Great Way To Save Valuable Time And Money

Outsourcing your payroll is one of the most used solutions to companies that are looking for an economical payroll solution. The basic concept is that by utilizing a processing company you are using an expert group of professionals to manage your company payroll needs. Accuracy and reliability are the minimum requirements of a payroll processing organization.

This will allow companies the opportunity to concentrate on developing other departments and concentrate on marketing and product development. By relieving companies the burden of having to staff an in-house payroll department and the expense software that is required to maintain their records.

Outsourcing your payroll to a reliable, professional company will ensure timely employee checks and deposits of federal taxes. Managing and processing your employees checks includes, court required payments, pension contributions, employee record management and accurate reports. In addition, most processing company's mange the timely filing of your payroll tax obligations to the IRS for federal reporting, by keeping track of deadlines and constantly changing laws and reporting requirements.

Proper communication and set with the service company will avoid confusion from the start and throughout their service time. Most processing services are flexible and easily integrate themselves into your business easily. Utilizing an outsourced processing service allows a number of options that would otherwise not be available to your employees, such as debit cards, online reporting and the ability to store and maintain their paycheck stubs.

Many processing services use custom software that is capable of generating checks, reports processing taxes, calculating deductions as soon as the payroll is entered into their system. Taxes are deposited into the appropriate accounts right away, so you will not have to worry about them getting paid on time and will avoid costly penalties and possible fines.

With the advancements in technology and the internet, several companies have begun to offer online processing. A web-based system allows users to securely and accurately process their payroll and print reports and paychecks in there our office.

Processing using an online portal provides a great deal of flexibility for the employer. You can maintain your employee records online, manage your payroll taxes, monitor your expenses and even print checks right from your own computer. All without additional software to purchase, processing online makes great business sense.

When it comes to outsourcing your payroll, by either utilizing a company online or not, there is a good possibility that you will save a lot of time not to mention money. Money that is better on the bottom line.

Thomas Bladecki is the author, you can find additional information about payroll processing, employee management and the latest news about human resources by visiting The Payroll Company

Checklist for Best Business Payroll Accounting Software

The number of small businesses continues to rise. Not all people are like the bigger companies that are able to hire some professional payroll personnel. Paper accounting is actually starting to be considered obsolete and the smaller businesses today are requiring accounting payroll software solutions which would be able to help in saving time, money and effort simultaneously.

Here is a payroll accounting software checklist.

1. The software solution you would be getting must include and use the latest payroll tax computations.

2. The software that you would be purchasing must save you and your company time.

3. The software that you would be using should be able to assure invoices, statements, compatibility checks, payroll tax forms, printable catalog and more.

4. Regardless of the amount of revenue that is generated by your company, you would be needing an accounting software that would be used by your small business that has less than 500 employees.

5. Check that it has real-time modules that could be personalized and customized , based on the operators that is within the same file, which would keep your data updated and readily accessible.

6. The payroll accounting software that you would be using must be portable to the 600 various platforms.

7. Verify if the improvements of the software has been developed.

8. It must have a culmination of checks and payroll, general ledger, after the fact journal, accounts payable, as well as payroll system and accounts receivables.

9. Your chosen payroll accounting software must have the ability to accommodate different types of client reports.

10. It should also be flexible and versatile enough to handle a significant amount of data entry.

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