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.

Doing payroll can be a very difficult chore for small businesses.  It is not that the tasks are difficult.  However, if a business owner is busy generating sales, doing work, hiring, training and running everything it can be hard to make sure you get all the documents filed and keep everything up to date.  That is why you should use small business payroll services from a good virtual bookkeeping company.

The fact is, missing filling a payroll report or tax payment will not suddenly cause people to show up at your door demand money the next week.  That would almost be better.  What actually happens is month, maybe  years go by until finally you start receiving letters.  By that time, you have probably forgotten the issue and may have trouble finding the needed documents.

Not caring for your payroll taxes in a professional way can lead to many future problems and put your future company in serious peril.  This is just something that is better to do right the first time.  Future you will thank you.

After you have run a business or two and build them from the ground up, things become obvious to you that were not obvious the first time around.

Here are some mistakes that entrepreneurs often make when starting a business.  If you can avoid these, then you will be more likely to succeed.

First, do not have more payroll than you need.  Entrepreneurs often think they need employees as part of the business.  Some do – you are not going to have a restaurant without employees, for example.  However, many types of businesses can operate with contractors or keeping the employees to a minimum.  Payroll should be less than your income, not more.

For example, few new businesses need a full time book keeper, but you can hire an outsourced book keeping company to help you do a lot.

Office space – if you are looking at having an office, you need to ask yourself if you really need one.  You may feel like you need one – because you are starting a business – but is it really required to operate?  You can build a virtual team using online tools to manage them.

Messy financials – When you start out, you do not need to have a very sophisticated process to keep your financials straight.  However, that can sneak up on you because if you ignore book keeping, budgeting and financial issues, eventually you can end up with a mess and it is hard to fix.  The easiest thing is to start out doing it in an organized way.

Legal requirements – this is an area that can really hurt a new business.  Find out about everything you need to file and report.  Missing forms or not filing something may not come back to cause problems for years, but it is terrible to have to dig up old stuff to settle simple issues years after the requirement has passed.  You need to get small business payroll services.

I strongly suggest you start your business off on the right foot by working with a financial expert that can help you keep your costs in line, keep your documents filed on time and help you budget for success.

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.

Recently, an Akron, Ohio, woman was arrested for embezzling money from her employer. The successful real estate developer for whom she worked must have trusted her like family. Not only had she been his personal assistant for many years, she also was a signer on his personal checking account.

This loyal employee is accused of carefully skimming off money for herself. Ten years later, her embezzlement appears to add up to over a $1.78 million dollars.

For a small business owner, even a theft of a few hundred dollars can seriously rock your bottom line. Having internal accounting controls in place can help protect you form loss.

Stealing can take different forms. Retailers call it “inventory shrinkage” – when the stock seems to naturally erode and go missing. Non-profits and small business both struggle with employees everyday “loss” such as using the copier machine for personal use, sending personal packages using office postage accounts, and running their own purchases through as “expenses.”

Even these smaller violations can add up to hundreds – if not thousands – over time. Having the appropriate internal controls can help you keep such loss to a minimum and set clear standards and expectations to keep your team on track, while protecting your bottom line.

When the time comes that you need accounting outsourcing service to evaluate your company’s operations, call Dashboard Accounting. Our professionals will determine if the appropriate internal controls are in place to ensure proper handling of resources. The small business accountants at Dashboard Accounting will help you protect yourself from employee theft.

Evaluating and developing internal controls is one of our specialties. First, we assess the “checks and balances” you already have in place to determine the efficiency and effectiveness of your operating procedures. Then we make recommendations that help your company become stronger and more profitable by fixing any sloppy or weak operating procedures we find.

By outsourcing your small business bookkeeping services, small business payroll services through virtual bookkeeping, you’re in a better position to protect your small business from loss.

Even though the Akron woman may receive a stiff fine and years behind bars if convicted, it does little to repay to lost money and broken relationships that can result from employee-theft situations. Having strong controls will help you avoid such stress so you can focus on what’s most important — your clients.

Contact Dashboard Accounting today. Together, we’ll drive your business forward.

Let’s just be honest and up front and first say that Dashboard Accounting offers a variety of small business payroll services and I hope you will give us a call for a free discussion on your needs.  This article is about the various small business payroll options that can help your business become more organized and save time and money on payroll processing.

While many payroll companies will tell you it is worth while even if you only are processing one payroll, that just depends on what you want.  If you are concerned about not missing deadlines, taking out the right amount the first time and paying the right taxes – then working with a payroll company, a virtual bookkeeper or even your accountant is a great option.  But if you have time to learn about payroll and you are good at being organized and keeping up with payroll law, then there is nothing wrong with doing it yourself and saving a few dollars per month.

What are the other options?

1. Bookkeeper – If you are working with an in house bookkeeper or a virtual bookkeeper, they can easily manage your payroll as part of their duty.  There is payroll software that can make it easy, or you can have them utilize a payroll company and they simply manage the process for you.
2. Direct Payroll Company – If the business owner does not mind putting together the hours and submitting everything, they can work with a payroll company themselves and just provide the reports to the accountant or book keeper.
3. Accountant – often you can work with your accountant as well.  However, before doing this compare prices.  This is often your most expensive option and there is a good chance they are just outsourcing the payroll to a payroll company anyway.  Nothing wrong with that, but the small business may be able to save money with a bookkeeper doing it or doing it directly.

No matter what small business payroll service you chose, try to stick with it for a while and keep your things organized to simplify your book keeping and payroll at year end.

In today’s world, sadly there are so many scams; anywhere from people trying to sell you something fake, to a person who is trying to pass that they are someone, who they are not. Theses scams are everywhere, in every industry, even the Accounting and Finance industry; With the Recent accounting scandals, highlighted by cases at Enron, Arthur Andersen, WorldCom and Qwest.

 That is a scary concept, due to the fact that your accountant has access to all of your financial information. Keep in mind that not all Accountants are “bad guys”. Most accountants do have integrity, reliability and are very trustworthy. There are a few different organizations accounting firms can be members of.

AIPB- The American Institute of Professional Bookkeepers

                http://www.aipb.org/

NACPB- National Association of Certified Public Bookkeepers

                http://www.nacpb.org/

NBA- National Bookkeepers Association

                http://www.nba.org/

The Ohio Society of CPAs

                http://www.ohioscpa.com/Content/home.aspx

Dashboard Accounting is an accounting outsourcing service that you can trust. Owner, Terri Ream, CPA, is dedicated to Integrity, Ethics, Quality and Confidentiality. Terri also makes sure her team is also dedicated and values the same values she has, ensuring the best service for clients. Dashboard Accounting wants to serve as the CFO — bookkeeping accountant for small to medium-sized Cleveland, Akron and northern Ohio. They offer Quick Book Accounting for small to medium sized business, including small business payroll services, controller services, and many other bookkeeping help services.

Contact Dashboard Accounting today and see how they can help you drive your business forward!

You may not understand everything about small business bookkeeping and accounting, but you probably do know it takes both time and commitment to do a good job. 

Keeping track of your personal life – and your personal finances – can be a task in itself. You may find it easier to employ an outsource accountant to do the job for you, if that’s an option.

But when it comes to your business, getting the right accounting solution is huge! Making that decision – deciding what small business accountant to hire, who you can trust, who you can afford for accounting services – is crucial to your business.

The best small business accountant will partner with you, helping you navigate the details important to the success and growth of your company. Beyond what a simple software program (like quick book accounting software) can provide, the right accountant helps steer you toward your goals faster.

If you are a small business owner, you may simply need a outsourced book keeping service or bookkeeping help. These services help keep you up to date and organized; they can keep you posted on transactions that may not be known to you — or even clear to you — so you get an idea of what’s going on with your financials. Solid accounting keeps your business going forward. 

Figuring out payroll can be a headache unto itself. With so many different small business payroll services available, you need to have an idea of what you specifically need them to do for your business in order to find the right one.  It helps to find bookkeeping firms that treats your small business as well as it treats big companies. They should take the time to explain the accounting help they offer. Communication between both parties has to be open and trustworthy.  Professionalism is a must.

You’re already aware that the accounting of a business is a system of recording and summarizing financial transactions so the data can later be analyzed, or used to communicate with others. The accounting process packages financial information for a variety of individual or business purposes.

Small business and entrepreneurs just starting out should remember the Accounting Equation — The value of the things you own (called assets) is equal to the value of what you owe for the things (called liabilities), plus what you don’t owe for (called equity). Of course, transactions can get a lot more complicated… but these principles remain.

For a small business owner, however, financial matters need to be taken care of by a professional. Outsourcing accounting service may be the solution — and often the missing link — in an otherwise well-run business.

Basic knowledge of accounting and bookkeeping is something you need to have. But for today’s small business, small business bookkeeping services are a must for those passionate about success. Dashboard Accounting helps you drive your business forward.

Small businesses are required to keep bookkeeping records to produce a set of accounts to show sales income, business expenses and net profit for tax purposes at the end of the financial year. Medium and larger businesses employ a number of accounts clerks, bookkeepers and accountants just to maintain their financial records and produce regular accounting information on a monthly, quarterly, and annually basis. Small, self employed businesses have a choice on the preparation and production of their financial accounts. They may employ the services of a bookkeeper to produce accounts in the first business while keeping a manual record of the financial transactions on the second while using a bookkeeping software system on the third one.

There are several advantages and disadvantages in producing the financial accounts. Financial control over the business activities and knowledge of the performance of the business is crucial to success. Failure in keeping the financial records results in a succession of administrative burdens and leads to financial penalties if taxation deadlines are not met. If the small business owner chooses the use of bookkeeping software or outsourcing of the financial function to a bookkeeper or accountant, manual records must be kept. The major disadvantage of a small business keeping manual records is that lost documents may result into over declared profits and taxes, inaccurate fines and penalties, and reduced financial control within the business during the financial year to a minimum of zero. Disciplined recording of the financial information on a regular basis must be attained when adopting a manual bookkeeping system; it is to see and understand the financial position of the business to be able to take positive action at the earliest opportunity to achieve satisfactory financial results.

An advantage of having bookkeeping software is that it is more likely keep regular up to date accounts and it is more likely to provide a fixed set of disciplines and produces types of records the business requires for the preparation of regular financial statements and year-end tax returns. Records tend to be less likely to be lost; the packages can be backed up but essential financial performance can be improved by greater financial control. Bookkeeping software comes in formats from a simple spreadsheet to complex data based accounting software.

For a small business, the software of choice is a simple system requiring limited accounting knowledge but must be a package producing the desired result. The software automates the manual keeping of financial records. One must then prepare a regular financial record to improve its financial control, to take financial decisions and achieve desired outcome. The financial records are maintained and regular financial reports are produced. It may be the best solution for a business with a volume of paperwork.

A disadvantage in using a bookkeeper is that the business owner may remove themselves from the detailed records. The second view of the accounts can be important; errors in the management judgment can be noted and bad practices become more evident. Missed documents are more noticed if the owner produces his own records than if being done by an accountant or bookkeeper. A manual bookkeeping system may be sufficient but it may be better served using bookkeeping software to increase financial control and performance.

Some tips on how you can help keep your data