If you are a small business owner and you have been trying to do your own bookkeeping, you may find yourself in a situation where those documents come from the IRS or from the state taxation office and you really do not know what to do.  It might just be that you filed the wrong form or you did not know you needed to do something – and even if you do not owe money, you can still get financial penalties for skipping a report or missing a deadline.

If you have good bookkeeping help with a reputable bookkeeping firm you should be able to ask them to handle the issue for you.  1st, your virtual bookkeeper can call everyplace and figure out what the issues are.  Next they can help you organize the forms you need and lastly they should be able to help you through the process of resolving the issue.

Of course, if you have an internal bookkeeping staff, they should be doing this for you.  But if you are working with an outsourced bookkeeping firm you might not know that they can often do it for you as well.  This saves the small business owner a lot of time and will probably save them a lot of money too  – by addressing the tax issues quickly and getting them resolved.

Dashboard Accounting is pleased to announce that QuickBooks 2010 is now available. The 2010 series offers QuickBooks Premier, QuickBooks Pro, QuickBooks Simple Start, QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions, QuickBooks Payroll, QuickBooks Cash Register Plus, QuickBooks Point of Sale, QuickBooks Point of Sale Hardware Peripherals, and Merchant Service for QuickBooks.

Some Key points to look at that are new for 2010 is…

 Client Data Review. This is compared to spell check, it will help you find errors and fix the client entry errors.

Report Center.  View recently-run Reports, create “Favorites” of the reports you use the most!

Clean Up Company Data Wizard- Maximize efficiency and Condense older transactional data!

Online Banking. You choose, which style you like better, Online banking in 2008 or 2009.

Forms Customization- Improved. Easier and faster to change the forms into what your company wants and needs. Add logo, change color and fonts, add shading and borders. If your company is professional, look professional!

That was only a few of the improvements that come with QuickBooks 2010.

Do you need Book keeping help in the Northern part of Ohio? Let Dashboard Accounting be your Accounting department. Dashboard Accounting offers great services from outsource bookkeeping to controller and tax work with great prices.

Contact Dashboard Accounting to see how they can help you DRIVE YOUR BUSINESS FORWARD!!!

Small businesses can leverage technology to accomplish a lot of things on a much smaller budget these days.

Take outsourcing for example.  Most people hear outsourcing and assume India or Russia.  But what outsourcing also includes in simply having people that work elsewhere manage parts of your tasks for you.  So, for example, the virtual bookkeeping services for small business could be being done 1 mile down the road.  It is just being outsourced to remote people.

Dashboard Accounting, for example, has all of their employees in Ohio and simply provides all the services of having your own in house financial departments but at a greatly reduced rate and with a lot less headaches.

Virtual Bookkeeping is something that can greatly simplify a business owner’s life and help them grow the business.  In fact, you should take advantage of talking with dashboard accounting because they offer a one hour session that could well save you money and improve your profitability.  And there is no risk to you.

Ever feel like a fire fighter?

As a small business owner, you may feel like you’re running non-stop – putting out one fire after another – without the time to really focus on the details of your business.

It’s easy to get behind and let the smaller tasks, like reconciling your bank statements. You know, the ones piling up on your desk. Trouble is that some of those smaller tasks on your accounting to-do list can turn into a real disaster if you don’t stay on top of things.

With Dashboard Accounting, there’s no reason to get behind.

When you need bookkeeping help – even part-time bookkeeping can make a huge difference for the health of your business.

Look at your bank reconciliations, for instance. If you’ve got a pile of envelopes from the bank filled with bank statements that deserve your attention, outsourced bookkeeping is a solution to consider to get it done – to protect your business.

Reconciling your business checking account each and every month allows your outsourced bookkeeper to keep your bank account, accounting, and taxes up-to-date.

Having Dashboard Accounting reconcile your account each month is one more level of protection against theft, loss and costly accounting errors.

Each month, we’ll help you:

• Identify lost checks, lost deposits and unauthorized wire transactions.
   
• Detect and prevent excess (and unnecessary) bank charges, ensuring all transactions are posted correctly by your bank.
   
• Detect and prevent embezzlement of funds from within your company.
   
• Keep you up to date on how your business is doing (You can’t really know where you are financially unless all accounts are reconciled, then properly accounted for on your financial statement.)
   
• Allow you to manage your cash better.
   
• Protect yourself from any unauthorized, fraudulent or forged checks presented to your bank and paid by that bank. (You can relieve your business of any responsibility for the shortfall of funds on your part, and transfer that risk to the bank. With the increase in crime, this reason to reconcile alone should be enough!)
   
• Ease your stress, knowing your bank accounts are reconciled, balanced and that all accounts, checks and disbursed funds are properly accounted for.

 Something as simple as checking over your bank statement against your activity can help protect you from risk and make your business stronger. No need to handle it yourself when you can outsource the hassle to the professionals at Dashboard Accounting. We’re here to help!

A Small Business Adventure, from your small business accountant

You have a treasure map … written in code, with hidden clues – to reveal buried treasures … even in the future! In its quest, there will be obstacles, challenges – possible peril – and some digging. If you could learn to read the codes, piece together the clues, chart your course along the map, and know, in advance, the tools needed to unearth your fortune – would you do it?

Here’s your chance.

Are you sitting on a buried treasure or a ticking time bomb? At any moment, and especially in this economic climate, do you know exactly where your business stands financially, according to industry benchmarks, and how to access its future fortunes? Two experienced guides will be leading a small group of business owners to do just that. FutureQuestNow is a hands-on lab workshop where you acquire and master the skills, tools and insights to map out a 2010 Financial Plan and three year strategic plan for your business. One-to-one consulting for this assistance typically costs a few thousand dollars; in this small guided group, it costs a few hundred.

Terri Ream, President of Dashboard Accounting LLC in Macedonia, and Eileen Sass, President of Sass Accounting Services LLC in Copley – both highly accomplished CPAs presiding over successful companies, with over five decades of combined experience – have led thousands of business owners on this journey to discover financial responsibility, prosperity and autonomy. Do you have what it takes to rough the seas of change on your own? Then hop aboard and learn how.

The Treasure Map

A financial statement: do you know how to read one? A banker knows how to read its clues, see “into the future”, and decide whether or not to extend credit – and for how much – to your business. Do they see something you don’t? Learn what your financial statement reveals about your business and what you can do to make your business more attractive to lenders and investors.

The Clues

Within your reach are vital clues, pointing the way to your business’s fortune. Look for them: accounts payable/receivable, chart of expenses, taxes, payroll, bank statements, job costing, cash flow, benefits, business plan, forecasts. Do you see it now – the map to your future, your fortune? Not yet? Read on.

The Code

Look closely at the clues: they have numbers in rows and columns – encoded with a pattern to decipher the steps to your goal. We’ll give you the tools to unlock and learn the code. Like using a sailor’s sextant, you will be able to navigate a sea of financial information, to know where you are – at any given moment – and, more importantly, where you are headed.

The Perils

Scylla & Charybdis: two mythological sea monsters, perched on either side of a narrow strait of water; in trying too hard to avoid one, sailors risked the fury of the monster on the opposite side. Knowing the middle course and navigating with purpose and skill remains the way to avoid the modern perilous monsters of Ignorance & Inaction. Armed with good information, a solid plan and skillful timing, you overcome fears that might lead to the wrong action or no action.  

Your Treasure Map

At the end, you will have in your hands a personalized strategy: a 2010 Financial Plan (based on your own cash flow analysis, with ways you have identified to reduce expenses, reduce tax liabilities, and increase sales) and a three-year strategic timetable – all of which you yourself will have mapped and fully authored.

The Guides

Even the best tools are useless if you don’t know how to use them. Both Sass and Ream are CPAs, meaning they have completed hundreds of hours of rigorous training, to help people like you.

Terri Ream – (MA, BA, CPA), President of Dashboard Accounting LLC, is a dynamic Finance Executive, with broad-based experience in integrations and strategic planning, cash flow control and asset management. Formerly Director at an eighty-million dollar corporation, Ream delivers high-level skills to nurture small businesses and innovative entrepreneurs. www.dashboardaccounting.com

 Eileen Sass – (BA, CPA), President of Sass Accounting Services LLC, carries the highest certification of QuickBooks training, applying three decades of public and private accounting experience to her forensic talents. Sass consults exclusively as an Advanced QuickBooks ProAdvisor (no tax preparation or financials), to a variety of industries, making tax preparations more efficient, less costly – and without surprises! Sass specializes in setting up, then training, businesses to optimize their bookkeeping and accounting systems, using QuickBooks. Let your books go too long? Sass does clean-ups, too. www.sassaccountingservices.com

FutureQuestNow

Forecasts, Finances & Fortunes

$350

Two 3-hour workshops or one 5 hour seminar

The series starts in November 2009.

 Attendance is limited so make reservations early.

for more information, call-email-or visit:

330.908.0888

info@FutureQuestNow.com

www.FutureQuestNow.com

www.SassAccountingServices.com

www.DashboardAccounting.com

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.

There are a lot of accounting and bookkeeping software solutions on the market.  An  accounting software consultant might try to get your company to consider another accounting software option, and if you have some special requirements that might make sense.  However, in most cases Quick Book Accounting Software just makes more sense for one very important reason.  It is the best known and most widely used accounting package for small businesses.

This is very important to your bottom line, because if you hire an outsourced bookkeeper or small business bookkeeping services you are going to want people that can get a fast start.  Most Accountants and Bookkeepers will happily learn new accounting software if they need to, but they are often going to have to take more time to get up to speed and they are probably not going to be as proficient on the software.

So if you are looking to get the best value, you are going to want to start with an accounting software solution that almost every accountant and bookkeeper knows already.  In fact, you should be able to find an affordable Quick Book Pro that can help you with your accounting, bookkeeping and even provide training to you if you are doing some of the work in house.

Small Businesses are just not going to benefit from getting locked into a less well known accounting software package, and the cost of chancing over in the future can be considerable.  So if you are just getting started, get Quickbooks for your small business and hire a Quick Books pro to help you set it up the right way to begin with.

Continuing on with the top ten mistakes made by small business owners

Forgetting to track reimbursements

Often owners will tell their employees to pick up items they need and then reimburse the  employees once they see them. These reimbursements are often paid with their personal funds, either cash from their pockets or their personal credit card. With this being the case, many owners normally forget to write it down or forget to mention it to the bookkeeper, so it goes undocumented, causing the owner to lose money in the end.

Not properly classifying employees.

Every company has different employees that have to be classified differently due to how they are paid and taxed. There are contractors, subcontractors, commission based, on-staff employee, ect. Certain forms must be filled out for each different type. If the wrong classification is done, it can cause headache and can be costly due to fines.

Dashboard Accounting is available and offers bookkeeping help to small and middle sized businesses. Contact Dashboard Accounting with any questions you have. Dashboard Accounting offers their book keeping service to the northeast Ohio, including Akron and Cleveland.