An outsourced bookkeeper can help you protect your data.   Any business that has lost their accounting computer data has a higher chance of business failure.   By using Dashboard Accounting to outsource your bookkeeping, you can be confident your data is backed up and secure. 

There are many different backup methods available.  When choosing the right option, consider these questions:

• Will the data be available when you have a hard disk failure
• Will the data be available in a disaster, such as a flood
• How long will it take to have your data restored
• Is your data secure
• How often is your data backed up

You may need a combination of backups to solve your needs and protect your data.   

Outsourcing bookkeeping to a company is a huge value.   We take away the complexity of determining if your data is safe and secure.   A professional bookkeeping company like Dashboard Accounting does nothing but maintain great people and systems in the United States that do bookkeeping for companies in Cleveland, Akron or anywhere.  There is a good chance Dashboard Accounting can lower your costs, improve your bookkeeping and eliminate the bookkeeper churn headache.

A small business accountant can assist you with obtaining money for your business.

One key to successful business start-up and expansion is your ability to obtain and secure appropriate financing.   Raising capital is one of the most basic of all business activities.  Raising capital may not be easy; in fact, it can be a complex and frustrating process.

However, if you are informed and have planned effectively, raising money for your business will not be a painful experience. Professional guidance should be considered in this quest, especially as to the financial information for the loan proposal.

This Financial Guide focuses on ways a small business can raise money and explains how to prepare a loan proposal.

Finding Sources Of Money

There are several sources to consider when looking for financing. It is important to explore all of your options before making a decision. These include:

• Personal Savings. The primary source of capital for most new businesses comes from savings and other forms of personal resources. While credit cards are often used to finance business needs, there may be better options available, even for very small loans.
• Friends And Relatives. Many entrepreneurs look to private sources such as friends and family when starting out in a business venture. Often, money is loaned interest free or at a low interest rate, which can be beneficial when getting started.
• Banks And Credit Unions. The most common source of funding, banks and credit unions, will provide a loan if you can show that your business proposal is sound.
• Venture Capital Firms. These firms help expanding companies grow in exchange for equity or partial ownership.

For additional information, see the Dashboard Accounting website.   Dashboard Accounting can assist your company with bookkeeping in Akron and Clevelan.   We can be the accountant for your small business, handling your bookkeeping and payroll.

Pricing your product or service is one of the most important things you will do in your business.  Not only can Dashboard Accounting assist you with outsourced bookkeeping, we also help our clients set or review the pricing of their product or service. 

Your prices must be high enough to cover your costs and return a profit, but still appeal to customers. 

Businesses have two types of costs:  Variable Cost and Fixed Cost.  Variable costs are the actual costs of your materials, product or service.  They are “variable” because they are linked to volume. The more you make or sell, the higher your costs.  Fixed costs are  include such things as rent, rates, wages, etc, which remain the same regardless of volume. —A common reason why people under price their products is they fail to add up all their fixed costs. 

 There are several methods of pricing, which can be combined to create the correct price for your product or service:

Four methods are common:

• Cost-plus

This is the simplest form of pricing. In this pricing strategy, you take the “Cost Price” of the product and you add to it how much profit you would like to make per unit sold. What you get is the “Selling Price”.

It’s very simple logic: Cost Price/unit + Profit/unit = Price/unit or Selling Price/unit

• Job costing

Using this method, you complete a job card for each job, detailing the direct materials and direct labor used. You then add a proportion of your fixed costs.

• Process costing

In this method, whether one or multiple products are made, the cost of the manufactured item is based on total cost of the batch.

Simply add up all costs and divide by the total number of units produced to get a cost per unit.

Then add mark-up.

• Service costing

When you sell services, knowledge, and expertise, you are effectively selling your time. If you’re selling time, you can only deliver so many “billable hours’” per day/week/year.

The first key question to ask is, How many hours can you realistically sell in a year?

Follow this simple four-step process:

1. Work out how many billable hours you can realistically sell
2. Calculate the charge-out rate for your direct labor costs
3. Allow for a proportion of your fixed costs
4. These two costs added together will give you the required hourly charge-out rate

Take into account the time taken up in marketing, planning, finance and administration.

Score has a free seminar on pricing: http://www.score.org/Pricing_Products.html which reviews this information.

Dashboard Accounting can help you with your outsourced bookkeeping.   We work virtually with clients anywhere, including Cleveland and Akron.

Whether your bookkeeping is outsourced or not,  preparing and using budgets is an important tool for your success.  Why spend time budgeting?

• A budget can greatly enhance your chances of success by helping you estimate future needs and plan profits, spending and overall cash flow.
• A budget allows you to perceive problems before they occur and alter your plans to prevent those problems.
• Budgets help you determine how much money you have and how you will use it
• Budgets help you determine whether you have enough money to achieve your financial goals.
• A budget can help convince a banker that you know your business and have calculated its needs.
• Budges help measure performance.
• A Budget can be used to perform “What If” scenarios on changes in income and expenses.

 When you’re running a business, it’s easy to get bogged down in day-to-day problems and forget the bigger picture. However, successful businesses invest time to create and manage budgets, prepare and review business plans and regularly monitor finance and performance.

Dashboard Accounting

330-908-0888

8536 Crow Drive, Suite 120

Macedonia, Ohio 44056

www.DashboardAccounting.com

Press Release on Workshop for Budget Planning

Are you looking for bookkeeping help in Cleveland or Akron?  Have you considered outsourced bookkeeping?

Outsourcing is not a new concept.   Currently, the following services are often outsourced:  Payroll, Pension Management, Taxes, Property Management, Mass marketing campaigns, Legal services and Insurance Services.

The construction industry is an example of a business model which outsources many tasks:   Electrician, Painter, Plumber, Carpenter…   In this arrangement, the General Contractor still has the responsibility for the project’s success.   You cannot delegate responsibility. 

This is often forgotten when a small business outsources bookkeeping.  Outsourced bookkeeping does not relieve the business owner of the responsibility for the company bookkeeping.   You cannot transfer ultimate responsibility. 

The rewards for outsourced bookkeeping can be high as long as the relationship and process is managed.   

Benefits to outsourcing are:

• Operating cost reduction or control
• Reducing current/future capital expenditures
• Flexibility to increase or decrease volume efficiently
• Quality improvement
• Obtaining current and ongoing expertise. 

What are the keys to outsourced bookkeeping while maintaining responsibility?  The keys are:

• Define what you want to outsource
• Review vendor’s certifications.   Do they have CPA’s on staff, Are they in the software they support. 
• Does the vendor have the proper business insurance?
• How will the workflow be handled?
• When will your books be completed/how often?
• Does the company assist you in interpreting your results?
• Does the company have proper segregation of duties?
• Are the appropriate security measures in place to protect your data?
• Is you work completed outside the US? 
• Are written procedures provided for the workflow?

You can fulfill your responsibility while outsourcing by evaluating the answers to the above questions and reviewing your results on a regular basis. 

When you think through this process, it is easy to see that outsourcing bookkeeping to a company is a huge value.    A professional bookkeeping company like Dashboard Accounting does nothing but maintain great people and systems in the United States that do bookkeeping for companies in Cleveland, Akron or anywhere.  There is a good chance Dashboard Accounting can lower your costs, improve your bookkeeping and eliminate the bookkeeper churn headache.  Plus they are offering up to 2 free hours of consultation just to see if there is an opportunity.  Why not book your free book keeping assessment today?

If you’re like many small business owners, you handle payroll yourself. Maybe you don’t trust using small business payroll services. Perhaps you get pleasure in personally handling the money, when each of your employees gets paid. Maybe you’re trying to save a few bucks by keeping it in-house instead of using a small business bookkeeping service.

Cutting paychecks once was much easier. But thanks to today’s laws… deductions and the IRS… the simple task of paying your staff has evolved into a time-consuming nightmare.

In fact, many payroll do-it-yourselfers don’t even realize how much time they spend on payroll alone. Recent studies showed that small business owners spend an average of eight hours a month performing payroll functions.

That’s 12 full days a year — over two working weeks! Wouldn’t that be better spent generating sales, prospecting new business opportunities, improving products or services, or servicing customers?

Instead of working on payroll, you could be generating more business so you actually can make payroll. Instead of cutting checks, you could be collecting them – from fresh sales.

In today’s competitive economy, it makes sense to outsource bookkeeping help and payroll, with small business accountant solutions that meet your business’s needs. Letting go of this one task will quickly let you to spend more time doing what you do best… like running your company.

Here’s why you should outsource your payroll:

• Save money – Use your staff more efficiently by letting professionals handle payroll and the associated legal details. This allows you to better contain your overhead, removing expense of specialized employees.
   
• Save time – Outsourced payroll services eliminate the hassle of customizing, updating and maintaining your own payroll system. No more data entry… no more researching updates or stressing about new laws… no more worries.
   
• Worry-Free Tax Filing – Eliminate the risks of calculating and filing your own payroll taxes. Have professional CPAs do it for you. Federal, state and local payroll tax laws always seem to be changing, becoming more complex. Your time can be better spent than researching new rules and updates.
• Easy-to-Understand Payroll Reports – You get a wide variety of user-friendly and accurate payroll reports. For a tiny fee, we can even include union reports, certified payroll, workers’ compensation reports and much more.
• Let the pros handle it - Our professional staff allows you to focus on the core competencies of your business. You get true accounting professionals working for you and with you.

When you’re ready for book keeping service — whether you need bookkeeping Akron or bookkeeping Cleveland — there are many bookkeeping firms and bookkeeping businesses from which to choose. At Dashboard Accounting, we specialize in virtual bookkeeping and outsource small business accounting services, giving our clients the complete financial picture and expert advice — all at a price that makes sense. We’re also QuickBooks certified, and can train you on small business software tax, payroll, and serve as a general accounting software consultant. For more details, go to www.DashboardAccounting.com.

A Business Owner utilizing a traditional bookkeeping accountant, in which they send all their financial information to bookkeeping firms at the end of the month, may wait weeks before receiving the results of the financial reports.  Months could pass before the Business Owner realizes potential problems, and the losses could be huge!

Dashboard Accounting’s utilization of Real Time Virtual Bookkeeping provides Daily, Weekly, and Monthly financial reports that are available to view at anytime.  This means the Business Owner no longer has to wait until the end of the business cycle to analyze the company’s performance!

The timely financial reporting gained from Real Time Bookkeeping is an invaluable benefit from utilizing  Dashboard Accounting for your company’s accounting needs.  The Business Owner is empowered to make intelligent decisions and allows time for critical adjustments to prevent weeks of lost income.

Let Dashboard Accounting be your company’s small business accountant, and enjoy all the cost savings that outsourced book keeping provides.  Dashboard Accounting uses Quick Book accounting software and has Quick Book Pro advisors.  Dashboard Accounting is centrally located to easily accommodate bookkeeping Cleveland and bookkeeping Akron needs or may service anyone worldwide utilizing virtual bookkeeping.

Dashboard Accounting can handle all the bookkeeping needs for companies in the Cleveland/Akron area. 

QuickBooks in a hosted environment is utilized as the accounting software.  Tax filings are handled correctly and on time.  Tax planning and education is available.  For instance, interpretation of the 2009 Tax Law Stimulus is provided.

One of the business tax incentives from this act to consider is the Work Opportunity Tax Credit. 

The Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC) is an incentive given to employers to hire disadvantaged workers in certain targeted groups.  The amount of the credit available to an employer is determined by the amount of qualified first-year wages paid by the employer.

The 2009 Act expands the WOTC to include two new targeted group:

• Unemployed veterans, generally defined as those (1) discharged or released from active duty from the Armed Forces during the five-year period ending on the hiring date and (2) receiving unemployment compensation for at least four weeks during the one-year period ending on the hiring date.
• Disconnected youth, meaning individuals certified as (1) having reached age 16 but not attaining age 25 on the hiring date; (2) not regularly attending any secondary, technical, or post-secondary school during the six months prior to the hiring date;  (3) not regularly employed during that six-month period;  and (4) not readily employable by reason of lacking a sufficient number of basic skills.  

The WOTC is available to employers hiring members of these new targeted groups who begin work during 2009 or 2010. 

Please contact Dashboard Accounting to set up an appointment to review your Cleveland/Akron business and your bookkeeping.

Virtual Bookkeeping is an important element for your payroll software small business process management.

Payroll software is good at managing your payroll, but you have probably heard the expression – Garbage In, Garbage Out.  You need to find a virtual bookkeeper that will take your business payroll data entry seriously and not make errors that could result in future fees and unexpected expenses.

Working with a bookkeeping firm, such as Dashboard Accounting, which is a bookkeeping Akron firm, has some huge advantages over just outsourcing bookkeeping to an individual.  For example, if you are outsourcing your bookkeeping to one person and they get ill or close their practice, what happens to your books?  A firm that specializes in outsource bookkeeping with local talent will give you the best of all worlds.  The costs will be lower than an in house book keeper.  The security of multiple, local bookkeepers gives you more peace of mind.  And in the case of Dashboard Accounting, having a certified CPA in Akron as an owner is a huge advantage.

If you would like to schedule a consultation with Dashboard Accounting to review small business payroll software, bookkeeping and Quickbooks services, Contact us.