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June 4, 2020

18 Small Business Opportunities in 2020

acceleratorsupport Business Development, Business Tips

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Deciding on the kind of business you want to start is a very big decision. Some require specialized skills that either the owner or employees will need. Others require a substantial initial capital outlay. In any case, it’s always a good idea to consider the health of the industry you’ll be entering in.
While we are not giving any kind of investment advice in this article, we thought it’d be fun to list the business ideas that will be recession-proof in 2020, many of which were also fast-growing in 2019. They are not in any particular order.
1. Bicycle shops
Demand for bikes ramped up this year when people started staying at home due to shelter-in-place orders. They saw the need to exercise close to home, and a bike is the perfect accessory to get people out of the house safely.
2. Building services
This group includes businesses that provide services like office and home cleaning, landscaping, and pest control. New demands in cleaning will continue for some time.
3. Software development
Businesses with skilled developers are in demand as other businesses look to automate more and more of their processes. Workers with skills in artificial intelligence and virtual reality are in very high demand. In 2020, we added a huge demand for video conferencing tools, and other tech tools we need to work from home.
4. Online publishers
While the traditional print media such as book publishers and newspapers are declining in growth, online publishers are thriving. This category includes bloggers as well as the internet stars on YouTube that are making great money through online ads and product endorsements. The fast pace of the news in 2020 has simply accelerated this trend.
5. Building finishers
This category includes construction companies that provide drywall, painting, and flooring to finish out a building or house. Th need will continue in 2020 as offices, shops, and other businesses remodel to meet social distancing and other safety rules.
6. Outpatient care
An alternative to going to the hospital emergency room, these care facilities are growing fast. For patients, they are less hassle than making an appointment with a doctor and far less expensive than ER bills. Once tests and treatments for COVID-19 become universal, these places will become good alternative for people with mild symptoms.
7. Administrative services
There’s a growing need for businesses that need additional administrative support beyond what employees can provide. Virtual assistants are included in this category as well as staffing companies that provide temporary clerical workers onsite.
8. Physicians
If you’ve ever been in a doctor’s office waiting room full of people, you know that this area is in demand. This include offices of physicians of all specialties.
9. Professional drivers
Professional drivers fall into two categories: truck drivers and delivery/taxi services. The demand for truck drivers is always increasing as online orders and ecommerce steadily grows. Many of these drivers are independent and own their own rigs as well as their own businesses.
Uber, Lyft, GrubHub, and DoorDash, to name a few, have increased the demand for professional drivers who can deliver food, medicine, or people to where they need to go.
10. Data processing
The demand for data hosting, server farms, and data processing continues to grow as our appetite for technology increases.
11. Warehousing and storage
Places like self-storage facilities will be in demand for a couple of reasons. Families have more stuff than they have room for. And as families continue to be mobile, they will need temporary storage space. All you have to do is look on your street at all the cars that don’t fit in their garages to see the demand in this type of business.
On the commercial side, increased ecommerce demand and the need for pickup and delivery services has increased the need for warehouses for businesses in the distribution space.
12. Construction
In most places, construction is booming, so there is a demand for general contractors, subcontractors, architects, engineers, and businesses that support construction.
Architects should be busy re-designing spaces, such as offices, restaurants, nursing homes, day care centers, and jails, to name a few, to keep people safer.
13. Medical and diagnostic laboratories
Even before COVID-19 came on the scene, this type of business was growing fast for several reasons beyond standard medical test ordered by doctors. People are getting DNA tests on their own, and nutritionists are doing more testing as people realize diet is a huge factor in health and personal energy.
Now that COVID-19 diagnosis and treatment require a variety of tests, these labs will be busy for a long time in the future.
14. Ecommerce wholesalers
There is a growing number of people who sell items on ecommerce platforms such as eBay and Amazon. While a few source these items through agreements with manufacturers, many visit flea markets, donation centers, and resell shops to make their purchases and repurpose the items.
Smart wholesalers that have their systems set up can help brick-and-mortar shops without an ecommerce presence sell their items while they are shuttered.
15. Professional services
Fields that are fastest-growing include technology and marketing consultants. An interesting new type of security consultant is one that trains groups on how to deal with violence in the workplace and schools.
Attorneys are busy helping individuals update their estate plans and will likely be busy with divorce filings after COVID-19 has let up some. Accountants have new laws to communicate to their clients, and many small businesses want their books caught up now.
16. Educational services
This broad group include elementary and secondary schools and junior colleges. It also includes adult career education, including businesses that teach trades skills, computer skills, and business skills.
Companies that provide an online component to learning will be in demand for quite a while.
17. Real estate agents
Competitive, yes. But the average home sells twice as fast as it did eight years ago, so the number of transactions have doubled, increasing demand.
18. Personal services
While a broad category, the areas seeing growth include personal trainers, personal nutritionists, and wedding planners, to name a few.
If your business falls into one of these categories, congratulations. If you’re considering starting a business and you have the skills needed to start one of the businesses above, what are you waiting for?
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Accounting and Bookkeeping Services for QuickBooks® Online

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402 A West Palm Valley Blvd #182
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If you track transactions by the QBO fields for Class, Location or Project, but this information is missing on relevant transactions, it can result in incomplete or misleading reports. We assign the proper values to those transactions based on information you provide.

We will provide guidance on how to set up, enter and modify budgets in QBO. In addition, for each budget you set up, we will create, customize and share two budget reports in QBO that you may run on demand: Budget Variance Report and Budget Remaining

We will categorize and record your vendor bills and expenses in QBO. We will do so based upon information you provide and our increasing knowledge of your company. We will ask for clarification, as needed, to ensure transactions are recorded properly.

All packages include unlimited support incidents for issues encountered when using the software subscriptions in your package. You also get unlimited consultations with us for advice on ad-hoc accounting matters.

We will create, customize and configure Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable Aging Summary and Detail reports to be emailed to you on a weekly basis. This provides more current information so that you may act more quickly.

We will allocate revenue and/or expense by a single segment (QBO Class, Location or Project) using either fixed or variable percentages depending on your needs.

To help ensure your accrual-basis reporting is even more accurate and meaningful, we will periodically record the following entries:

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For clients with construction projects that have binding contracts with enforceable rights, we also offer contract accounting using the Completed Contract Method (CCM) or Percentage of Completion Method (PCM).

After calendar year-end, we will prepare and e-file your federal Forms 1099-NEC and 1099-MISC.

Rewind automatically backs up your QBO file, providing the ability to restore your entire QBO file or individual transactions and items.

We will reconcile your payroll tax liabilities as well as other liability accounts such as cafeteria plan withholdings and garnishments where applicable.

We will assist you with setting up your QBO Payroll subscription so that you will be ready for your first payroll. Our assistance includes an online working session where we will walk through the setup steps together including:

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Our assistance doesn’t end with the initial setup. The unlimited ad-hoc support and advice extends to your payroll subscription as well. Need help setting up a new employee? Not sure how to properly record an employee advance? How to record tax value of a gift card provided? How to record an employee bonus? We’re here to help.

QBO Payroll is a full-service payroll subscription. You specify how much and when to pay your employees. Payroll calculations, tax deposits, payroll tax returns and W-2 filing are all done for you. Pay employees by check or direct deposit. Employees have an online portal to view pay stubs, W-2s and more. We will help you select the specific edition that best meets your needs.

We will prepare your Balance Sheet and Income Statement. These are key reports to help you understand your company’s financial position as well as the amount of revenue and profit you’ve made for the period. We will also provide Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable Aging Summary reports to help you better understand who owes you and who you owe.

We will compare your statement balances and transactions with the ones in QBO and make corrections as needed. Reconciliations help ensure your account balances are correct by identifying missing, duplicate or incorrect transactions. We will also alert you regarding any old, uncleared items that may need your attention.

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We will categorize and record your fixed asset acquisitions, depreciation, and disposals in QBO. We will do so based upon information you provide and our increasing knowledge of your company. We will ask for clarification, as needed, to ensure transactions are recorded properly.

We will categorize and record your bank, digital wallet, and credit card transactions in QBO. We will do so based upon information you provide and our increasing knowledge of your company. We will ask for clarification, as needed, to ensure transactions are recorded properly.

Go paperless! We provide a subscription to receipt capture software using optical character recognition (OCR), and we integrate it with QBO. The allows you to easily and securely capture and store supporting documentation for your expenses and vendor bills in the cloud.

QBO is the cloud accounting software we use with all our clients. We will help you select the specific edition that best meets your needs.

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If a vendor is not assigned to a check or expense transaction, it can result in incomplete or misleading customer reports as well as incorrect totals for Form 1099. We assign the proper vendors to those transactions based on information you provide.

We will prepare your Balance Sheet and Income Statement. These are key reports to help you understand your company’s financial position as well as the amount of revenue and profit you’ve made for the period.

If you require historical reports, then it’s important to resolve issues that affect your Income Statement as well. It’s not uncommon for us to find numerous issues, but not all of them necessarily need to be resolved. We let you decide how extensive you want the cleanup to be based on your needs. How do we do this? By separately identifying:

  • issues that affect section subtotals (such as total income, total cost of sales, total operating expenses)
  • issues that do not affect section subtotals but are not categorized properly within a section

If you require historical reports, then it’s important to resolve issues that affect your Income Statement as well. It’s not uncommon for us to find numerous issues, but not all of them necessarily need to be resolved. We let you decide how extensive you want the cleanup to be based on your needs. How do we do this? By separately identifying:

  • issues that affect section subtotals (such as total income, total cost of sales, total operating expenses)
  • issues that do not affect section subtotals but are not categorized properly within a section

Issues affecting your balance sheet account balances (assets, liabilities, equity) should always be resolved even if you don’t need historical reports. That’s because you need accurate balances as a starting point going forward.

If your bank and credit card reconciliations have not been done or are done but need to be fixed, we will take care of it for you. Reconciliations help ensure your account balances are correct by identifying missing, duplicate or incorrect transactions.

If your diagnostic review revealed that your QBO file has unprocessed bank feed items or there are missing transactions (based on bank or credit card statements), we will record those for you. We will ask for clarification, as needed, to ensure transactions are categorized properly.

If your diagnostic review revealed that some of the QBO “products” and “services” are assigned to incorrect income accounts, we will make the proper adjustments to prevent invoices from continuing to be incorrectly categorized.

We will design your new chart of accounts, tailored to your company’s needs, based on information gathered during the diagnostic review as well as other discussions with you. We will then implement the new design in QBO for you. This includes carefully mapping existing accounts to the new ones.

We will prepare your Balance Sheet and Income Statement. These are key reports to help you understand your company’s financial position as well as the amount of revenue and profit you’ve made for the period.

We will set up the open Accounts Receivable invoice balances for each customer, and we will set up the open Accounts Payable bill balances for each vendor. For each customer or vendor, you have the option of having us set up the balance for each individual unpaid invoice/bill OR you may combine the open invoice/bill balances for each customer or vendor.

We will meet with you in a screen sharing session and walk you, step-by-step, through creating your QuickBooks Payments account and connecting it to QBO. If you already have a payment account with Inuit, we will walk you through connecting it to QBO.

If you want financial statements for additional historical periods, we will prepare your Balance Sheet and Income Statement for those periods.

We will reconcile bank, digital wallet, credit card, line of credit and loan accounts. This means we will compare your statement balances and transactions with the ones in QBO, and we will make any necessary adjustments. We will alert you regarding any uncleared items that may need your attention.

We will categorize and record the following transactions to QBO. We will ask for clarification, as needed, to ensure transactions are recorded properly.

  • bank, digital wallet, and credit card transactions
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We will set up your budget(s) in QBO using information you provide.

“Products” and “Services” are used in QBO to record customer invoices, sales receipts and credit memos. We will set them up for your use in QBO and map them to the correct income accounts.

If you want to track income and costs by specific projects, we will set up your client projects in QBO using the information you provide.

We will set up your customers/clients and vendors in QBO using the information you provide.

You provide your general ledger account balances to us from your previous accounting system or tax return. We will provide guidance if you’re not sure how to get the information we need. We will set up your account balances in QBO.

For each of your financial accounts supported by QBO, we will either set up the bank feeds for you or we will meet with you and walk you, step-by-step, through setting it up.

We will design your chart of accounts, tailored to your company’s needs, based on information gathered during the planning meeting. We will then implement the new design in QBO for you.

We will configure your QBO settings optimally for your company based on information collected during the planning meeting. We will explain the types of QBO user permissions available, and we will set up your users and permissions based on a list of users that you provide.

We will set up your QBO subscription on your behalf after the planning meeting.

The planning meeting is critically important because we will ask you questions about your company processes and accounts. This information will help us properly plan your implementation.