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.

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.

Need Accounting help? When understanding accounting and the different terms accounting uses, it’s often ideal to start at the beginning. This is so one can start out having basic common knowledge of the terms.

When discussing Liabilities, there are two different kinds of liabilities. One being Current assets and the other being long-term liabilities.

A liability is known as the obligations and or debt of a business.

Current liabilities are the obligations that will be taken care of within one year or the current operating term.

The following is a list of the current liabilities. These liabilities the company should be prepared to pay quickly.

Accounts Payable- Our vendors, this is to cover the cost of our inventory, goods, and or services acquired.

Notes Payable

Taxes Payable- This is broken down to the Income Tax, Property tax, and Payroll Tax.

Long term liabilities are the obligations that will take longer than a year to take care of them.

Long term liabilities are known as

Leases

Deferred Taxes

Pension Obligations

Dashboard Accounting offers outsourced bookkeeping and Accounting for small business owners around the Cleveland/Akron area.  Call Dashboard Accounting today to see how they can help you drive your business forward!

Dashboard Accounting

330-908-0888

8536 Crow Drive, Suite 120

Macedonia, Ohio 44056

www.DashboardAccounting.com

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.

Dashboard Accounting is beneficial to the company that:

• Cannot afford to staff an accounting department, but recognizes the necessity of having one.
• Does their bookkeeping their self, but wants to free up time and needs help
• Has a bookkeeper but is unable to manage them.
• Needs to utilize their financial information to assist with decision-making.
• Wants to reduce costs by outsourcing the bookkeeping.

What Dashboard Accounting can do for your company:

• Function as the Accounting Department for your small or medium-sized company.
• Complete bookkeeping tasks on a daily basis.
• Assist in interpreting your financial data.
• Assist with current year budgeting.
• Assist with forecasting and strategic planning.
• Assist with tax planning and tax filing.
• Ensure a secure environment for all financial data

Dashboard Accounting Services Include:

Accounts Receivable Processing

• Record sales invoices
• Invoice customers
• Send customer statements

Accounts Payable Processing

• Process vendor invoices
• Process approved vendor payments

Payroll

• Record third party payroll
• Prepare payroll
• Prepare payroll tax returns

Reconcile Balance Sheet Accounts

Controller Services

• Supervise and review bookkeeper
• Quarterly phone consultation
• Monthly financial report package
• Monthly “Dashboard Report”
• Quarterly management letter

Control Review

• Review management internal control
• Review standard operating procedures
• Review backup procedures

When looking to outsource, not only should you look at small business bookkeeping services, but make sure you use a small business accountant.

Dashboard Accounting offers outsourced bookkeeping and Accounting for small business owners around the Cleveland/Akron area.  Call Dashboard Accounting today to see how they can help you drive your business forward!

Dashboard Accounting

330-908-0888

www.DashboardAccounting.com

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

If you are working with an outsourced bookkeeper, you are going to have to find ways to collaborate on Quickbooks with your virtual bookkeeper.  The traditional way was always to send files back and forth.  Of course, this is not easy, could pose a security risk and requires people to know how to restore the backups to see the new view of the financials.

Today that is really not necessary.

Today a professional bookeeping service can collaborate with you on your quickbooks in several different ways.  Dashboard Accounting, for example, has a secure server that hosts Quickbooks and provides remote access for book keeper and for client.  That way everyone is seeing the latest version of the bookkeeping live.

Other ways to do it is to remote into an office machine if you want to keep your books on site.

Also, Quickbooks online is an option for some small businesses that want to have a collaborative environment.  This option costs a little more per month, but is easier to take with you later if you chance bookkeepers.

That fact is, there are many options for virtual bookkeeping and today you should not be emailing files back and forth to update your accounting.

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?

Need Accounting help? When understanding accounting and the different terms accounting uses, its often ideal to start at the beginning. This is so one can start out having basic common knowledge of the terms.

When discussing Assets, there are two different kinds of assets. One being Current assets and the other being noncurrent assets.

Current assets are known also as short-term and liquid assets. The current assets are made up of the company’s cash, cash equivalents and also short-term investments. The reason these are considered current assets is because they will be turned into cash, sold or consumed into the business within one year.

Noncurrent assets are the second type, and included in this type is the fixed and long-term assets. With in this category is the item the company does not expect to be sold or consumed into the business within one year.

Dashboard Accounting offers outsourced bookkeeping and Accounting for small business owners around the Cleveland/Akron area.  Call Dashboard Accounting today to see how they can help you drive your business forward!

Dashboard Accounting

330-908-0888

8536 Crow Drive, Suite 120

Macedonia, Ohio 44056

www.DashboardAccounting.com

Need QuickBooks Help?

Did you know there’s a website that is designed to find all the QuickBooks ProAdvisors in your area? Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisors are typically CPAs, accountants, small business advisors or consultants who have been tested and certified on QuickBooks.

ProAdvisors help businesses customize QuickBooks for their unique needs and help them get the most out of the software. ProAdvisors are also a great resource if you run into trouble with QuickBooks. Go to http://quickbooks.intuit.com/product/training/local_expert.jsp

Make sure you rate your Proadvisor.

Many of Staff members of Dashboard Accounting are QuickBooks Proadvisors and are willing and happy to help with any and all of your QuickBooks needs, from QuickBooks Pro to QuickBooks Payroll.

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