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January 17, 2019

How to Save More in 2019

acceleratorsupport Business Tips

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Many people in their retirement years have regrets about not saving more during their earning years, but you don’t have to be one of them. All you need to do is be realistic and proactive about saving. It’s all about paying your future self.    

Circumstances can arise that can erode savings you hoped would be there for retirement. Some of those events include not being able to work due to poor health or a bad job market, unanticipated hospital bills, a divorce, overestimating Social Security benefits, bad investments, procrastination, and simply not realizing how much you need to live on. 

The good news is you can prevent future regrets by making a strong savings plan now. As a small business owner, you may not have a retirement plan, so it’s essential that you create one for yourself. You earn an income today. Put some of that income toward paying your future self, and pay that “bill” first each month or each paycheck. 

To be proactive and build as much savings as possible, take these steps:

  1. Increase your financial skills by learning how to fund your retirement, including all that traveling you’d like to do.
  2. Take care to manage your investment risk and be realistic about investment returns. In good markets, purchase rather than rent or lease so you are building an asset.
  3. Put as much aside as you can, and try living just below your means.
  4. If you do have periods where you are out of work, try living frugally until your income is back to normal.
  5. Optimize your business profits and apply some of them to your savings plan.
  6. Minimize taxes where possible so you can keep more of what you make.
  7. Make everything work twice as hard for you:
    1. Get credit cards with loyalty programs.
    2. Sign up for frequent customer programs to earn points.
    3. Make sure your bank is giving you the best deal on interest.
  8. Sell unused belongings on eBay and put the money in savings.
  9. Cancel used subscriptions and memberships for both your personal and business needs and move the saved money to savings.
  10. Periodically reach out to vendors to get a better deal on the expenses you incur. This could be for phone plans, utilities, and any other routine expense. Put the difference saved in savings.
  11. Select cars and trucks with good gas mileage and also high resale value. Consider that using Lyft or Uber may be cheaper than maintaining a car, depending on how much you drive.  Put the difference in savings.

There are hundreds more ways to save more, and these will get you started in the right direction for 2019.

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Accounting and Bookkeeping Services for QuickBooks® Online

Scott Springer, CPA PLLC

402 A West Palm Valley Blvd #182
Round Rock, TX 78664

(737) 471-4272
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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

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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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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.

We will perform ongoing, limited review of your transaction entry to look for anything out of the ordinary or likely incorrect.

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.

If a customer is not assigned to a sales receipt or refund receipt, it can result in incomplete or misleading customer reports. We assign customers to those transactions based on information you provide.

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
  • vendor bills and expenses
  • fixed asset acquisitions, depreciation, and disposals
  • payroll journals for non-integrated payroll, if applicable

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.