Quickbooks, Bookkeeping and Accounting Blog

January 31st is the deadline to give annual information statements (Form 1099) to recipients of certian types of payments you made during 2007. Payments covered include:

Abandonment (1099-A)
Accelerated death benefits (1099-LTC)
Agriculture payments (1099-G)
Annuities (1099-R)
Attorneys, fees and gross proceeds (1099-MISC)
Auto reimbursements: Nonemployee (1099-MISC)
Awards: Nonemployee (1099-MISC)
Barter exchange income (1099-B)
Bonuses: Nonemployee (1099-MISC)
Broker transactions (1099-B)
Cancellation of debt (1099-C)
Capital gain distributions (1099-DIV)
Car […]

[Read more →]

I always recommend to clients that they close their books in QuickBooks as soon as they have finished entering regular bills and invoices from the prior year. Many clients are resistant to doing so claiming that they trust their bookkeeper and therefore don’t have any reason to do so. The primary reason to set a closing date in […]

[Read more →]

A list of upcoming dates and actions that accountants, bookkeepers and small business owners should be aware of follows:

1/1/2008 - Stop the advance credit of the Earned Income Credit for employee who have not submitted a new Form W-5.
1/4/2008 - If you are subject to the semiweekly deposit rule, then deposit payroll taxes for payments made on […]

[Read more →]

Employees cost significantly more than what they receive in salary. If you offer generous benefits, then they probably cost much more. Making your employees aware of this is a simple way to make them feel more valuable.
Consider an employee with an annual salary of $30,000 who receives full individual health insurance. After you add in […]

[Read more →]

Accrual based businesses generally need to make a number of adjustments before closing their books at year-end. Different businesses make different decisions as to exactly what to accrue, but whenever an expense is incurred in one year for which the benefit won’t be received until the next year, or revenue is received in one year for products or […]

[Read more →]

QuickBooks classes enable you to essentially break your business down into a number of smaller businesses and look at complete profit & loss statements for each business. For example, you could break your business down by industry, location, product or service, or anything else that is meaningful for your particular business. This is a powerful […]

[Read more →]

We generally know who are biggest customers are and which customers pay us the most money. It is much more difficult, however, to know who our most profitable customers are. The end of the year is a good time to evaluate your customers and figure out which ones have earned you the most profit during […]

[Read more →]

When quickly entering a pile of bills or reconciling a bank account, it can be very frustrating to come across an unknown bill or transaction. How do you enter it into QuickBooks if you don’t know what it is? Instead of stopping what you are doing and hunting down someone who knows, assign it to […]

[Read more →]

Spending some time reviewing and correcting your books in December makes it a lot easier to close them in early January and helps insure you get off to a good start in the new year. Here are some things to do:

Reconcile bank accounts

Make sure all bank statements are reconciled. If there are old unreconciled items, look into […]

[Read more →]

I have used various of the questions below when interviewing bookkeepers and controllers and have found them to be very useful for assessing a person’s knowledge of QuickBooks, Excel and general accounting/bookkeeping.
General accounting knowledge: 

Explain the differences between assets and expenses.

If a person stumbles, then they don’t understand basic accounting and you don’t want them in charge of […]

[Read more →]

Many small businesses suffer from the lack of strategic financial input. The questions below will help you determine if your company would benefit from CFO Services.  If you answer “No” to any of these questions, then it’s likely that you are missing out on valuable and easy to obtain information that could help you make better business […]

[Read more →]

Some companies pay their bills the day they get to them and others let them pile up until the pile starts to fall over before digging in. Companies that pay right away never face late payments and are ahead of the game. Companies that wait as long as possible keep their cash longer and don’t […]

[Read more →]