Posts Tagged ‘small business’

If you’re on track with your year-end accounting tasks, then you’ve already mailed your Forms 1099 to your vendors. If you’re running late, you can find the form and this year’s instructions at the IRS’ website.

There is an impressive new website geared toward helping small business owners, and people thinking about starting their own small business. The site is sponsored by the IRS, so you know you can trust the tax topics. This site, IRS Small Business Resource Guide 2009, in addition to SBTV.com, are great ways to get your business started or organized.

If you would like some help getting started, help with your bookkeeping, or help with organizing your business data, please consider contacting me. With the technologies available today, location is often a non-issue! So, even if you are not in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas area, I may be able to help you get where you want to be with your business.

Did you know that there is an internet-based resource for small businesses that combines video content like a television channel, plus cutting-edge web content? I’ve known about sbtv.com for awhile, but never visited. BIG mistake. If you own a small business, or are thinking about starting one, I strongly recommend that you visit sbtv.com. Sbtv.com is powered by our very own federal government.

This is the time of year when many small businesses are scrambling to to meet budget and revenue goals, as well as prepare for taxes. Business owners can do themselves a huge favor by keeping accurate and current records of all business and financial transactions. If you wear many hats, including Accountant, be sure that you utilize your accounting software to the fullest extent. This will help you get through year-end close and taxes smoothly, so that you can focus more of your time on your business!

The IRS has announced the new mileage rates for 2009. Beginning January 1, 2009, the rate is 0.55/business mile driven, down 3.5 cents from the current 0.585/business mile driven. You can also find a wealth of information about taxes for your small business or self-employment at the Internal Revenue Service’s Small Business and Self-Employed Tax Center.

If you have questions or need help with your small business accounting, data systems, or reporting, please contact me at info@coakleysbs.com.

Happy Holidays!

As I write this, Congress is hearing testimony and asking questions about the proposed “700 Billion Bailout.”

Wow.

What does this mean to the small business owner? If your business relies on financing to operate, you may have some worries. If your business generates cash in amounts sufficient to operate your business without need of financing, you are decidedly better off – no matter what the financial climate.

Since many small businesses work with other businesses…it is hard to find a business NOT affected by this financial “meltdown.”

If ever there has been a time for small business owners to take a close look at their financial footing, their business processes, and their efficiency – it is now. And I can help.

I can also help if, up until now, you have been trying to run your business AND handle your accounting functions. Since I am an independant contractor, I can help you get your business finances in order and set you on your way to operating “lean and clean,” without the long-term comittment or overhead of hiring an employee. I can also help your existing staff by augmenting their ability to streamline and address those back-burner items that are now on fire.

I have been test-driving Google’s email (“Gmail”), routed so that it uses my own domain. So far, it has worked great, though I let my hosting service do the heavy lifting as far as changing the settings where needed to get the routing done properly. My hosting service made this easy – so it required hardly any time on  my part.

I love that I am able to use my own domain, which means that I do NOT change my email address or lose the reference to my business website.

The reason I decided to give this a try is that I became frustrated with accessing my email from multiple locations – IMAP service was not a perfect fit. I also really liked Google’s approach to handling email in “conversations,” and it does a good job of linking separate emails appropriately.

If you have an exchange server, and it is working smoothly – I think you should stick with your investment. If your email is always “going down” or not working properly, you may want to experiment with Gmail. I recommend setting up a personal account and just using it for awhile. This will give you an idea of how it looks and feels. If you decide to make the change, Google even offers an easy conversion tool to move all of your existing email and contacts from Outlook and other software – to Google.

Next up, I will be experimenting with Google Docs!