Small Businesses Should Definitely Use Accounting Software

There is only one major difference between a big and a small company except the financial status. This difference is small business most often does not require a certified public accountant as a full time employee. Accounting is the financial process by which a business is able to summarize the costs it has borne and the profits it has made. Here are the top ten reasons why small businesses should invest in accounting software.

1. Productivity is increased by the use of Accounting

Though your company got adjusted to the paper work manually, it does not mean you can’t change it. Accounting is a high professionalism job. This software simplifies the whole process and handles a various financial calculations simply. By spending less time you can achieve more using a accounting software you can reduce error.

2. Banking processes get immense help by Accounting Software

The latest accounting software can also be linked to your banking account through Internet and the business banking information can be incorporated by the software.

3. The Good Bookkeeping value

Bookkeeping is an essential part of any business as it become important while tax return to the government. As Accounting software reduces the pain of the work so most accountant prefer it. It also saves the work a lot.

4. Using Accounting Information is convenient

Using accounting software is simple to send data and information to your tax consultant or to an outsource service provider through email to work on your accounting and financial data. For Small businesses this saves significant time and money.

5. Accounting Software can be easily accessible

Any small business accounting software like QuickBooks, Simply Accounting, Peachtree, MYOB, Microsoft office small business accounting , etc., are easy to install and use. All of the accounting software comes with manuals and tutorials for you to read and understand the software. Other option for small business is using Application Service provider (ASP), in this accounting software model small businesses can use other companies accounting software for a monthly fee.

6. Tax calculations can be made easy by this software

Small businesses like other businesses have several financial and tax responsibilities to keep in mind when preparing their quarterly and year-end financial statements. Accounting software greatly simplifies and helps you to pay your tax dues correctly and accurately without incurring any penalties and fines.

7. Best practices

Using accounting software small businesses can instantly increase their operational and business efficiency by the best practices offered by the accounting software.

8. Planning & forecasting are prime thing in this software

Accounting software can assist in keeping the small businesses in forecasting their current and future business strategies. They can easily compare their past and current data in various reports, graphs and can use their business data for planning and forecasting purposes.

9. Accounting Software can be combined with Other Software for Better Use

Most accounting software allow other software programs such as Microsoft Office and other related business application to simplify the data sharing

10. Accounting Software is versatile

Small businesses can not only keep a track of their expenditure, debts and receipts; but also create pay rolls, invoices, print checks, pay outstanding invoices, track overdue invoices, scheduled transactions, accounts payable, accounts receivable etc. Thus the software can help the small business keep a track of virtually all its financial dealings and ensure that no payment or bill is missed

Accounting Society Photoshoot


Image by dcshoesboy

Little Miss Jocelyn – Accounts

Small Business Accounting – A Reasonable Solution to Your Accounting Woes

Are you in constant stress just because accounting work at your firm has become unmanageable? Is it true that you toil hard, spend almost whole of your day in office and yet your work doesn’t gets streamlines? If this is what you have been facing since long time, do not worry and look for some Small Business Accounting help. This will make your firm flourish well with efficiently organized and intact accounting data.

If you are running a small scale business and have accounting task done, then there are several small business accounting firms available in the market. These firms have expert accounting professionals who are well equipped with latest information on handling accounting task and software usage too.

One of the major benefits a business firm reaps via small business accounting services is that one is spared from tallying the balance sheet at the end of the day. Professional help from accounting personnel sorts out smallest to largest issues concerning accounting work.

Accounting standards and policies are such that they keep changing, making it almost impossible for someone other than a CPA to solve them. They need a professional touch. The businessman also needs to concentrate on more important matters other than accounting problems. Since accounts supplement the business, the business needs to stay profitable for accounts to make them look good. For this sole reason the businessman should devote his time growing the business and acquiring new businesses.

Accounting help from outsourcing firms can be of immense help to your business. Also these services are cheaper than recruiting accountants and setting up a whole department in your firm for them. A small time business should be able to bear the cost of accounting service and this is how they can do that. The cost factor is very important in modern day business as everyone is in competition and the prices should be quoted well for the business to make profits. These small businesses need to be extra cautious about their business costs because if they don’t then they get gobbled up by big business houses.

The quality of business also improves because the business gets added help of professionals on how to manage it. Small business accounting services help the business in making important decisions like what the fair valuation of the business is and how to make a profit with the current speed of business activity. The business gets a facelift and improved financial performance makes the profits increase. The businessman needs to know if the stock of goods he is maintaining for his business would be better or not or if the debtors should increase above a particular limit or not. All this information would be supplied by small business accounting at cheap prices, making the business reach at the zenith of success.

Outsourcing firms also deals in SEO help. If you have any problem in optimizing your online business then do consult some efficient SEO NYC firm. They will certainly assist you in optimizing your company’s web portal online so that your business gets global recognition.

Accounting=Human Sacrifice


Image by rococohobo

Wall St. Training Self-Study Instructor, Hamilton Lin, CFA describes the fundamental concept underlying accounting, as well as the root of all evil — the accrual concept of accounting and the matching principle. A proper foundation in the accrual concept will simplify financial model building down the road as pro forma adjustments are made to merger and LBO models. For more information of the video courses previewed here, go to: www.wstselfstudy.com/modules.html Over 80 hours of online, interactive Self-Study Videos! ***YOUTUBE VISITORS ONLY*** 10% off any online course, use Discount code: youtube www.wstselfstudy.com Wall St. Training Self-Study provides online, video-based, self-study financial modeling training solutions to Wall Street. Our interactive course modules are Excel-based and specialize in advanced and complex financial modeling, valuation modeling, investment banking, mergers & acquisitions and leveraged buyout training topics. Enhance your skills and master the content required by Wall Street investment banks, M&A, research, asset management, credit, and private equity firms.
Video Rating: 4 / 5

Small Business Financial & Accounting (f&a) Offshore Outsourcing Cost

Fortune 500 companies have been off shoring the financial and accounting business processes (BPO) to countries like India, Philippians, China, etc. These companies have big budgets and a big team of consultants who analyzes the total cost and ROI of sending their financial and accounting work to the service providers in offshore locations. Though smaller companies have started off shoring their financial and accounting work to offshore locations but like big corporations small businesses do not have huge budget to hire consultants to identify the total cost of off shoring their financial and accounting work to offshore locations. But small businesses can still perform their due diligence in calculating total cost of their offshore engagement and gain critical knowledge in finding ROI of sending their financial and accounting work to offshore locations. In this report we will go through all of the hidden costs of offshoring financial and accounting business processes.

1. Different Costs of Offshoring Financial & Accounting Work

Small businesses mainly consider offshoring their work, they will consider only the hourly rate they need to pay to the offshore vendor for various accounting works like bookkeeping, accounts payable, accounts receivable, etc. There are several other additional hidden costs small business have to face in their offshore outsourcing engagement. Typically a small business goes through following offshore accounting work cycle in their offshore engagement:

• Selecting an offshore accounting vendor

• Sending the work to the offshore vendor

• Answering questions for the offshore vendor

• Receiving the finished work from the offshore vendor

• Verifying the finished work from the offshore vendor

• Monitoring the quality of the finished work from the offshore vendor

2. Cost of Selecting offshore accounting vendor

The cost associated with selecting an offshore accounting vendor will be small compared to other costs. Most of the time small businesses can find a qualified offshore accounting vendor simply by searching in Google or by contacting other small businesses those who are already using an offshore vendor, for detailed discussion on this topic read Offshore Accounting Success. This cost is the one time cost and it will be similar to selecting an onshore vendor.

3. Cost of sending the work to an offshore vendor

Small businesses must consider various types of cost like Scanner, High speed Internet, Backup Server, etc, to send their financial and account documents to an offshore vendor, but the good news is that it will be a one time investment and most of the small businesses will have these in place already. There are three different offshore accounting models you can use to send your accounting and financial work to the offshore vendors and for these you will incur following one time cost.

3.1. Scanner & Scanning software

Most of the accounting and financial data will be in your accounting software like QuickBooks, Peachtree etc, but there will be other documents like Bills, Checks, Invoices, Goods received notes, etc will be on paper and these should be digitized using a scanner and a scanning software to convert it into PDF documents which will be stored in your computer. Once the documents are in your computer then you can give access to the offshore vendor to view the PDF documents or they can retrieve it from your computer to perform their work in the offshore location.

Most of small businesses already have a scanner, if not a scanner (scanning software comes with the scanner) can be purchased for less than 00.00. The cost of the scanner will go up based on the volume of accounting and financial documents to be scanned in a given day. It will be a one time cost for the small business and also by scanning all their paper based accounting documents; you can improve the efficiency of overall accounting process.

3.2. High speed Internet Connection Cost

You need to have high-speed Internet connection to send and receive the work to and from offshore location. Again all most all small businesses already have DSL/T1 Internet connection if not they can get a DSL Internet connection for -100/month.

3.3. Secure FTP software

If small businesses are using Application Service Provider (ASP) like Quickbooks online, cpaasp.com, etc, then it is possible for offshore vendors to directly access your accounting data directly from the ASP vendor. In this case there is no need to use secure FTP software.

3.4. Backup Server

Once small businesses start digitizing their accounting documents for their offshore vendors, they need to start planning for the backup server to backup all their accounting documents. Most of the small businesses will have this feature already, if not it is a good investment to have a backup server to backup all their accounting and financial data from their main computer to the backup server. For any business “Business continuity” is a vital task and the backup server will help the small businesses to recover all the accounting data in case of main computer failure.

3.5. Additional Accounting software License cost

Small businesses use various accounting software packages like QuickBooks, MYOB, Microsoft Office Accounting etc, for doing all their accounting and financial work. When they offshore the work the offshore vendor will use the same accounting software to do the work. It is very difficult for the small businesses to find an offshore vendor who already owns the licenses for all the accounting software. As described in the offshore accounting models if small businesses decides to use Remote Server or ASP then there is no additional cost for small businesses. On the other hand if the small businesses decided to use Secure File Transfer then small businesses needs to buy additional accounting software license for the offshore vendor to use. Small businesses will incur this cost even if they outsource the work to onshore vendors. This cost is truly soley based on the accounting software package used by the small businesses. Accounting software packages comes with various flavors types of software licenses like concurrent users, fixed number of users, CPU based, Network based etc., Some times small businesses can completely avoid this cost altogether.

4. Managing Financial & Accounting offshore vendor

Once you send your accounting and financial work to the offshore vendor, you need to constantly mange and monitor the quality of finished work that comes back from the vendor. Initially you may need a full-time person educating the offshore accountants and bookkeepers about your accounting process and preparing proper instructions for them to follow in their work. Once you and the offshore team are comfortable in the working relationship then all you need is to verify the work periodically. Basically you need to consider the offshore team as your virtual team and educate them in your accounting processes and procedures, once you are comfortable with their work your own employee(s) will spend less time with the offshore vendors.

5. Offshore vendor wage

For the accounting and financial work performed by the offshore vendor, small businesses will pay either an hourly rate or a monthly rate to the offshore vendor. This will be the actual direct cost small businesses will pay to the offshore vendor and all other costs are indirect cost of sending the work to offshore vendor. Typically the wage cost will be 50-70% less than the cost paid to the onshore accounting and financial vendor. For small businesses this cost savings is one of the major reasons to use the offshore vendor for their financial and accounting work.

Small businesses need to consider several costs in their financial and accounting offshore engagement. As shown in the table Small business F&A offshore outsourcing – Fixed Cost Vs Monthly Cost some of the costs are fixed and some of them are monthly expanses incurred by the small businesses. Among the monthly cost only the offshore vendor wage is the direct cost paid to the offshore vendor. While performing ROI analysis small businesses must consider all these costs to find the Total Cost of doing business with offshore vendors. As shown in the table, for certain items finding out the exact cost may not be possible and it is highly based on the individual small businesses and the type of accounting and financial work that has been sent to offshore locations. The total cost may not be a fixed amount and it can change from month to month. For example in some months there will be more questions from the offshore vendor in clarifications and in other months there will be less questions, this cost will vary from month to month.

Credit Card Services and Business Loans for the Small Business

To achieve financial independence, experts encourage even currently employed individuals to consider entrepreneurship. Setting up your own business, no matter how small, is touted as one of the best ways toward building the foundation for wealth. Those who are concerned about having a safety net need not take the plunge recklessly. One can start setting up a small business even while employed.  

Of crucial use to small businesses are credit card services and small business loans. The entrepreneur needs to know how to avail of these tools and how to effectively wield them for maximum business growth.

Credit Card Services

A small business would do well to get reputable credit card services in order to prosper in the current business climate. Availing of credit card services will enable it to accept both credit card and debit card payments. This is true either for brick-and-mortar businesses or internet based online businesses. After all, most consumers nowadays routinely use credit cards or debit cards for payment purposes. It only makes good business sense to be well-equipped for the needs of credit card users and debit card users as well as for the needs of customers who pay in cash.

Merchant services provide credit card services covering a wide range of solutions for the processing of credit cards and debit cards as payment options. These credit card services include traditional terminal equipment at point of sale, where credit cards or debit cards are swiped. It also includes software and high speed IP solutions for both traditional commerce and e-commerce. Credit card and debit card payments can, therefore, be accepted in person or through the internet, by phone or by fax.     

Small Business Loans

Any business – whether a small start-up business, a medium-scaled one or a big business company – will be needing an infusion of additional capital sooner or later. Additional capital is always needed for expansion, additional inventory, additional manpower, new systems, new equipment or a new physical layout.

Capital is not always easy to come by, though. The original investors’ personal coffers may have been emptied by the earlier outlays. Prospective investors may not be keen on shelling out funds in times of crisis. Businesses, therefore, have no choice but to seek business loans.

Getting business loans is a difficult process. Even small business loans are not readily approved. Be prepared to present a lot of documentation and paperwork. For small business loans, the proprietor’s personal credit history is taken into account and related references need to be submitted. Of course, the company’s financial statements are just as important in proving the feasibility of the business and its capacity to repay its business loans. Having a detailed business plan will show your business strategies and projections, demonstrating your business acumen.

Unfortunately, even with all the requirements completed, applications for business loans – including small business loans – are, more often than not, disapproved.

Solutions

Some merchant services provide a comprehensive solution for the needs of small businesses in relation to credit card services and small business loans. The set up is elegantly simple. A small business need only avail of the company’s credit card services to be eligible for merchant cash advances. These cash advances are actually small business loans, except that there is no need to go through the complicated application process for business loans. Repayment is made very easy and worry-free, too. A certain small percentage is built into the credit card processing rates to take care of the advances. This way, repayment is actually done automatically in a very affordable manner and according to income flow.

Small business owners would, indeed, be wise to look into these timely business solutions.

Music video by Yung Berg performing The Business (featuring Casha). (C) 2008 SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT

The Small Business Administration is an agency of the federal government that is tasked with ensuring the small businesses are able to have access to credit, do business with the federal government, and maintain employment among small businesses. Although major corporations dominate the headlines of financial news – it is the small businesses within the United States that make up for almost 80% of employment. Additionally, almost 90% of the companies within the United States are considered small businesses under the definitions of the SBA.

 

The primary role of the Small Business Administration is to ensure that lending banks are able to provide financing for their small business customers. As we have discussed in previous articles, the primary method of how this is completed is by providing guarantees to banks on behalf of small business owners throughout the country. Again, the most popular and flexible of these lending programs is the 7a SBA Loan.

 

Historically, the SBA was established in mid 1953 via the passing of the Small Business Act. Prior to the SBA, the primary agency in charge of providing support to small businesses was the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. Since its inception, the SBA has prompted an entire sub-industry in the world of finance. There are several banks, finance companies, and other organizations that deal solely with SBA loans. Additionally, there are also several types of firms including business planning companies and loan brokerages that exclusively assist small business owners with obtaining the 7a SBA loan and other loan programs offered by the administration.

 

Prior to the SBA, it was very difficult for small businesses (especially startup companies) to receive the financing that they needed. However, since its inception, the SBA has been instrumental with the rapid propagation of small business ownership within the United States. This trend is expected to continue as the role of the SBA has continued to expand over the past fifty years. The SBA has taken an active role in ensuring that small companies are able to successfully bid on and receive federal government contracts while concurrently ensuring that they have the financing they need to service these contracts.