Cohen Consulting Group

Buying a Car or Truck for Your Business?

April 25, 2019 by Mandy Leave a Comment

When you purchase a new vehicle, you get the fun of riding around in a new car with the new car smell! Our job has just begun – to get your new asset recorded properly on your books. We thought it’d be fun to give you a behind-the-scenes sneak peek at our part.

Sales Contract

The first thing we’ll ask you for is the sales contract. It will give us the payment price of your car, and we’ll use that number to record your new asset on your balance sheet. If you paid cash with no trade-in, the journal entry we’ll make is:

	Debit: 2019 Toyota RAV4	$25,500
	Credit: Cash	$25,500

Then we’ll decide on a depreciation method and book depreciation monthly or at year-end.

	Debit: Depreciation Expense	$5,100
	Credit: Accumulated Depreciation:	$5,100

Trade-in

If you traded in a vehicle that is on your books, we’ll need to make an adjustment to your books. Effectively, your old car will be eliminated from your balance sheet. If this asset had a book value and it was not fully depreciated, the net value would be compared to the trade-in value and a gain or loss on the asset sale would be recorded on your income statement.

Let’s say the balance sheet value of the three-year-old car you traded in was $10,000 and you got $8,000 on the trade-in. Here’s what we would record:

	Debit: 2019 Toyota RAV4	$25,500
	Debit: Accumulated Depreciation	$15,000
	Debit: Loss on Sale of 2016 Car	$2,000
	Credit: Old 2016 Toyota RAV4	$25,000
	Credit: Cash	$17,500 ($25,500 – $8,000 trade-in)

We’d also start the depreciation for the new car.

New Car Loan

Most often, a new car purchase will be financed, so we have a new liability to record too. We’ll need to get a copy of the loan documents from you and an amortization schedule of the payments. Let’s say you made a ten percent down payment with no trade-in. Here’s how that would look:

	Debit: 2019 Toyota RAV4	$25,500
	Credit: Cash	$2,550
	Credit: Toyota Loan	$22,950

Then, each time you make a monthly payment, the amount will need to be split between principal and interest and those amounts will need to change each month.

	Debit: Interest Expense	$390
	it: Toyota Loan	$60
	Credit: Cash	$450

We left out a few trade secrets just to keep it intriguing. There are a lot of other numbers on a car purchase: taxes, licenses, warranties, add-ons, fees, and more. Some of these can be directly expensed, while others need to be included in the value of the asset. So if you’re happy that we’ll take care of this for you, we’re happy to do so.

Let us know if you purchase an asset this summer so we can get it booked right for you.

Filed Under: Bookkeeping

5 Ways to Speed Up Your Cash Flow

March 14, 2019 by Mandy Leave a Comment

One of the biggest challenges for small businesses is managing cash flow. There never seems to be enough cash to meet all of the obligations, so it makes sense to speed up cash flow when you can. Here are five tips you can use to get your cash faster or slow down the outflow.

1. Stay on top of cash account balances.

If you’re collecting money in more than one account, be sure to move your money on a regular basis when your balances get high. One example is your PayPal account. If money is coming in faster than you’re spending it, transfer the money to your main operating account so the money is not just sitting there.

2. Invoice faster or more frequently.

The best way to smooth cash flow is to make sure outflows are in sync with inflows. If you make payroll weekly but only invoice monthly, your cash flow is likely to dip more often than it rises. When possible, invoice more frequently or stagger your invoice due dates to smooth your cash balances.

Take a look at how long it takes you to invoice for your work after it’s been completed. If it’s longer than a few weeks, consider changing your invoicing process by shortening the time it takes to send out invoices. That way, you’ll get paid sooner.

3. Collect faster.

Got clients who drag their heels when it comes to paying you? Try to get a credit card on file or an ACH authorization so you’re in control of their payment.

Put a process in place the day the invoice becomes late. Perhaps the client has a question or misplaced the bill. Be aggressive about following up when the bill is 45, 60, and 90 days past due. Turn it over to collections quickly; the older the bill is, the less likely it is to get paid.

4. Pay off debt.

As your cash flow gets healthier, make a plan to pay off any business loans or credit cards that you have. The sooner you can do this, the less interest expense you’ll incur and the more profit you’ll have.

Interest expense can really add up. If you have loans at higher interest rates, you might try to get them refinanced at a lower rate, so you won’t have to pay as much interest expense.

5. Reduce spending.

You don’t always have to give up things to reduce spending. Look at your expenses from last year and ask yourself:

What did you spend that was a really great investment for your business?
What did you spend that was a colossal mistake?
What do you take for granted that you can cut?
Where could you re-negotiate contracts to save a little?
Where could you tighten up if you need to?

Managing cash flow is always a challenge, and these tips will help give you a little cushion to make it easier.

Filed Under: Bookkeeping, Budget

Training Fido to Fetch More than a Bone

October 11, 2018 by Mandy Leave a Comment

While “fetching” might be what some trained dogs can do, accounting systems are getting into the act too. This relatively new feature is called “receipt fetching,” and it’s when an app can retrieve documents directly from the vendors that you do business with so you don’t have to spend so much time on paperwork retrieval.

Apps that can perform receipt fetching can integrate with your accounts and pull invoices into their system. For example, if your business has an account with a utility or telecom company, the receipt fetching app can pull the electricity, water, or telephone bills into your receipt fetching app account and consolidate them.

The benefits are simple. You save time, certainly. But the bigger benefit is you no longer have a monthly deadline to get your documents to your accountant — at least for all the documents that can be automated in this way. This reduces stress and eliminates minutiae from your day.

Accountants benefit too. No accountant likes to spend their time asking clients for documents over and over again. We know you have better things to do with your time, and we know you probably hate doing the paperwork. Receipt fetching is an easy way to get the job done.

To take advantage of receipt fetching, the first step is to select a receipt-fetching app. A few of the apps to select from include LedgerDocs, ReceiptBank, HubDoc, and Greenback. Some of these apps do receipt fetching only, and others have many more functions.

The second step is to determine which vendor accounts are supported, and to connect with them. Generally speaking, the connection is based on your account credentials, so if those change, the connection will need to be updated. When many of your documents can be pulled into one place, you don’t have to spend time logging into each vendor portal to pull receipts.

If you’re curious about how to benefit from receipt fetching in your business, please feel free to reach out.

Filed Under: Bookkeeping

Should You Have a Financial Dashboard?

August 30, 2018 by Mandy Leave a Comment

A quick glance is all you need to check your fuel gauge, speed limit, engine temperature, and RPM when you’re driving down the road. Your car’s dashboard is designed to focus you on what’s important and what you need to know to have a safe trip.

Your car’s dashboard items, if they applied to business, would be called key performance indicators or KPIs. Unlike a car’s, the KPIs of your business vary depending on your business goals and what’s important to you. Common ones might include your cash balance, how fast you get paid, how much revenue is coming in, and whether you’re making plan. There are literally hundreds of them to choose from, and many of them are not derivable from your financial statements, such as number of orders, client satisfaction levels, and employee turnover.

Would it be useful to have a dashboard of KPIs for your business so you can know what’s working and get alerted to what needs focus? Here are the steps to creating a dashboard for your business:

Decide on the KPIs you want to track. Selecting 6-10 to create and track is a good place to start.
Select a tool that will provide you with the KPIs in the format you desire. There are many great add-ons to your accounting software that will instantly crunch the financial KPIs for you and present them in insightful formats, including charts, graphs, dashboards, and reports.
Create any new processes to calculate the new KPIs and get them entered into the dashboard app.
Hold a review meeting to go over the KPIs and determine any action based on the review.

There are many great KPIs available right in your accounting system, which might be plenty to get started with. And there are some real gems outside your accounting system that will take a bit of work to calculate. In any case, we can help you through this process. Feel free to reach out to us any time to discuss the possibilities of having a dashboard in your business.

Filed Under: Accounting, Bookkeeping Tagged With: dashboard, financial dashboard, KPI

How to Read Your Income Statement

May 10, 2018 by Mandy Leave a Comment

The income statement of any business is probably the most important report of all. It is a snapshot of the financial performance of your business over a period of time, such as a month or year. You might also hear it called the Profit and Loss Statement, or P&L.

The income statement can give you all kinds of insights as to whether you are bringing in enough sales, if your prices are generating enough profit, and how your expenses are running. Let’s take a look at the report, step by step.

Revenue

The report starts by listing the revenue for the period of time covered. Revenue includes all sources of income, including sales from operations, interest and investment income, revenue from insurance claims, sales from assets or other parts of the business, and any other source of revenue. In most small businesses, sales will be the largest part of the revenue, if not all of it. In some countries, the term used for sales is turnover.

If you sell more than one item or have more than one location, it might be a good idea to be able to view the sales detail from these categories. This may or may not be on your income statement depending on how formal it is, but you should be able to get a drill down report on your sales detail.

Look for exceptions to what you expect to see. There can be some decisions you can make and actions you can take from the insights you discover.

Cost of Goods Sold

This section of the income statement includes costs you incur directly on items you sell. If you maintain an inventory, it’s the cost you paid for the inventory items that you sold during the period. If your business is a manufacturer, cost of goods sold, or COGS, will include costs of materials and labor to produce the items.

If you own a service business, COGS will typically be zero. As a service business, you may incur direct costs when providing services, and these costs can be booked in a variety of expense accounts, including supplies.

Gross Profit

Some income statement formats will include a gross profit number which is sales minus cost of goods sold. This number is important for businesses with inventory.

Expenses

The expenses section of the income statement is the longest part. It includes all of the expenses you incurred in your business, including advertising and marketing, rent, telephone, and utilities, office supplies and meeting expenses, travel, meals, and entertainment, payroll and payroll taxes, and several more.

You might also hear the term overhead. Overhead is a subset of expenses that have to be met whether you sell zero items or millions. They include items like rent and utilities, management payroll, and office supplies.

To review your expenses, check line by line to see if anything looks out of sorts, and take the appropriate action.

Net Profit or Loss

The final number on your income statement represents whether you made or lost money in the period the report covers. The formula is simple: revenue less COGS less expenses equals net profit or loss.

Net profit/loss can go by many names, depending on the size of your business and your accountant’s vernacular. You may also see EBITDA: Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. Earnings is another word for net profit.

Perspective

It’s a good idea to compare your income statement numbers to other periods in your business. Common comparisons include last period, last several periods, and same period last year.

It’s also a great idea to have a budget that sets goals for your income statement numbers. Then you can compare budget to actual numbers and take action on the variances.

If your business falls into a standard type of business, you may also be able to see how it is doing compared to others in your industry. This is called benchmarking, and the income statement is a very common format that’s used in benchmarking.

Do spend some time each period reviewing your business’s income statement. It can help you make a faster course correction in your business so you can be even more successful than you already are.

Filed Under: Blog, Bookkeeping

Get Ahead on Year-End Tasks

December 7, 2017 by Mandy Leave a Comment

Year-end is just around the corner, and that means a couple of administrative tasks are necessary to take care of bookkeeping and tax chores. Here are a couple of tips to make year-end go smoother.

Cleaning up

Things will go a lot smoother if you reach out to your vendors and employees and get their help to update your records.

Send a notice to all employees, asking them to verify their address so they will get their W-2s without delay.
Make sure you have the right information for vendors that you need to produce a 1099 for. Before you pay your vendors more than $600 in one year, ask them for a W-9 so that you have a current address and taxpayer ID number on file.
Check to make sure you have any sales tax exemption certificates from vendors that you are not charging sales tax to.

It’s also time to clean up any account balances that need to be reclassified or corrected.

Any clearing accounts, such as undeposited funds, should be zero.
Bank reconciliations should be caught up and book balances should match the bank or be explained.
Inventory should be adjusted to reflect accurate quantities.
Loan balances should be adjusted to correctly reflect interest and principal allocations.
Depreciation entries should be made.

Maximizing deductions

Here are a just a few ways to maximize deductions:

Any bad debts that aren’t expected to be collected can be written off.
Any inventory that is not saleable or worth less than you paid for it can be adjusted on your books.
For cash basis taxpayers, pay any large bills before year-end if you have excess profits.
Pay employee bonuses prior to year-end.

Getting organized

Create a place in your home or office or a special file on your computer to store tax-related documents, such as W-2s, brokerage statements, and tax returns. Convert them to PDF format if they are not already, and upload them to your accountant’s secure client portal as you get them.

With all this great preparation, you’ll find tax season easier than ever and a chore that you can mark off your to-do list early.

Filed Under: Blog, Bookkeeping

The Perfect Chart of Accounts for Your Business

November 9, 2017 by Mandy Leave a Comment

Your “Chart of Accounts” is the list of accounts in your accounting software. The accounts are listed in your reports, and the totals allow you to determine how much you’ve spent, made, own, or owe depending on the type of account.

It’s essential to create a list of accounts that you need in order to make better business decisions. Your chart of accounts needs to be designed intentionally. If it hasn’t been, it’s never too late.

Two Types of Accounts

There are two major types of accounts:

Balance sheet accounts that tell what you own and owe. These are determined by your checking accounts, inventory, and credit cards.
Income statement accounts that tell you about current period operating results. These, in turn, have two major categories, income and expenses. For companies with inventory, expenses are further broken out into cost of goods sold and other expenses.

Three Purposes

A chart of accounts should meet three needs:

Make it really fast for you to do your taxes
Give you all sorts of “Aha’s”
Allow you to spend far more time on revenue analysis than expense analysis because that’s where success lies for small businesses

Taxes

Your accounts should be the same as (or be able to be grouped into) the lines on your tax return. You can find a copy of the tax form you fill out. For example, a sole proprietor will use a Schedule C of the 1040, and a corporation will complete an 1120.

There are a few special needs, such as meals and entertainment which are only partially deductible, that you need to pay special attention to. We can help you with that.

Aha

As small business owners, we work with a gut feel, but when you see what you’ve made or spent in black and white, it takes on a whole new level of meaning. Your income statement and other reports should do that for you. If they don’t you may not have your accounts set up right.

Revenue

Think about how you want to see your revenue:

By product line
By major supplier
By category of solution to the customer
By customer type
By service type
By location (you can also use Class for this)
By job
By distribution method

We can help you brainstorm based on your industry and type of business.

Actionable Intelligence

If you’ve been putting all your revenue into one revenue account, it will be exciting the first time you see your new Profit and Loss statement.

If you’ve been breaking out your revenue but it hasn’t led to any actionable change in your business, then there may be a better way to break it out.

If you’re happy with the way your revenue is broken out, then think about how you can take it to the next level.

Once you see your new chart of accounts, you will likely have even more questions. The chart of accounts can be an evolving entity, designed to serve your business needs.

Filed Under: Blog, Bookkeeping

What Is Reasonable Compensation?

July 20, 2017 by Mandy Leave a Comment

For small businesses formed as an S Corporation and with plenty of profits, reasonable compensation is a term you may want to be familiar with.

Many small businesses have organized as an S Corporation form of entity. In many cases, the S Corp election allows a business owner to save money on self-employment taxes, especially if they are operating as a sole proprietor. S Corp profits, or distributions, are not subject to payroll taxes.

If you are a business owner taking a salary and contributing substantially to the operations of the business, you may think that you should just take the distributions and forget the salary. After all, think how much you would save in payroll taxes. But this has already been tried and shot down by the IRS in the courts. And this is where the term reasonable compensation comes in.

The IRS requires that business owners that perform a substantial contribution to the business be paid a salary according to a number of factors. This is called reasonable compensation. You can’t pay yourself below market and take a large amount in distributions.

The IRS has issued a fact sheet that describes the guidelines that can be used to determine reasonable compensation. They include employee training, experience, duties, time spent, history of distributions, bonuses, and many other factors.

There are also reasonable compensation ramifications for C Corporations as well.

If reasonable compensation is an issue or concern for your business, please feel free to reach out and let us know how we can help.

Filed Under: Bookkeeping, Business Tips

Signs You Might Be Outgrowing Your Accounting System

November 10, 2016 by Mandy Leave a Comment

business-growth If you’re struggling with your accounting system, it might be a sign that you’re ready for something new. Perhaps your company has grown so much that it’s outgrown its older accounting solution. Here are several indications to look for that justify moving to an accounting system with more features and scalability.

User Permissions

Some companies have a need to limit certain functions to certain users. Most systems come with basic functional limitations, such as restricting Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable functions. But what if you need more granular user permissions such as access to only purchase orders or a certain bank account? Mid-market systems like QuickBooks Enterprise provide those features.

Multiple Companies and Consolidated Financial Statements

Do you have multiple companies that are the “children” of a parent company? You might need consolidated financial statements and the ability to open multiple companies at the same time.

Number of Customers and Vendors

If your business is growing and the number of customers and vendors you do business with exceeds 14,500, you will have reached a list limit in QuickBooks Premier. Each system has their own list limits, and these limits can get complex quickly, so check with us if you feel you are getting close.

File Size and Performance

There may also be file size limits that you need to watch, especially if you have a high volume of transactions or multiple years of history in one file.

You could also have performance issues. If you have a new PC and your accounting system is still running slowly, we can help you improve your performance by condensing your file or setting preferences differently before you have to switch.

Inventory Features

A mid-market system like QuickBooks Enterprise provides advanced features, such as tracking inventory in multiple locations, using the FIFO method, and managing lots or serial numbers. If you need these features, it may be worth it to switch.

Enhanced Customization

Most mid-market accounting systems provide better customization such as additional custom fields, better reporting, and improved form design.

Number of Simultaneous Users

The final reason to switch to a larger accounting system is if you need more simultaneous users. QuickBooks Pro allows for up to three simultaneous users, QuickBooks Premier handles up to five, and QuickBooks Enterprise makes room for up to 30 simultaneous users. QuickBooks Online allows up to 25 simultaneous users. Check with us if you are curious about your system’s license limits.

Did any of these reasons resonate with you? If so, let us know so we can discuss your needs.

Filed Under: Bookkeeping, Business Tips

Beyond Saving Trees: New Trends in Receipt Management

September 29, 2016 by Mandy Leave a Comment

online-business

Accounting automation has come a long way in the last few years, and the process of handling invoices and receipts is included in those changes. No longer is there a mountain of paperwork to deal with. In this article, we’ll explain some of the changes in this area.

Vendor Invoices

Most invoices are now sent electronically, often through email or from accounting system to accounting system. Some accounting systems allow the invoice document, usually in PDF format, to be attached to the transaction in the accounting system. This feature makes it easy for vendor support questions as well as any audit that may come up.

Some systems are smart enough to “read” the invoice and prepare a check with little or no data entry. Others are able to automate three-way matching – this is when you match a purchase order, packing slip, and invoice together – so that time is saved in the accounts payable function.

Receipts

Today’s systems allow you or your bookkeeper to scan in or take cell phone photos of receipts – whether cash or credit card – and then “read” them and record the transaction. This type of system cuts way down on data entry and allows the accountants to focus on more consultative work rather than administrative work.

Some vendors will email you receipts so all you have to do is use a special email address where your accountant is copied or forward the receipt as you receive it.

The biggest challenge for business owners is getting into the habit of photographing the receipt and sending it to the accountant. The days of shoebox receipts are not completely over, but cloud-savvy business owners are definitely enjoying the alternative options of today’s paperless world.

Approvals

Some systems automate bill approval. This is especially handy for nonprofits or companies with a multi-person approval process. It cuts down on approval time and the time it takes to pay the bill.

New Systems

Here is a short list of new systems that automate a part of the vendor payment or receipt management system. There are a lot more, in addition to your core accounting system, and all of them have different features, platforms, software requirements, integration options, and pricing.

Bill.com
Hubdoc
Receipt Bank
Expensify
SmartVault
Doc.it
Tallie
Concur
LedgerSync
ShoeBoxed
ShareFile
DropBox

If you are interested in finding out more about automating your accounts payable invoices or receipts, please reach out anytime.

Filed Under: Bookkeeping Tagged With: online bookkeeping, receipt management