Prepare To Avoid Tax Time Crunch

We all know that time of year will come! Yes, Tax Time! Many of us will be gritting our teeth at the sound of those words. With being business owners, we all find ourselves spending a lot of time in the beginning of the year gathering receipts, and preparing the financial statements for the previous year to complete the taxes and year end. My business has grown substantially over the last few years and this makes the year end even larger to prepare and so many details to attend to. Thank goodness for our accountant and the knowledge they can provide us with! Even with an accountant, we have found the more that you can do yourself the less the accountant has to do. This then does save $$ but does it really in the end? We all know that time is money. With year ends, financial statements, tax returns and calculation of tax payable; the larger the company, the larger amount of details that need to be considered, reviewed and processed. Accountants that deal with businesses and/or internet companies have knowledge and are trained for this area. Tax laws change almost daily, and they are up to date on these changes. They truly can save you time and money if you are prepared. The best advice I can give anyone, is to make sure you are prepared and organized throughout the year. Do not wait until January to start gathering your receipts. If you have your balance sheets done, expenses/ income accounted for each and every month, this will save you time when it comes to the preparation work for your year end. There are many handy programs now that will help you do this as well. Enter in your daily/ weekly income/expense receipts into an accounting software, balance your books each month and at the end of the year, all you need to do is print out these statements and send them off to your accountant OR use this information yourself to prepare your tax returns. A popular accounting software program is QuickBooks, which is available for US companies and does offer a free trial. http://www.quickbooks.com This program is not inexpensive, but when it comes to time and preparing your income/ expenses it could save you $$ in the end. Another great thing about Quick- Books is that a lot of the online payment processors offer a Quick- Books download of your financial transactions. By using this and importing it into your accounting software, you are able to prepare your monthly statements quite quickly and also with less errors. Another popular accounting software used in Canada is Simply Accounting. http://www.simplyaccounting.com/ce/products/simply.asp This powerful software is used by most Canadian accountants, is easy to learn and use and powerful features for all your accounting needs. NetSuite offers an integrated online accounting application with ecommerce, sales, inventory, shipping and support. Free Trial is available http://www.netsuite.com An easy to use accounting system that provides a total business solution to small and medium sized companies. This is a free accounting software system. http://www.enablecomputing.com/index.jsp It's a slick little bookkeeping program that tracks the ins and outs of your money without all the bells and whistles. Big E-Z has lots of cool programming that makes good use of your Excel program. It doesn't matter what your skill level is-- anyone can use it. And it's so affordable--it's almost free! http://www.bigez.com/ If you are just starting out with your business and can not justify spending $$ on accounting software or want to use a very simple system, using Excel spreadsheets is a fairly easy and inexpensive way to organize your income/expenses. If you were to do a search on Google for "accounting spreadsheet template" you will be presented with many spreadsheet templates, which will assist you with the proper format of your financial documents. All that is needed is for you to customize the accounts and fields for your own company, then start inputting your financial transactions into it. Here are just a few I have found through my searches: http://www.exinfm.com/free_spreadsheets.html http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/templates/CT011377021033.aspx http://www.excelbusinesstools.com/solutions.asp?q=Accounting&l=1 http://www.itssimple.biz/biz_tools/tools/trialb_m.html http://www.sbsbusinessservices.com/download_page.htm http://www.ozgrid.com/Services/profit-loss-spreadsheet.htm If you are using an accountant for your year end preparation, it is a good idea to check with them to see what type of accounting system will work best for both of you. They may have some good suggestions and let you know what software they are able to work with. Organization throughout the year will save you frustration and time and definitely money when it comes to tax time. We all know Organization is the key to any successful business! When you are organized, it frees up more of your precious time, which then can be used productively in growing your business